Sometimes Writing Is Like Throwing a Ball Down a Field and Hoping You Can Run Fast Enough to Catch It

I like making elaborate metaphors when it distracts me from actually having to write anything. Announcing my daily writing progress is my way of making myself stick to it. It’s a brain hack. Because writing is very hard, but I don’t like breaking promises. So I stick to it, even if it means writing way …

Judging a Story as a Whole

It’s now 2018, and I’m 16k words into The Xiaran Mongrel, the finale of my Annals of the Bitch Queen trilogy. This is going to be divided into two acts, each at around 90-100k each, so…quite a doorstopper. Anyone who has finished The Agartes Epilogues know I take finales very seriously. Not only do plotlines have to come …

Hello, 2018!

Earlier this week, my husband asked me what our plans were for 2018. It was a serious question, not a casual one. It had been a tough few years, with life looking like we’d been walking on a tight wire fifty feet off the ground. I can’t even pinpoint the exact moment when it all …

2017 At a Glance…Learning How To Fail Better, and Phoenixes and Shit, and Plans for the Upcoming Year

Early this year, I wrote a short story which was a better way for me to express what I’ve felt over the last year–the last eighteen months, really–than screaming at people. I published the rest of my The Agartes Epilogues trilogy in spring, a move which has caused a lot of confusion (as if the series …

My Scathing Review of The Ikessar Falcon

Like most writers, I suffer from self-doubt and low self-esteem more often than not. This shit can be crippling. Writers cope in many different ways. I think I’m a sucker for pain, because (apart from drinking) my method involves looking my critic in the eye and then saying, “Hey, you know what, let’s be friends.” …