AuthorLifeMonth!

Well, I got busy and then I got the flu and then…yada yada yada, I guess. However, if you recall, last month was “AuthorLifeMonth” on Instagram, so here are the rest of my entries!

Day 12 of #AuthorLifeMonth: Killed Darlings. This is how the first novel I wrote began. It was an Arthurian epic fantasy that told the story of Arthur's return to Britain in her time of need. I had a lot of nifty ideas for this story, some of which I stil

Day 12 was “Killed Darlings”. “Kill your darlings” is a common bit of advice for writers; it means that you can’t get overly attached to things in your writing, if removing them would make the writing better. It also means letting projects go, which is what this represents: my first attempt at writing a novel, an Arthurian fantasy called The Promised King. It was intended as a duology, and I actually got the first one, The Welcomer, finished and posted it online in blog form. But some stuff happened in the mid-2000s, and as way leads on to way…I doubt I’ll ever come back this way again. I did learn a lot from writing that book, though.

Next is Day 13, “Favorite Books in the Genre”.

Day 13 of #AuthorLifeMonth! Favorite books in genre. Here are two books each from SF, Fantasy, and horror/supernatural. These are all amazing books.
Here we have two books each from my preferred genres: fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I could take variants of this photo all day and still have books to use!

Day 14 was “Favorite Cover”. I figured this meant favorite cover of our own, but I only have two and I can’t possibly pick between them, so I went elsewhere: the wonderful cover for Nicholas Basbanes’s book A Gentle Madness, which is about book collecting:

Day 14 of #AuthorLifeMonth brings us to Favorite Cover. I love both of mine and they are meant to look as part of a larger set, so I'm interpreting this one as "favorite cover to someone else's book". This, the cover to Nicholas Basbanes's wonderful A GEN

Who wouldn’t want to read that!

Day 15 was “Swag”. All I have right now are business cards.

Day 15 of #AuthorLifeMonth: Swag! All I have right now are these business cards. I plan to have bookmarks printed later this year. Maybe buttons, too! #amwriting

Day 16 was “Where you write”. This photo is my workroom at the day job; I often use my thirty-minute lunch period as a writing session.

Day 16 of #AuthorLifeMonth! One of my main writing spaces is my worktable at The Store (home of the day job), where I've taken to using my 30-minute lunch breaks for writing. I also like cafes and libraries, along with the deck of my house. This year I'm

Yes, it’s cramped, but I do tend to do well in tight spaces. (Not that open spaces freak me out, or anything.)

Day 17 brought us “Where You Relax”. I love to kick back and read at home, but there’s also some very real spiritual revitalization to be found in the woods and forests and along the rocky streambeds of Western New York. I’ve always enjoyed hiking, but the last year or so, with the dog as my partner…it’s becoming nearly an obsession.

Day 17 of #AuthorLifeMonth: Where I relax. For me, it's all about the forests of WNY and Erie County. This is Sprague Brook Park, one of my favorite haunts, a bit farther away from Casa Jaquandor than most. Hiking in nature "regrounds" me, if that makes s

Day 18 was “Research”, so here’s a part of the background work for The Adventures of Lighthouse Boy: the poem “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes. Reading in the genre is research, for me; I like to get an idea of what kinds of tales can and have been told, as well as seeing if I can figure out various tricks of those trades.

Day 18 of #AuthorLifeMonth (which I missed): Research! I don't do a lot of direct research, in the usual sense. I look things up as I need them, or I do a lot of "grab bag" reading and let the brain do its witches' cauldron thing. I also try to read in th

That’s it for now. More to come, sooner than later!

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