Janet Reid

I don’t normally blog about agents, editors, and querying, but it’s the end of the year and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Janet Reid recently urged writers to clean up their web presence, fix broken links on their sites, polish their bios, and various other things to present a professional image. Learn how…

A Woman Scorned

A Woman Scorned

Grandpa Jacob thumped the Meerschaum pipe against his boot heel, knocking the ashes out of it onto the worn wooden porch. He pulled a leather tobacco pouch out and carefully tamped a fresh load into the ornately carved bowl. I scooted closer to his rocker so I could smell the fruity blend. Mama warned us…

Surrey Aftermath

This group of posts about Surrey is long overdue. I bit the bullet and attended the Surrey International Writers Conference after thinking long and hard about it. It’s definitely an investment. So, I made a list of what I hoped to accomplish by attending. First on the list was getting together with the crew from…

Book Sale

Book Sale

Rose Phillips has been nagging, er encouraging me to start blogging again, so I’m doing just that. I probably shouldn’t be doing it tonight, but if I keep putting it off, you know . . . . I love library book sales. Let’s rephrase that. I used to. Boy howdy. When Odessa, Tx held their…

The Sleeper Must Awaken

Kristin Nelson blogged about the perils of waking characters. She’s a great agent and a wonderful teacher. If you can make one of her workshops, do it. I subscribe to her newsletter, and I don’t subscribe to many. I’m a busy person, you know. Her latest one was about query letter rejections and how they…

Writer’s Voice Entry

Query Dear Fabulous Agent, Bad news rides a fast horse. Kaelyn Diarmand’s bad news came on a dead horse ridden by her equally dead M’Eiryn uncle. The M’Eiryn are warrior horse lords–barbarians invited to Tamarland after they helped the Tamarl king defeat the demon armies, forming an uneasy alliance. Her Tamarl mother’s people are civilized,…

Higher Education

Brandon I’m a firm believer in learning from people who know how to do it right. Donna Rubino and I will be taking Margie Lawson’s Diving Deep Into Developmental Edits course starting April 5. Yes, this on top of me converting my main character from third person to first person. Yay, me. Anyway, if you’ve…

#AskJulie

#AskJulie

I’m not an agent. I don’t even play one on tv. I don’t even have the slightest desire to be one. Not in my wildest flight of fantasy. However, I have been stalking them for, oh, about twenty years. A lot has changed since I first decided I wanted to write and did absolutely everything…

Horses: What Does It Mean?

Horses: What Does It Mean?

I’ve had several people ask me for a post about horse behavior to go along with the horse appearance post. So, here it is. First off, forget what you see in the movies and on television. Horse don’t whinny and rear up all the time. They just don’t. Horses are prey animals. That means they…