by Bethany Maines While I was reading Sparkle Abbey’s recent blog post about how real her characters in their Pampered Pets Mystery series, I laughed and sympathized with the authors who are clearly suffering from C.A.R.D. – Character / Author Reality Disorder. Most authors I know suffer from this. We invest a lot of time […]
by Bethany Maines He looked at the chart but he look in vain Heavy cloud but no rain – Sting, Heavy Cloud No Rain, Ten Summoners Tales Originally, this was a post about publishing. I’ve been singing this song for the better part of a month feeling that it related to my efforts in self-publishing. […]
by Bethany Maines Dear Brain, While I appreciate your many efforts and strong creative solutions, I would very much appreciate it if you could focus on the problems at hand. Thanks so much. Sincerely, Self I have a writing calendar that tells me what I’m supposed to be working on. Outlining, editing, actually writing, it’s […]
by Bethany Maines I was all set to write a post today about authors who have influenced me and then I opened the internet and poked around. I shouldn’t do that; twenty minutes of internet time and suddenly I know too much about what people I don’t know are wearing to events I don’t care […]
by Bethany Maines Remember in school when the teacher would say those dreaded five words? “This is a group project.” Your mind races into overdrive as you scan the class room, searching for the few students who will hit trifecta of smart enough, pulls their own weight, and doesn’t have BO. Select outside of those […]
by Bethany Maines It’s that time again. The editing time. The time when I get back all the stupidy stupidy line edits and have to go through and approve them. That’s the worst part. I have to approve them. OK, I don’t absolutely HAVE to, but the truth is about 8 out of every 10 […]
By Bethany Maines Recently, I spent an hour at our historical documents library chasing down the names of the trolley stops between Tacoma and Spanaway Lake in the year 1914. Why, I hear you ask? What possible strange writer thing could I be up to? Is there a new novel in the works featuring a […]
by Bethany Maines J.M. Phillippe In celebration of Mother’s Day my friend and fellow writer, J.M. Phillippe watched and tweeted the 1996 action flick The Long Kiss Goodnight. You can read all our tweets at Storify. J.M and I watched the movie, tweeting as we went and then discussed the film before rating it on Feminism, Action, and Romance. Synopsis: […]
by Bethany Maines As the release date for my newest mystery (An UnseenCurrent) approaches (April 28th – ahhhhhhh!!!) I find myself once again pondering the cruel irony of nature that crafts writers to be introspective sorts and then pits them against a task to which they are monumentally unsuited. That is to say: marketing. The […]
by Bethany Maines There’s a hashtag on Twitter for people who are writing – #amwriting. An innocuous hashtag for tracking other writers, but sometimes… it can be just a little bit smug. And given the nature of writers I was wondering if we could have a more honest hashtag? #amsurfingtheweb #amwatchingcatvideos #amdoinganythingbutwriting Right now I’m […]