A writer’s life

Boy, am I busy. Right now I’m back to promoting the Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story contest, and as part of that we are thowing a Scare The Dickens Out of Us reading party this Saturday, January 21 at the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas. Stewart McGregor will read us the winning story from the main contest, “Dirt on Vicky” by Clint Smith of Indianapolis, IN, and the winning  junior contest winner “The Queen of the Crooked Teeth” by Diane Ward of Brandon, MS. Cake and punch are refreshments. My sister Roxanne and I will answer any questions about the contest and pass out entry forms. And after that’s over, I’ll go back to sending out information about the 2012 contest. You can find full rules and entry forms at http://clarklibraryfriends.com.

I just finished judging the Golden Heart novel contest for Romance Writers of America  http://rwa.org  The past two years I have also judged another chapter-level romance writing contest, but may pass that by this year.

I started my new novel Talking To The Dead Guys, a Boo-Done-It Mystery on January 1. So far, so good. This time, instead of having a daily time amount as my goal in writing, I’m using a writing schedule Susan Mallery http://susanmallery.com  passed on to my local RWA group. It’s based on page count, not time, and it’s pretty difficult to transition from the time goal to the page goal. But with her schedule I’m already on Chapter 9 and working harder than I ever have before. And it’s damned fun, too.

In a couple of days I’m going to publish my short story Truepenny to Amazon.com. I need to proofread it twice more before I let it go. And after that is up, I need to edit Saints and Sinners, another of my short stories, into better shape and then start the whole process over for it. And then there’s even more where that came from.

Meantime, Arroyo had been published as an e-book, and recently issued as a paperback available through Amazon.com and locally at the Buffalo Clover  http://buffalocloverflowerco.com florist and gift shop. We are also selling copies hand-to-hand, successfully distributing five in Austin and five yesterday afternoon at the Irving Club in Lockhart.

I’ve got books to read that I promised reviews on, and then I’ve got the reviews to write. I hope they will be as good as the last one I read, Fate’s Mirror http://amzn.com/B005CJ70O8. I just did that review. Busy, busy, busy. And that doesn’t even count the mundane stuff like taking out the trash, mowing the lawn (actually, hiring someone to mow the lawn), grocery shopping, watching The Big Bang Theory, walking the dog, etc.

I left out the part about Twitter, Facebook, RWA loops, the big spam hunt, reading other people’s blogs and most of all, watching my statistics on Amazon.com for the Kindle and Createspace, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble for the Nook. Out of all the things I do on a daily basis, watching my statistics is the most useless, but it’s addictive. I swear I’m going to wean myself from it to maybe only once a week, but it will take time.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK—Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston.   Brood of the Witch Queen by Sax Rohmer.

4 thoughts on “A writer’s life

  1. Thank you for organizing and hosting this. It was delightful and Stewart’s reading was perfection. It was very nice to meet you as well. Please keep up the good work. The “Scare the Dickens” Contest is inspired!

    • You are welcome. We had a blast, and Stewart was just perfect reading the stories.

  2. Thank you so much for the letter about the “Scare the Dickens Out of Us” event. It really made my day getting to see the pictures and read about it. I’ll put it under my trophy to keep!

    -Diane Ward

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