Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

As you can see from the counter on the side-bar, I've hit the 80K mark on  Painted Over,  and from the outside it might look like I'm done. In fact, though I reached the end, thanks to some big changes that happened in the middle (major deviations from my plan!), I have to go back and change some things to make the ending work. I want to do some of that now, while it's fresh in my mind, so I'll be working on it the next couple of days, re-writing some parts and leaving lots of notes to myself in others.  This draft has been a bear, and I feel a  like I've been wrestling a bear! I can't lie: I'll be glad to put it aside until sometime next year. In the meantime, I have short stories that have been waiting patiently for attention, and can start after the holidays with the edits on Seffi Wardwell #4,  Logged Off  (or maybe  Logged Off at the Library,  but I'm leaning to the short and crisp for my titles just now. Feel free to offer opinions). Just on...

Time for one of my occasional writer's update posts!  I've been home for a month now, which means... I'm about to head about again, to spend Thanksgiving with the kids in the Bay Area. But it also means that I've had long enough to get into something of a habit of work. With what results? I'm 36K into the draft of  Painted Over,  which will eventually be #4 in the Seffi Wardwell mysteries. That's the big thing. I'm averaging nearly 2200 words a day, which is in my target range. I have also been tinkering with a couple of short stories, and trying to figure out where to start and what to say in a short memoir piece. Probably too much to keep in my head all at once. On the administrative side, I have set up a store with Buy Me a Coffee! That also means I have the link for people to donate if something I share really excites them, though I'm not going to hold my breath. But having the store means that when I am doing direct sales at events I can offer a lin...

It's November 28. The month is almost over, and I hope all of you have had a good one. If you've been participating in NaNoWriMo, whether as a "traditionalist" who's pounding out 50,000 words (or more), or a "rebel" who's been writing short stories or  revising something or trying to finish a book started years ago, here's to meeting your goals in the next two days! And what about the Ninja Librarian? Well, in once sense, I met the goal: I've written nearly 60,000 words, and have a beginning, middle and end to the novel. But I don't have what I'd call a complete draft, and not just because it's about 20,000 words short of the target length. There are a lot of holes to fill in and red herrings to fry before I can call it a draft. So I've been working since Saturday to identify the missing bits and start filling them in, to give myself a complete draft to work with when I start editing in a few months. So here's what kills m...