posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken, in Anchorage, AK

Ever since I was a toddler listening to stories being read to my two-years-older sister, I have loved books. Reading was my refuge from a family so dysfunctional that I (the honor student Girl Scout goody two-shoes) was the black sheep.

I read everything, from cereal boxes to the three newspapers (tabloids all) that my parents bought every Sunday. My avid attention to the salacious true crime stories got me banished from…

posted by Doranna

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you've been missing out--both as a reader and a writer! Over at my online hang-out (SFF Net, which hosts my newsgroup and a ton of others), writers--both published and unpublished--occasionally post short--really short--excerpts of their work--ie, "snippets." (This in turn has led to the development of snippet hounds, who go sniffing for snippets, and who howl in glee upon finding them, but that's a…

Posted by Sheila Connolly

Our weekend guest blogger Kate Flora pointed out a few realities that we as writers do our best to ignore.

I'm the newbie in this bunch of bloggers–the only one who has never seen a book of her own in print. It's something I'm looking forward to, and apparently I had better enjoy it, because that may be the high point of the whole writer's experience. After that it's going to be a long downhill slide, spending time and effort and money on…

Posted by Guest Blogger Kate Flora

Almost since my first book, Chosen for Death, in 1994, I’ve been teaching writing for various organizations throughout New England. I think I’m very lucky. I’ve had a lot of wonderful students. I’ve also had occasional students who didn’t want to do the weekly writing assignments, but only wanted to sit there, pen poised, to write down the magic advice which, when followed, would transform them into best-selling authors. At library…

Posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

I love the expression, "Children have imaginary friends. Adults have imaginary enemies." I honestly don't remember having any imaginary friends when I was a kid, but my daughters certainly did, and other parents have told me great stories about their kids' imaginary friends.

I have been thinking about this because my younger daughter (in her 20s, working and putting herself through college) has a friend in need. If the guy didn't have bad…

posted by Doranna Durgin

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Belle Dog, who has been confined to a crate for several weeks in the wake of a severe flare of her spinal disk disease. Well, I pull out the leash for her potty breaks, but these have hardly offered her the freedom she craves.

Belle, as it turns out, does not live in…

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

The recent collapse of the Minneapolis bridge was a warning to America that our infrastructure is failing. That's not surprising, considering that the U.S. system of repair and new-building is based on accepting the lowest bid. Pay crap--you get crap. In Europe, the road beds are several feet deeper than ours. They last…

Posted by Sheila Connolly

Like a lot of writers, I can't stop acquiring books. I can't walk past a bookstore–particularly one with used books–without stopping just to take a look. And I'm drawn to flea markets and yard sales where books are stacked in unsteady piles, priced to sell–a quarter, a dollar tops. As a result, over the years I have ended up with a rather eclectic assortment of books. I have never regretted buying Emily Post's Etiquette, because if I'm…

By Guest Blogger Kate Flora

My youngest niece has left for college. Kate is bright, beautiful, and enthusiastic about this new adventure. I’ve had a flurry of excited e-mails with pictures of her dorm room. She loves her classes. Her roommates are great. She calls to ask if I can order a book from Amazon and rush it to her when the school bookstore doesn’t have it. She e-mails to say she’s made the cheerleading team.

I’m so happy for her, this strong and agile young…

by Guest Blogger Raymond White

So, how do you get an agent and get published?

My co-author, Duane Lindsay, and I, Raymond White, cringed at the idea of more query letters. We probably hated the thought of writing them and mailing them as much as agents and editors hate getting them. Those folks are simply buried by the volume of queries they receive and we viewed that as a problem because, since they didn’t know us personally, and we hadn’t been recommended to them by…

posted by Leann Sweeney

Oh you know what I'm talking about. The great rulers of the universe. Our at least of my universe--my prescription drug carrier. Seems they have taken issue with my need for migraine medication, or at least as much migraine medication as they have determined that I need. Does it seem odd that a pharmacy is allowed to change a doctor's order by simply sending the office a fax and then who ever picks up the fax says "oh well, there they go again?" Does…

Posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

I was sitting under my favorite tree in Maine and gazing around the campground where we spend as many days each summer as we can manage. Our site is on the main roadway through the woods among the sites and near the bathrooms (good), the laundry (even better) and the septic dump station (not so good).

What does that have to do with writing? Funny you should ask. Our little trailer (just big enough for one person, or, if they're really really…

posted by Doranna Durgin

So the hullabaloo is dying down, but that doesn't mean it's time to rest easy as writers--not even though scribd has pretty much changed its tune when it comes to responsiveness in removing stolen works, or that SFWA, at first inundated by snarling disapproval because of the mistakenly removed works caught in the initial removals, isn't now hearing a whole lot more from readers who fully understand and support a writer's need to…

posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

To everything, there is a season.... And the warmest season is already winding down. My question? Where the blazes did the summer go?

It seems like only a couple of weeks ago my Dad and I planted my bean crop at our cottage. (Those not familiar with my attempts at farming may want to check out my personal blog--under the subject of gardening.) I'm now…

Posted by Sheila Connolly

I was going to write about this in a timely fashion last week, but Mr. Peet's demise intervened. However, this odd piece of lore has intrigued me for a long time, and this seemed an appropriate time to pursue it, as you will see.

How many of you subscribe to the practice of waking up on the first day of the month and saying "rabbit, rabbit" before anything else?

For those of you who have never heard of this peculiar tradition, you must…

Posted by guest blogger Julie E. Czerneda

What a wonderful place you have here! Thanks for inviting me to drop by.

It wasn't difficult to find a topic for my guest appearance. All I had to do was look around my office. Under normal conditions, my workplace is, shall we say, enriched? (My tidy spouse thinks I don't see him shudder when he walks through.) But I need stuff around me. Whenever I glance away from my screen, I want to see something. Not out a window (although…

posted by Leann Sweeney

This week, the cat feels better, the dog and I are calmer and I am about a month away from becoming a first time grandma. It doesn't get any better than that in my personal life. Even my son-in-law, who is the worst airplane phobic ever, will be taking a train to be in Seattle at Thanksgiving and meet the newest member of our family. I'm smiling, folks. But there's more good stuff--at least I hope all of you reading this, some who have hopefully read…

Posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. That statement might seem waaaaay off topic for the Writers Plot, but it's really on target. Because I moved from "some day maybe I'll be a writer" to "I am a published author" as a result of an event that would shake anybody's life to the core.

My toddler daughter was diagnosed with…

posted by Doranna Durgin

These days, writers have different ideas about what they want done with their work. Those of us who write for a living tend to want control over how the work is displayed--and so do our publishers. Others of us sometimes want their work freely available, as widely as possible. The nice thing is, we can each make that choice for our own work, and proceed accordingly.

The not-so-nice thing is when others try to make that choice for…

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

We were headed off for the Labor-Day weekend. At the last second, Frank decided we should deliver the wire I’d promised my Dad--not just leave it for him to find when he came over to feed the cats. That short trip delayed our departure by no more than three minutes. As we pulled out of Dad’s driveway, I saw a UPS truck pull up ours.

We stopped at the end of our yard and I hollered to old Brown Shorts, asking if he was making a delivery.…