Category: Snippets and Stories
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I’m starting to think of this as the potato-chip book (plus snippet)
“Nobody can write just one.” I started and finished the chapters Throwing Stuff Against A Wall, Theme and Concept, When Things Go Well (intro), When Things Go Splat (intro), and Word Games: Goosebumps, and, with way over 3000 words for the day, had to make myself quit before I headed into Word Games: Pong, and…
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Plot Clinic–How to Use This Book
Snippet: the How To Use This Book Section, which I hope is both funny and useful, and will give you a clear idea of what you’re getting yourself into. The section is in pdf form like yesterday’s snippet, and for the same reasons. Usual disclaimers and notices apply. How to Use This Book Also have…
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Plot Clinic Intro
Attached is the first draft of the intro to Holly Lisle’s Create a Plot Clinic. It’s in pdf format because my writing program is apparently inserting characters into the text that crash the weblog text editor. PDF was fast and easy. All disclaimers apply: This is unedited first draft, and will have typos, spellos, and…
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Wandering Ways
I’m almost done with the first draft of The Ruby Key. Due to the fact that I left out a lot of important and exciting things in the middle portion of the story (because I write very, very tight in first draft and almost always have to expand in revision) I’m going to end up…
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Friday Snippet: The Ruby Key
Genna, Dan, Yarri and the cat travel the moonroad the old woman told them to seek. We had barely caught our breaths than the cat said, “And now Coldfall,” and something in my heart contracted at the sight of the red sparks that spun around him, brightening and tightening until they coalesced into a terrifying…
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Friday Snippet … almost
It’s Saturday. I got the words this week, but I haven’t had time to breathe otherwise. However, here, belatedly, is the week’s snippet from THE RUBY KEY. (Scholastic, pub. date pending.) “You’ve already crossed the moonroads,” the cat said to me. He rode on my shoulders. “If you have not walked them in the flesh,…
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Snippet from THE RUBY KEY
I’m not going to give too much set up here. My young heroes have made a life-or-death deal with the nightling Kai-lord, and have realized he doesn’t intend to keep his end of it. They’ve gone to visit an ancient audiomaerist—a woman who can track people through time and space from the words they’ve spoken.…
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Snippet: Intro to Holly Lisle’s Create A Culture Clinic
This is first draft. It was drop back and punt time for me, as I got my head around what, exactly, I’m trying to give you in this book. This is the introduction to the book, where I think I got it. Why Create Cultures? Every novel ever written is, was, or eventually will be…
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Some Weird Backgrounding on Project Blue
Am deep in developing a “written” language for the worldbuilding in Project Blue. I’m having to think way outside the box, because the language is encoded for weavers, knitters, and others who work in fabric, and it’s got to be compact but flexible. So patterns have meanings, and so do colors, and so do textures…
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If I Brought Lambs
The novel LAST GIRL DANCING was born as IF I BROUGHT LAMBS, on 9/1/96, with the following poem that I wrote. I’ve included the whole page, because initially each chapter was supposed to be preceded by a poem from the killer, and, finding it this morning, I thought the header was kind of funny. Along…