New Short Story: "Lavender and Chamomile" up at Big Pulp

Took a little while, but I finally got this short story sold. It’s up and running at Big Pulp Magazine.
The foundation to this story came back when Daniel was still a baby. One of the many toys he got was the quintessential teddy bear, complete with glassy eyes and button nose. One day, I was [...]

Continue reading »

Weeping of the Willows update (actually, it’s more of a non-update…)

So this week is the last week of the boy’s summer school. Can’t believe six weeks went by so quickly. It’s a good thing I used all that time to focus exclusively on Willow…
…oh, wait. No I didn’t. Truth is, I did not work on Willow at all.
You see, back in June, I was working [...]

Continue reading »

Status Update on Willow

It’s been about three months now since I started the second full rewrite of Willow. And today, I just started working on Chapter Five. That means that so far, I’ve been spending roughly 3 weeks on each chapter, instead of just one week like I thought. At this rate, I won’t be finished with Willow [...]

Continue reading »

Weekly Cafe update and a little Writing News

Another bunch of links for you. I’m finding it easier to squeeze these kind of posts in between writing and real life.
First, an update on Willow: going slow, but I expected that to happen. I want the first three chapters of this book to really pull readers in, so I’m taking my time to make [...]

Continue reading »

New Story: “The Liberation of Roscoe White” published at The Town Drunk

Hot dog! A new story of mine is up and running! I like it when I get my stories published!
“The Liberation of Roscoe White” was among one of the first short stories I workshopped with my writers’ group back in Chicago. It’s also the first story I ever wrote that utilizes the “F-word”, or any [...]

Continue reading »

Flash Fiction Fun

I’m almost a week away from officially working on my Weeping of the Willows edits.
I look at the past couple of weeks, and I’m glad that I’ve given myself a month to rest. If you’ve been following me on Facebook the past couple of weeks, you’ve noticed I mentioned entering a Flash Fiction contest 8 [...]

Continue reading »

Writing Goals for 2009

Yayyy! I get to start off 2009 by setting up my goals again. Hooray!
Just think–around this time last year, I had no clue what the year would be like. My hubby and I had just started working on our house, stripping out the carpet and painting the walls, while we interviewed real estate agents who [...]

Continue reading »

Readthrough of Willow Done (or Helllooooo, 2009!)

Well, I’m back! Did you have a good Christmas holiday? I sure did. Lots of rest and relaxation. It was pretty nice.
Oh, by the way. I finished with my readthrough of Willow.
It rocks considering that I didn’t think I’d be done with it until the end of January. Then again, it sucks because I [...]

Continue reading »

It’s rest time; Cafe going on Christmas hiatus

So if I was Daniel a couple of years from now, I’d be like, “Wait a minute. We live about an hour away from Wisconsin Dells, with all the water parks and rides and fun, fun, fun…and we can go up anytime we want, and you didn’t tell me? Why aren’t we up there EVERY [...]

Continue reading »

Finally! A story out the door! Now I can get on with my life! (or at least ‘Willow’…)

Welcome back. Did you have a good Thanksgiving? Eat too much turkey? Ended up snoring in front of a televised…er…digitized football game?
Me? I just got back from visiting family. Seems there’s a little side effect in moving to Madison called “travel”. As in, we get to “travel” to visit family now. We “travel” two hours [...]

Continue reading »