AmiMaxine

Subtle Part Two

I do have two cats. This one is more camera shy – she’s good at turning away when she sees my phone pointing at her. She, too, though has clear guidelines when I’ve worked enough – she likes to try to walk on and sit on my keyboard. Or the barrier I put up whenContinue reading “Subtle Part Two”

Beta Reader Returns

It’s hard to know when we write something if others will like our work or connect to it. It can hurt if someone doesn’t because it feels personal – they don’t like my story, which in turn means they don’t like me. We are not always the hardiest of folks, we writers. So when myContinue reading “Beta Reader Returns”

My Cute Editor

Social media is just a space for me to share pictures of my cute kitties. I can’t imagine this space will be any different. I make no apologies. Look at her.

Beta Readers

The thing I loved most about my time in undergrad and grad school was the community of writers who were available to read stories and provide feedback. It’s a little trickier when you’re out of school to find these same sorts of communities. If you are lucky to live in a big city, there areContinue reading “Beta Readers”

Timeline for All Falling Things

August 17, 2018 – Alice and Stanley bump into each other on the street. May 24, 2019 – Alice unpacks her office box at the end of the novel. Along with using PowerPoint to track characters and locations and a few other things, I used an Excel calendar to track the time of the story.Continue reading “Timeline for All Falling Things”

The End. Sorta.

I am a bundle of emotions at the moment. I started Alice’s journey 753 days ago. And today, I got to type “The End.” 753+ days of thinking about and writing about and talking about these characters as though they were living breathing people. And just like that – “The End.” It feels physically anticlimacticContinue reading “The End. Sorta.”

Milestone #2

If my WIP were a car, it would be a well-established car. (My car, coincidentally, is nearing 260,000 miles…)

Inspiration

This post contains spoilers for All Falling Things. It was my intent from the moment I started writing this book that Alice and Stanley were not meant to end up together. I just wrote their break up. I knew it was coming since the first page – and even then, it wasn’t easy to do.Continue reading “Inspiration”

Milestone

Every genre has a set range of words that is typical of what is published. Agents will go so far as to note they will only look at novels that fall within this range (if you submit something outside said range, they likely won’t even look at it – as an English teacher, I understandContinue reading “Milestone”

Titles

Titles are hard. Seriously – I would pay someone to write titles for me. I tell my students in my writing courses that the intro/first paragraph of an essay/story is like meeting someone for the first time. It’s our first impression where we size each other up and decide whether we want to continue withContinue reading “Titles”