Can you name actors whose performances provided hope for you in dark times? Walter Koenig did that for me – twice. As a kid, I would come home and flop on the carpet to watch back-to-back syndicated re-runs of my obsession: Star Trek. While my favorite character was Uhura (woman doing cool things on the bridge, natch), the character who impacted me most was probably Ensign Chekhov, ship’s navigation. You see, Chekhov was Russian. I was Ukrainian. At the time, no one had heard of Ukraine, so we said we were Russian . Why did his ethnicity matter so much to me? I was a sensitive kid, and I knew that the US and the Soviets were not on friendly terms. Russians were “the bad guys” in my air-force-base-adjacent home town. My friends’ fathers might have to fight them at Read more…

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like being at a writing conference, strap in, ’cause I’m gonna spill some tea! This September, I attended two conferences. The first was with mostly newbie writers and the second with very experienced writers, but they had one thing in common: WRITERS. And smashing hundreds of us together has consequences…. So what’s it like being with hundreds of fellow writers? It starts out pretty uncomfortable. While not all writers are introverts, most identify that way. And because writing is a solitary activity, we are used to lots of alone time. That’s two strikes against any gathering. To mitigate this situation, conference planners often include “mix and mingle” events.   Oh, honey.   Many of us simply choose not to attend. But conference planners are smart enough to know this, so they set out writer-bait like Read more…

I love fish-out-of-water stories. Lately I’ve been musing on my own growing-up years, and I think I had a little break-through as to why I love that kind of story.  My dad spoke fluent Spanish and often talked to me about the Cuba of his childhood. When I would visit my grandmother and grandfather, I was guaranteed that, at some point, the talk would circle back to Cuba. How much they missed Habana, guayaba, lechon. How much they would give to be able to visit. (This was the 70s. Visiting Cuba was not happening.)    I loved their stories, and I loved when Grandmommie called my granddad “Papi,” or when she got out the Cuban school books for me to read, or when she taught me what the words meant, or prepared plátanos using crushed Saltine crackers (probably tortitos de plátano, but Read more…

I speak Elizabethan. Okay, imperfectly, and not as a regular thing, and probably it would be more accurate to say that I understand Elizabethan English. So how did this happen? Was it gained through hours and hours of graduate-level work, resulting in an obscure degree? Nope. (Although I do have a VERY obscure advanced degree, and some day I can tell you all about it.) I learned to understand the English of Shakespeare as a kid, in the way kids learn any language: by being immersed in it. My dad was a high school English teacher who wanted to become better educated in his Shakespeare. Thus, when I was a baby, he and my mom began an every-summer habit of taking the fam to Ashland, Oregon to watch plays. (Or, as the Elizabethans would have said, to “hear” plays.) For Read more…

  While I was at sea for my writing cruise, I reflected an awful lot on questions. The more I thought about it, the more I came to see that, as an author my job is all about moving a character, in a compelling way, from asking the wrong questions to asking the right questions. Let’s look at an example. I’ll use my SAVING MARS series. That series has so many characters with whom I can contrast Jessamyn, my main character. We can take a quick look at three of the “contrast characters”: Harpreet, Ethan, and Kipper. Harpreet doesn’t have much of a growth arc, because when we meet her, she’s already done the hard work of becoming who she was capable of becoming. She has, in essence, learned what the guiding question is for her life.  She faces her circumstances Read more…

Three days without a phone? What? Seriously? Is that even possible in the modern world? I’ll tell you how it went…. But first I should probably explain how I came to be cell phone-less in the first place. It would make me sound very cool if I said this was some sort of planned connectivity fasting period. It was not. I most definitely did not plan to have my phone fall out of – but I’m getting ahead of myself. Three weeks ago, I rose very early in the morning to drive with Dr. Science up to Portland to catch a flight. We had a lovely empty-freeway drive and arrived in plenty of time for me to check my bags. And that was where the trouble started. It’s been awhile since I posted a pic of how I normally travel, but let’s just say that I Read more…

I was asked a question about my writing process last month, and it got me thinking. (“A dangerous prospect; I know.”) Here was the question: how many revisions are normal for me when I’m working on a novel? The answer is: a lot. More than one or two. Or three. Or four. I am absolutely not one of those writers who can pound it out and get it right the first time. Nor am I one of those who can, by going at a snail’s pace, say what I want to say the first time I make the attempt. Fortunately, I actually like revision. Mostly. For me, the steps go like this: 1) First draft: pretty much what it sounds like. This is where I get the bare bones of the story down. 2) Read the first draft (after stepping away for a week-ish) and Read more…

I’m back from my all-too-quick visit to the UK last month. I re-visited Cornwall and Stratford-upon-Avon, doing a little research along the way! Here are the highlights:   Things look really good in pictures. I would LOVE to live my life there, in all those great moments. Look! Shakespeare’s schoolroom! Look! School boys walking there because it is STILL a school, and how cool is that? Look! Wildflowers! Timber-frame buildings! The ocean! My trip wasn’t solid goodness, actually. I neglected to snap pictures of me, pulled off the motorway when the oil light on my rental car lit up 30 minutes after I hired it. No screen shots of my purchased phone minutes vanishing while I waited on hold for the car hire agency to take my call. And definitely no pictures of me sobbing when they said it might take two hours for help Read more…

Like most writerly types, I am wordy. Verbose. When two words will suffice, I am likely to use twenty-six. Or two hundred. Or two thousand. (See what I did there?) (And here?) I have a way of tidying up these (unnecessary) words that I’ve never heard anyone else suggest, and I want to share it. Though I always try to remove the deadweight during one of the final revisions, I will often find myself with a larger word count than is ideal. Here’s how I tackle it: by deciding what final word count would make me happy, and evenly removing the words from each page. That means that if I have an 85,000 word manuscript, and I want to get it down to 78,000, I will need to remove 7,000 words. If I have 365 pages, then I need to Read more…

I’m writing this down in hopes it will inspire anyone needing that push to keep trying for success on a difficult task/project/dream. If you’ve seen the video about making The Wedding Gown for the daughterling, then you know I met the deadline and gave my daughter a gown that was absolutely perfect for her. It wasn’t a huge challenge, because I have the background in pattern-making and costume design. I started patterning in December and slowly worked my way through sourcing fabric, perfecting the fit of the pattern in a “muslin” (fake fabric), buying and cutting the real fabric, sewing the gown, cutting up the lace embellishment, mosaic-ing the lace pieces to fit onto her bodice, embroidering crystal beads and pearls onto the lace, and attaching the lace to the gown. I would do about an hour’s worth of lace Read more…