Saying No to Say Yes

Ah, I’ve been in my writing cave again and haven’t been blogging here at A Writer Afoot.  I do keep trying! Meanwhile, I have my regular monthly gig at Writer Unboxed, the 4th Wednesday of the month. This is November’s column: India is on my mind this morning. Forgive me for dreaming a little of […]

Boot Camp For Writers

Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference, August 15 – 17, 2014, Los Angeles, CA Plot Your Novel’s Course Move closer to your goal of completing a tightly crafted novel that will capture and keep the attention of publishers and readers. Learn from industry-savvy speakers and deepen your knowledge in focused sessions. All this is brought to […]

Wild Fertility

A writing blog today….. I’m in the midst of an enormously fertile period. I’m writing in several genres, including a non-fiction project. This morning I awakened to write the next scene in a book that will eventually become a Barbara O’Neal book. There is soup and a lost child and dogs, but the underpinnings of […]

The fun side of ebooks

This is what can be fun about the shift in the way books come to market. A Bed of Spices was my first historical. It’s a dark, wildly romantic Romeo and Juliet tale, and I loved it madly. It was, however, set in an unusual location, and it did not sell all that well. Over […]

The anvil of holiday guilt

First: we’re working behind the scenes on the Barbara O’Neal and Barbara Samuel webpages, which should be up early next week. Lots of new features, better navigation…and of course, contests will be kicking off with the release of How to Bake a Perfect Life, coming December 21. Stay tuned! ————- Every year, I promise myself […]

Fresh local food…from my backyard

Today, I harvested two handfuls of red potatoes from a black potato sack. I’ve never grown potatoes before, afraid of them for no reason I can really pinpoint, maybe just because they grow deep in the mysterious earth and you have to dig them up.  How would I ever know when I should harvest them? […]

Whispers of autumn

This morning, I had to put on tennis shoes and pull on my fleece before I walked the dog.  The sky is clear and the sun is like lemon juice dripping between shadows, but there’s a bite to the breeze.  On the western horizon, Pikes Peak is drawn in soft puce and faded blue crayon, […]

Elsewhere, a blog on walking

No one here will be surprised at this post that I wrote for  Writer Unboxed.   I knew some of you would enjoy reading it, but keep forgetting to post a link here. The Writer’s Toolbox: Walking One of the number one requirements of a commercial fiction career is that you must reliably produce good […]

The damp, dewy beginning

I’m at the beginning of a new book.   This is probably my favorite part of writing—every possibility exists.  There is a freshness to the material, a scent of dew and dawn filling my work hours.  There is always the chance that this time I will have matured enough, learned enough, that I will be able […]