Happy Pride Month! Yesterday, Mol and I were in downtown Olympia at the corner of 5h and Washington for the dedication of two crosswalks painted in trans flag colors. I was part of the speaker line up and though the mood was celebratory, I felt it necessary to bring some #realtalk to the event. You…
Hello from the wet side of Washington State where it is finally warm enough to wear shorts sometimes, the itch to garden has become irresistible and we’ve even had to wear sunscreen a couple of times. Writers Chat I will be hosting a social gathering for introverts on Tuesday, May 9th. We will be at…
Hello friends. A lot has happened and is happening, so grab a comfy seat and I’ll catch you up Clocking Out to Concentrate on the Work On Friday the 3rd, I logged off of my work computer, shut down the monitors and began a two week writing retreat. For the first week of my retreat,…
Adventures with Words, January 2023 – from CK Combs, Author I used to do New Year’s Resolutions, back when I was younger and hadn’t learned to choose my battles well. I piled up goals and ambitions, listed anything I could think of that I believed would improve my life. And every year there would come…
Hello! I’m going to try this newsletter thing. All the cool kids are doing it and I want to be cool. Also, I want to build systems to connect with readers that aren’t dependent on fascist billionaires. I’m planning a monthly schedule, with occasional short announcements if they are time sensitive. Making space for creativity is…
April has become the month for gathering feedback on my work in progress, the YA novel about the haunted amusement park. My partner and muse, Mol, was the first to complete the read through and we had several great conversations about their impressions, ideas and suggestions. Through the course of those conversations, I came up…
I have been hard at work writing, writing, writing toward a major milestone – the first complete draft of my WiP, the YA novel involving enby, queer, black, awkward, ghosts, villains, mystical lady magic, and teenage angst. I set a goal of reaching this milestone by the end of March and I hit it on…
There is a Sir Terry Pratchett’s quote that is a part of my personal gospel: the first draft is just you telling the story. The gist is that we should not be self-critical about the first draft. We should blaze ahead with creative abandon rather than get in our own way at such an early…
This week, I spent some quality time finalizing the order of events in my haunted amusement park novel. I’ve got 20 chapters planned, many are in their third draft. A few need to be written whole, probably up to about 20k more words to write, then edit. Knowing my final outline, progression and chapter layout…
I’m working my way through Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft. In chapter 9, Indirect Narration, or What Tells, she warns against the info dump style of telling the reader about the world their are entering. If you’ve read fantasy or sci fi, you know what she’s referring to. That scene early in the book…