News, Updates, and Minor (Major) Ramblings

Greetings to one and all! We have made it to the end of January, and into February. Here in VA we had a wicked bad cold snap a couple weeks ago, and other than causing my electric bill to jump, I tried not to leave the house, but that thing I call a day job (insert depressed groan here) made me. Granted, there was one day where I had to work from home because the roads weren't the best. Looking forward to some warmer weather. Not Summer, but just mild weather. The kind of weather where you can open the house windows during the day, and burn a nice fire in the pit at night. That kind of weather. January also saw the return of my monthly newsletter. If you received it, what'd you think? It wasn't anything special, but I think it was a good way to re-introduce myself to my readers. If you haven't read it yet, you can head over to the archive on my website and read it. Do note, any freebies or coupon codes in archived newsletters have expired, so there's no point in cli...

 I know we've all heard about pandemic "burnout" and all that jazz, but is pandemic inadequacy a thing? When it comes to my writing, I have felt so inadequate about it since the start of the pandemic. Like I've been trying to edit the second Avery Lawson book for the last year and some change, and I've barely made a dent in it. I've been working on it in starts and fits, and when I am able to get into it, I get maybe three or four pages done. This is why I'm getting bummed out because I know I'm able to write, edit, and publish a book in a decent amount of time. I mean in 2018, I put out two books, one of which was outlined, written, edited, and published with quick turnaround. So quick, I fcking impressed myself, but I'm seriously having a hard time putting the pedal to the metal on this second Avery Lawson book. This feeling of inadequacy is wreaking havoc on my confidence as a writer, and I've been questioning if I even want to continue with...

I was supposed to put up a true update on what I'm doing at the end of June, but then I quit being a human. Shout out to my depression and feeling 100% like crap for that one. I'm trying to work through it with my therapist so I can get back to something that look like a functional person, but it currently remains to be elusive. Onto what you actually came here for....author ramblings! Fate Unseen....Fate Unseesn...FATE UNSEEN! It's like Bloody Mary. Say it three times and it'll pop out of nowhere, or so I wished. Still editing it. My editing has been reduced to fits of trying to get it done because I have lost all motivation for it, so I'm doing what I can. What does that mean for the book coming out this year? A miracle. That's it. If I manage to publish it before the end of this year it will definitely be a miracle and I'm gonna have me some peach Jim Beam and tea to celebrate. My struggle with editing has nothing to do with the story itself because once ...

Here is June's second blog post of the month. Yes! I did it! This blog post, however, is going to be a little different because I updated you all a week ago on my writer and book things, and nothing has change there. I'll plug the usual bits at the end, but the meat of this post is something else. Today, I'm going to talk about the critiquing of fictional work that portrays marginalized communities that is written by a person from a marginalized community. This falls in the #ownvoices category of things if you follow the literary world of Twitter. The idea to write about this was sparked by a tweet I failed to capture, but it provoked an excellent question and I wanted to pose it to my readers as well as anyone else that happens to stumble upon my blog. I think I'll start this off with my own personal example, and go from there. In 2016, I entered a screenplay I had written into a diversity competition for screenwriters. I knew it was probably crap, but I wanted t...