Round 2: Words That Strike Fear Into My Skeevy Little Heart

Round Two of revi­sions was the same as Round 1, but dif­fer­ent. Same, in that the edi­to­r­ial notes included line-edits and mar­gin­a­lia, as well as a short edi­to­r­ial let­ter (address­ing two major issues that I’ll describe below). Dif­fer­ent in that AEV’s notes came at two dif­fer­ent times—the first half of the novel one week, the …

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May 11, 2008 – 3:28 am | Posted in Blog | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Revisions? The Computer Says No

The next two blog entries were are going to be about rounds 2 and 3 of Soul Enchi­lada. I learned scads about writ­ing doing these revi­sions. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I became a writer some­where dur­ing the con­ve­nience store scene, some­where between the Vienna sausages and canned chili. In writ­ing about …

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May 10, 2008 – 11:56 pm | Posted in Blog | Tagged , , | Comments Off

FLYLEAF BOOKS Hosts Authors for CHILDREN’S BOOK WEEK

On May 16, I’ll join sev­eral of my fel­low SCBWI Car­oli­nas authors for a group sign­ing at Fly­leaf Books in Chapel Hill. Although I’ve lived in NC for over a decade, this will be my first visit to Chapel Hill. Hope I don’t lost!  Here’s the press release: Chapel Hill, NC, May 16, 2010—Local author …

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May 9, 2008 – 2:10 pm | Posted in Blog | Comments Off

A Revision Story

The revi­sions for Soul Enchi­lada were sim­i­lar to ones I’ve done on nov­els in the past. Every nov­el­ist who has writ­ten a book that didn’t sell knows the feel­ing of chang­ing a novel in response to an encour­ag­ing but “not quite” rejec­tion. The same is true of work­ing from cri­tiques by your crit group. The …

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March 22, 2008 – 12:49 am | Posted in Blog | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Chicken or Egg: The Answer

Teen #1: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?“ Mom: “The egg. Eggs were around a long time before the chicken.”

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January 14, 2008 – 3:10 am | Posted in Zen | Comments Off

Smarticles of Matter

Today’s vocab­u­lary lesson–Smarticle The Urban Dic­tio­nary defines the term “smar­ti­cle” as: (adj) Describ­ing someone/something being smart, smart in nature. Iron­i­cally uses incor­rect gram­mar. Usu­ally used in an infor­mal or jok­ing fash­ion “The girl read her smar­ti­cle answer out loud to the class.” “That was quite a smar­ti­cle maneu­ver, he thought.” That’s all well and good because …

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January 10, 2008 – 12:53 pm | Posted in Zen | Comments Off