Authors Electric

 Just before the pandemic (the 2020s, to clarify for when I beocme nothing but a blip in history), we sought a better situation for our daughter and enrolled her in a private school. Moving from a class of 30 to one of 12 transformed her academics, though it strained our finances. Among her new classmates was an unexpected addition—a guinea pig named Miss Addie. The school asked for volunteers to care for Addie over Christmas break, and we eagerly stepped in. Addie and I bonded instantly (I’m a self-proclaimed pet whisperer), and when it came time to return her, I delayed by almost a week, because I just couldn't! I mean, look at those lovely, soulful, pink eyes! Pink! When the pandemic closed the school in March, they asked me to take her in again. By May, the school announced its closure (lack of funds... and at 1500/month, in a rural farm area, I understood why), and Addie became a permanent part of our family. During lockdown, my daughter discovered, through taking a guinea pig...

One of several virtual writers' groups I am part of is called Campers' Canteen - we first 'met' via one of the NaNoWriMo events and have stuck together now for several years, though not on the main NaNo website, which has apparently become rather toxic - not that I've witnessed that for myself, but I've received several emails from them apologising for things I didn't know had even happened, and sharing their plans and promises to do better in the future. The point of Campers' Canteen is that we mostly communicate with each other during NaNoWriMo events and share our anxieties about writing and (mostly) our regular failures to keep up with our various goals. April brought one of these events and I am happy to say my writing went almost exactly as I had hoped. I finished drafting and editing the latest book in my mystery series (book 27), and it's now live on Amazon etc - see cover pic at the end of this post. But I'm also happy to add that I foun...

  I live in the USA. Here it is NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month). *sigh* I never make NANOWRIMO work for me. And that bums me out, because it is a thing formed to help people finish their novels, and Finish Your Damn Novel! is the phrase I coined when I formed my first writing workshop, because many people need support to finish a book, and I was hoping that hosting a group would give that support to me, as well as the members in it. But NANOWRIMO is never something I can get excited about because it is in November. I have been a college adjunct professor for a gazillion years. This means that, in November, I have literally hundreds of students who are trying to get their writing done and in to me to read and grade. Or needing me to help them get their writing together. Or, often, needing me to help them get their college app essays ready. When you're a full-time professor in the USA in the writing department your teaching load is +/- four classes/semester, for about eight...

 The other night I couldn't get to sleep for hours. This was partly because my sister-in-law was round earlier in the day with her dog, who was in an unusually restless frame of mind, having detected something in the bushes at the end of our garden and been frustrated in her efforts to catch up with it, and we talked for hours, which is an unfamiliar activity for me these days as I spend a lot of time on my own. Not that I'm complaining about that, because I always have plenty to do, which brings me back to the 'clearing the decks' topic. The main reason I couldn't get to sleep was the multiplicity of tasks I had intended to finish with before NaNoWriMo. Of course I had known about most of the tasks for some time. There were last year's AGM minutes, for a start. I had been sort of hoping I'd typed them up before my accident in April and would find them somewhere among my computer files, but it turned out that not only were they not in electronic form anywher...

Having signed up for National Novel Writing Month again for what seems like the hundredth time but is probably about the 17th, and set up the title of the novel I planned to write for it, I'm now having second thoughts. Second thoughts are of course very familiar to me, although not always about what to write in November. Quite often my November novel will feature in the so-called annual writing plan I create in December or January for the year ahead. I often reserve this spot for the next novel in a series, but I've only just published the 26th in my long-running mystery series so I don't think I can come up with another idea just yet. Instead I currently have two completely different ideas. To try and come to a decision, I'm collecting thoughts about each of the ideas in a separate document, and I suppose when it comes to the crunch I can just wait and see which idea seems to have most depth or would be most fun to develop, or whatever the secret ingredient is, and wo...

  November is an odd month, I think. I don’t like cold, wet weather and by November, even I have to conclude that the summer has definitely gone. On the other hand, November is NaNoWriMo time, where lots of us commit to write 50,000 words in November. That’s exciting, it’s busy, it’s a lot to do, especially as I decided this year to aim for 70,000 so my first draft of book 3 would be finished, rather than have it hang around my head for most of December and possibly January. Exciting! And such a great excuse for not going anywhere, for being far away, daydreaming about somebody else’s life... It helps with the weather as well. My first proper NaNo project was Sapphire Beach, set in Crete, in September, with lots of soft beaches, baklava and sunshine. This year, my poor characters are making their way through a jungle; one nearly got eaten by a crocodile. Not as sweet as dreaming of baklava, but definitely warmer than it is outside. Having said that, we went to Bournemouth las...