Valerean

My current day job is one that I've loved and deeply appreciated over the last seven years. I have so much creative control, I earn half of the profits my work generates and all I do is what I do best: write. Did I mention that I work with a brilliant editor who gets me, and a gifted cover artist and copy writer who always makes my books look fantastic? But like all good things, my job can't last forever. We're all seniors, you see, and someday me and my crew will wrap up the business and go off to retire, which will probably be about the time I won't have any reason to work for money any more. I should stop writing professionally then, of course. The question is, after 27 years of doing something pretty much daily, including weekends and holidays, can I do that? I think about the time to come when I don't have to get up and start my writing day with a four-hour work session, and end my day with another after dinner. I do have enough to do around the ho...

Following the creaky tradition I had while writing PBW , I thought I'd take a look back at 2019. Okay, so all the bad stuff first. I had surgery to repair a jaw I didn't realize was broken, lost eight teeth, slipped three discs in my neck and had to give up sewing and quilting for a month while working on straightening out my spine. My guy got (treatable) skin cancer. All that was the personal worst. I had not planned to move my blogging back to Blogger, but Tumblr started censoring my G-rated posts about quilting as inappropriate/adult content. Meanwhile, every pornographer taking X-rated shots kept showing up, and some of them followed me. Euw. Then people on Tumblr figured out who I was and started asking me for money. I finally decided I'd better move. Best decision I made all year. I decided to keep this version of Valerean secret, so it could be just for trusted friends. I don't want to be a public figure anymore. So far that's worked, and I...

Today I'm going to start work on my NaNoWriMo project Twenty-One , which some of you may remember I started but never finished back in 2016. I always wanted to complete that book, so I'm hoping to knock out the rest of it, which should be at least 50K. If you want to follow along I'll be posting what I write on Google Docs here . That link is just for readers of this blog, so please don't pass it around. In other news, I am now transitioning at my job from full-time novel writing to something like a creative manager (there's a couple of hats I'll be wearing, but that title seems to fit them all best.) Basically I'll be helping to direct and edit the folks who work for me and my partner, and a few other things. I'm a bit nervous, but this is the direction we've decided to take with our business, and it will be a lot easier on me. I hope. Fingers crossed. For anyone else who is diving into National Novel Writing Month: Break a keyboard! Ha....