Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

(Hey, I might finally have found an alliterative name for my writing posts that actually makes sense!) Before I talk about NaNo ( National Novel Writing Month ), I want to share a blog post I found helpful and inspiring. Aliette de Bodard wrote this as a guest post on Chuck  Wendig's "Terrible Minds" blog: Cannibalizing a Draft . Take a look. Okay, now that we have a link to something to help us when we finish that crappy NaNo draft, are you participating? Tell me why or why not! I'm doing it again this year. I'd like to think that I'm fully capable of preparing and writing a draft in a month or 6 weeks without any outside motivators... but the truth is, that community of writers, the little word-count ticker, and just the idea that there's a deadline does a lot for my ability to prepare well and write hard. It's all about deadlines, I think. I am motivated to work on my outline/writing plan for Death By Library because I know I want to star...

iction in 50 is a regular feature in the last week of every month and I invite any interested composers of mini-narrative to join in!      What is #Fi50? In the words of founder Bruce Gargoyle, "Fiction in 50: think of it as the anti-NaNoWriMo experience!" Pack a beginning, middle and end of story into 50 words or less (bonus points for hitting exactly 50 words). The rules for participation are simple : 1. Create a piece of fictional writing in 50 words or less, ideally using the prompt as title or theme or inspiration. That’s it!  But for those who wish to challenge themselves further, here’s an additional rule: 2. Post your piece of flash fiction on your blog or (for those poor blog-less souls) add it as a comment on the Ninja Librarian’s post for everyone to enjoy.  And for those thrill-seekers who really like to go the extra mile (ie: perfectionists): 3. Add the nifty little picture above to your post (credit for which goes entirely to idefl...

  Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month . The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it. Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to Jemima Pett , who has kept it going--visit her blog to add your name to the list ! Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts , including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month. **** I dug into the archives in search of something appropriate to the season and found this story. Not exactly a Halloween story, but there are monsters enough to satisfy, I hope. This one appears to have clocked in at exactly 1000 words, and I said this about it when I first published it in May of 2016: Chuck Wendig gave us a...

Drop Dead Ornaments (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery) Cozy Mystery 7th in Series Self Published Print Length: 209 pages ASIN: B07GMZ2H4B Anastasia Pollack’s son Alex is dating Sophie Lambert, the new kid in town. For their community service project, the high school seniors have chosen to raise money for the county food bank. Anastasia taps her craft industry contacts to donate materials for the students to make Christmas ornaments they’ll sell at the town’s annual Holiday Crafts Fair. At the fair Anastasia meets Sophie’s father, Shane Lambert, who strikes her as a man with secrets. She also notices a woman eavesdropping on their conversation. Later that evening when the woman turns up dead, Sophie’s father is arrested for her murder. Alex and Sophie beg Anastasia to find the real killer, but Anastasia has had her fill of dead bodies. She’s also not convinced of Shane’s innocence. Besides, she’s promised younger son Nick she’ll stop risking her life. But how can she say no to Alex...

Title: Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II Author: Liza Mundy. Publication Info: Hachette Books, 2017. 432 pages (Kindle edition). Source: Library digital services Publisher’s Blurb: In the tradition of Hidden Figures and The Girls of Atomic City, Code Girls is the astonishing, untold story of the young American women who cracked key Axis codes, helping to secure Allied victory and revolutionizing the field of cryptanalysis. Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surv...

Fiction in 50 is a regular feature in the last week of every month and I invite any interested composers of mini-narrative to join in!        What is #Fi50? In the words of founder Bruce Gargoyle, "Fiction in 50: think of it as the anti-NaNoWriMo experience!" Pack a beginning, middle and end of story into 50 words or less (bonus points for hitting exactly 50 words). The rules for participation are simple : 1. Create a piece of fictional writing in 50 words or less, ideally using the prompt as title or theme or inspiration. That’s it!  But for those who wish to challenge themselves further, here’s an additional rule: 2. Post your piece of flash fiction on your blog or (for those poor blog-less souls) add it as a comment on the Ninja Librarian’s post for everyone to enjoy.  And for those thrill-seekers who really like to go the extra mile (ie: perfectionists): 3. Add the nifty little picture above to your post (credit for which goes entirely ...

Still working our way across the country! (And now I'm nearly a day late with my Friday post. Oops. So hard to keep track of the day of the week!) After crossing several states I'd never before visited, we entered Canada at Sault Ste Marie, taking me into Ontario, which I'd also never visited (before we finished, we also visited Montreal, Quebec--another new Province, which is the only part of Canada that felt like a foreign country). Our main target in Ontario was Algonquin Provincial Park . We didn't quite make it the first night, and ended up grabbing a campsite at another Provincial Park about an hour from Algonquin. We were fortunately well equipped to fix dinner in the dark. In case anyone wants to see our kitchen set-up. The ice chest usually stayed in the car, being heavy and awkward. Next day we were able to claim a spacious site at Algonquin, as the holiday weekend campers streamed out of the park, leaving lots of room for us! The campsite really was almost th...

Write…Edit…Publish (WEP) is an online writing community now partnering with the Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG). We post the third Wednesday of every second month. WEP challenges are open to all.  I don't really like horror, so I took the prompt in a different direction, and wrote a short story from my Pismawallops PTA mystery series. You'll only get the "deja vu" part if you read Death By Trombone :)  I managed to hit 1000 words exactly, exclusive of the title. Deja Vu All Over Again “We’ve been over this, Kitty. With my new job at the library I don’t have time for everything. I really can’t do the Fall Formal.” I crossed my fingers as I said it; I worked a great deal less at the library than Kitty did at their gas station. “We have been through it all before.” Kitty didn’t sound like she agreed with me. She sounded like she was laughing at me, or humoring me, which was worse. “You can afford one evening, and the library isn’t open Friday nights. Well, plus ...

  Title: Castle Hangnail Author: Ursula Vernon Publication Info: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2015. 386 pages. Source: Library digital collection Publisher’s Blurb: When Molly shows up on Castle Hangnail's doorstep to fill the vacancy for a wicked witch, the castle's minions are understandably dubious. After all, she is twelve years old, barely five feet tall, and quite polite. (The minions are used to tall, demanding evil sorceresses with razor-sharp cheekbones.) But the castle desperately needs a master or else the Board of Magic will decommission it, leaving all the minions without the home they love. So when Molly assures them she is quite wicked indeed (So wicked! REALLY wicked!) and begins completing the tasks required by the Board of Magic for approval, everyone feels hopeful. Unfortunately, it turns out that Molly has quite a few secrets, including the biggest one of all: that she isn't who she says she is. This quirky, richly illustrated novel is filled ...