Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

It's the first Wednesday of the Month, and that means time for our Insecure Writers Support Group posts! I'm having to make a fast trip to California this week, so I may be slow responding, but I will get to you if you leave a comment!   Purpose:   To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting:   The first Wednesday of every month is officially   Insecure Writer’s Support Group   day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting!   Don't forget you can ...

Yes, friends, that's right: today, Washed Up With the Tide is released on the world! If you pre-ordered ebooks, they should drop onto your device today. In fact, they should already be there, and you should be too busy reading the book to read this post. If you didn't pre-order, today's a great day to buy the book. Why? Because a big bump of sales on one day pushes me up the sales ranking and increases the odds the book will be seen. So, yeah, that's totally about me, but since you know you want it, why not click "buy" when it will do me the most good? You can also (finally!) order paperback copies. I sent for mine some time ago, but I guess Amazon wouldn't want me to give any out before they do, so they haven't even shipped them yet. For those who pre-ordered signed copies, I'll get them out as soon as they arrive, apparently along about the end of the week. And for anyone who hasn't seen all my excited posts about this, here's the scoop:...

I've been pretty quiet for quite a while, and it's time I got back on the blogging schedule! I've been enjoying some great trips--I even got to see Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS from a perch in the Grand Canyon! And followed it up with several days in the Bay Area with my kids, engaging in some house-hunting on their behalf, which is both fun and stressful as all get out. As a result, very little writing has happened (again). I did work a little on the poor sad short story that keeps getting shunted aside in favor of another hike, and of course, the new book has a cover, is formatted, and--ta-da! -- has a release date! So here it is:  It's available November 18, just in time to give copies as Christmas presents! So that's pretty cool. I still have some tinkering to do with the formatting but it is substantially finished--and I'm really excited, both for the release and to be working on the next book! Edited Out has been patiently waiting its turn for revisions, and Bo...

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and time for another IWSG post, delving further into a touchy topic: AI.   Purpose:   To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting:   The first Wednesday of every month is officially   Insecure Writer’s Support Group   day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting!   Don't forget you can post your link on the IWSG Facebook page !   Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and ...

After last week's IWSG posts, where many people recommended ProWritingAid as a great way to be sure you have a clean MS, grammar-wise, I decided to give (the free version) a try. I know I have a few issues, many of them about commas. When I get my MS back from my proofreader I typically find I have used a lot of commas that don't belong there. Maybe left out some that do belong.  I loaded in my whole MS for Washed Up With the Tide , and hit go. It came back indicating a LOT of grammar issues, which shocked me, though I soon found that most had to do with those dratted commas. Most of the software's suggestions in that area seem to be valid, as nearly as I can tell. A few reveal the flaws in automated software, as sometimes things aren't quite what they seem to a non-human "reader" . Still, for punctuation and catching things like missing quotation marks, it is doing well. When it starts looking at stylistic issues, it's a different matter. With no ability ...

It has been a while since I had much of a writer update. If you notice I've been a bit thin on the book reviews as well, the two are related. There's been a lot of travel since the first of the year, even for me! The inevitable side-effect is less writing, and a bit of a struggle to get back in the groove now that I'm home for a bit. Here's the current status: Washed Up With the Tide (Seffi Wardwell #2): I'm in the early stages of what I hope will be the final edit (to be followed by polishing and proof-reading). I've been dealing with some plot issues but think I might have a grip on it now. I also met last week with my cover artist and hope to have a cover soon, after which I'll set a publication date and open the book for pre-orders. Short stories: After a long hiatus when I wasn't getting around to finding new places to submit (and the rejections of the last items out), I now have two stories out on submission. Working on the novel makes it hard for...

  It's the first Wednesday of the month--time for the IWSG post.       Why? The IWSG is here to share and encourage, to offer a place for authors to admit their insecurities and offer help and support to each other. How? The official IWSG posting day is the first Wednesday of every month. Hop around the list and see who has worries, triumphs, and news to share.  Every month we have an optional question to spark discussion.  Our motto:  Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.   The awesome co-hosts for the April 3 posting of the IWSG are Victoria Marie Lees,   Kim Lajevardi,   Nancy Gideon,  and  Cathrina Constantine! Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post i...

  It's the first Wednesday of the month--time for the IWSG post.       Why? The IWSG is here to share and encourage, to offer a place for authors to admit their insecurities and offer help and support to each other. How? The official IWSG posting day is the first Wednesday of every month. Hop around the list and see who has worries, triumphs, and news to share.  Every month we have an optional question to spark discussion.  Our motto:  Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.   The awesome co-hosts for the April 3 posting of the IWSG are Janet Alcorn, T. Powell Coltrin, Natalie Aguirre, and Pat Garcia! Every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling wi...

Yes, my friends, it's that time again! Revisions! Notes and outlines and corrections and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!  Whenever and wherever I have the chance to work on it. Okay, those are old photos, but you get the idea.  Today's discussion: where am I in the process, and how is it going?  Way back last fall, just before I began drafting Seffi Wardwell #3 ( Edited Out ), I took a squint at #2. My initial reaction was that I'd done an amazing job with the first draft (not something I usually think). My second reaction was that if I thought it was all in such good shape, I needed a second opinion. I don't usually care to have anyone read a story until I've revised it a couple of times, but I needed advice, so Ellen Jacobson kindly agreed to read the MS of Washed Up With the Tide .   Thanks to Ellen's insightful comments, I am now in the process of my usual level of revision and re-vision. Between her comments and my own realizations as I began reading aga...

Happy Solstice! Somewhere in the next 24 hours the days start getting longer (for us in the north) or shorter (for you folks south of the equator). Winter Solstice is a favorite of mine, because I'm not a huge fan of the dark days of winter and though nothing changes in a hurry, from here we are on our way back to light. Last week I reflected on my NaNo experience, and I believe noted that I was kind of burned out and struggling to keep writing after 40 intense days. That's still kind of true--I've dropped my characters in the middle of the short story was I crafting, because I simply can't seem to make the story gel in my mind. I'm not giving up--but I am letting things percolate in hopes that the glimpses I've gotten of how it works out will turn into a clearer vision so I can write. Meanwhile, I've had a LOT of business to tend to, personal and writer-related. I've managed to send out my newsletter (see sign-up box in the side-bar if you want to get i...

Well, this has been a mixed bag, as evidenced in part by my post being a day late (look for Photo Friday on Saturday, too).  Of course, having pretty much a week with the house full of company added extra challenges. But every day I was able to write at least a few hundred words, and some days I clobbered the word counts, so at this point I am still well ahead of my target, if not keeping up quite the level of over-achieving I was at the beginning of the month. So my writing time has been up and down. What about the actual writing? You know, the way the story is going and all that? Ups. Way up there. Downs. Way down there.   That's been a bit up and down as well. I have a lot of big holes in the story that need to be filled. And that turns out to be a good thing, because at the moment I seem to have wrapped up the basic story line at about 65,000 words--well short of my usual 80K for a cozy mystery. We'll see how close I come; 70K is still in the ballpark. Of course, I went an...