Do you moo when you pass a field of #cows ? #Etiquette

Hemingway advised #writers to stop for the day in mid flow, so they knew what came next. Sounds good, but I don't do that. I go until I don't know what comes next, leaving room for the 'well' of my ideas to refill while I'm asleep that night. Miraculously, it always does so.

An editor once told me that the most crucial failures in #writing were not failures of technique, but failures of imagination. True. Inexpert prose can be fixed, but if the writer fails to write her characters with utmost empathy and her story with total truth, nothing can help.

The first five novels I wrote, in a 'boxed set' of digital editions, will be on sale tomorrow, May 16, for $3.99 as versus the usual $20+. Here be dragons! #Fantasy .

In Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, I've found that men get cool names like Jabez, Tobias, Hosmer, Neville, Trevor -- okay, also James and John -- but women are almost always Mary, Alice, Lucy, Violet, Clara or such. I didn't find any any Lavinias, Eglantines or Parthes.

Back in the early 1990s I was offered $3K for a #fantasy novel, way too little, but I needed the money. So, sulking, I wrote the book as fast as I could, no second draft, just handed it in. To my astonishment, the editor published it that way. And it won awards! It was Larque.

I've had reason to look myself up on Wikepedia, and now I find myself editing parts of the references, especially what has been written there about #EnolaHolmes . This could turn into a huge task! There is a lot of mixup between the movies and the books. Aaaak! Stay tuned.

May 6 - 12, my five-volume mythic #fantasy series The Book of Isle will be on sale for $3.99, as opposed to the usual $27 or thereabouts. These are the first novels I wrote, nearly fifty years ago. #quest #elves #dragons #sun_kings

On May 4, the digital edition of my YA novel Blood Trail will be on sale for $1.99. I wrote this book to exorcise a very upsetting murder that took place near where I lived. #crime #teenagers #murder #brothers

Throughout the month of May, my fantasy novel Wings of Flame will be on sale for $1.99 -- in the digital edition. Back when it was first published, the typesetter kept hitting 'scared horse' instead of 'sacred horse' and 'tree truck' instead of 'tree trunk.' Those were the days.

'Such as thy thoughts and ordinary cogitations are, such will thy mind be in time. For the soul doth receive its tincture from the imagination. Dye it therefore and soak it with the assiduity of thy cogitations.' - Marcus Aurelius. A lifetime of writing has tie-dyed my soul.

Please humor one of my linguistic peeves: this illustration is to prove that it's ruffed grouse, not ruffled. Grouse do not have ruffles and never have had ruffles. They have ruffs, like Queen Elizabeth I. Although a woman once told me, jokingly, that she had a ruffled spouse.

Have you noticed that the root word of 'delightful' is 'light'? Just saying.

Getting old is a pain in the patootie and tends to put a person in a grumpy mood. So I start every day by writing in a designated notebook about things that are beautiful in my life right now. And I use fancy colored pens, turquoise magenta emerald. And stickers on occasion. ❤️

Just got an email, 'Me and my friend are writing a book.' 'Her and her friend' want my advice, which is, for the love of mercy, learn correct #grammar !!! In the heartbreaking case you don't know, it should be 'My friend and I.' 'She and her friend.' Yes, that's the way I talk.

Reading my own fantasy novels published thirty or forty years ago, I've been appalled to find errors that have been nestled, smirking, in the text all this time. What's even more appalling, they will continue to to lurk and smirk like jolly little tumors in my books forever!

How stupid is this? In order to access a working scooter at the store, a disabled person (moi) must climb like a goat over others that are charging and not in service. They are parked too close together for access, and the ones that are functional are sure to be in the middle.

I can no longer read paper books; the print is too small. So, now that my fantasy novel The Hex Witch of Seldom is on sale, I bought a Kindle copy. (I've decided to start enjoying my own books again. Hadn't looked at Hex Witch in decades.) I read it last night and was astonished!

This contemporary #fantasy novel of mine will be on sale April 1 thru 4 for $1.99. 'Seldom' is a fictional small town in Appalachian Pennsylvania. One of the protagonists is a mustang named Shane. #hex_magic #mustang_rescue #Vietnam

Theodore Roosevelt's daughter Alice, a teen when he was in the White House, loved to surprise guests by pulling her pet out of her purse. 'Meet Emily Spinach. She's as green as spinach and as skinny as my Aunt Emily.' Alice also chewed gum, played poker, and dressed daringly.