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• Post #4170455

  #PennedPossibilities 1083 Are you pleased with the way the various relationships between the cast of characters are developing throughout your WIP? I am & have been. I love writing about various relations & interactions.

• Post #4144230

  #Today Harvested my first limes. Small but smell sooo good. #Gardening

• Post #1673106

  #ScribesAndMakers Apr 24 Our next featured creator has a "love/hate affair with common tropes." What's your relationship with tropes? These hashtag games taught me everything is a trope. I'd no idea how many there were until I looked them up for a question. I still never think about them, just write my stories as I like.

• Post #1497789

  #WritersCoffeeClub Apr 21 What's a hill you're willing to defend? Leave trans folks alone. Let them have medical care. Let them pee. Let them be themselves. They are not hurting or impacting your life in any way. Sheesh! WTF is wrong with people?

• Post #1237685

  #WordWeavers Apr 16 If your MC lived in our world, would they have good financial credit? Maggie lived in our world for a while, though not in our timeline. She was an heiress so did fine financially, save for spending most of her money on books and data for her archives. Assuming she had the same start in life she'd be up there with the 1% If you're talking just dropped by herself in our world & having to start from scratch? Then she'd be subject to the same...

• Post #1237684

  #ScribesAndMakers Apr16 How do you feel about illustrations in (non-comic) books? It can be nice. Have no strong feelings either way. I do love maps.

• Post #1237683

  #PennedPossibilities 987 Do any of your characters have an unusual or uncommon pet? The world of Ardonna doesn't have pets. At least it didn't until refugees landed, but then it was confined to one small portion of the world. Plenty of mages have animal friends or allies. Maggie acquires an African gray envoy who travels with her when she goes out of the country. There's one character specifically mentioned as taking in a stray cat, but he's actually a spy sent...

• Post #1217346

  #WritersCoffeeClub Apr 16 Must writing always be in complete sentences? Unusual syntax? Nope. Depends on the work, of course. I write in 1st person and, while I usually use complete sentences, there are certain instances, including dialogue, action or reaction scenes, or musings, where fragments flow better.

• Post #1136642

  #WordWeavers Apr 12 Your MC has 2 1/2 days of spare time, time to... Technically, Maggie can take as much time off as she likes. Quenelle doesn't demand schedules or working every day or even at all, as long as mages are available to help on request. Maggie does this to herself. The few instances where she's been convinced to take time were at the request of Jez or her friends to do something with them.

• Post #1136641

  #WritersCoffeeClub Apr 12 How does being a writer influence your life outside of the work? One way is that everything I come across might make it into a book in some form. Like the time I went out on a whale watching boat. No whales, but striking scenery and interesting motion and changing shades within the water.

• Post #1136637

  #WritersCoffeeClub Apr 13 What do you borrow from other fiction (or nonfiction) genres? My fantasy has elements of scifi, a bit of horror, and some romance. Mage philosophy has been influenced by a number of sources.

• Post #1136636

  Sometimes I feel bad about my life, then I recall there are people who have to see Trump in person every day 🤢

• Post #977963

  #ScribesAndMakers Marr 30 Do birds feature in your work? 😆 Do they ever. I've got characters who speak to birds, characters who shift into birds, characters who do both, and bird characters. Of the real birds, some are familiar but many are native only to Ardonna. My Midnight Crow book has a bird shifter MC.

• Post #716641

  #ScribesAndMakers Mar 20 Self-promotion day. Shame optional. Ooh! Excellent chance to show off my new cover, with art by the brilliant @HeliaXyana Tales of Ardonna is a #HopePunk #Fantasy adventure series with a decidedly counter culture bent & lots of romance, found family, & TREES. If you buy direct, there's always a discount. https://crcollins.org/

• Post #661236

  #WordWeavers Mar 14 Is selling your work for money important to you when you write? Not enough to "write to market," or to be exclusive with Amazon, or to do a number of the "must do" marketing activities self-publishing experts have been on about since I started. Although, yeah, it would definitely help to sell more books. My husband had health issues all last year & has yet to get back to work (he's contract) so we currently rely on SS &...

• Post #661235

  #WritersCoffeeClub Mar 14 Do you think readers want new experiences in structure or narrative, or do they prefer what's familiar? I'm a reader, and I enjoy diversity in this. However, I suspect I am not in the majority.

• Post #661230

  #WritersCoffeeClub Mar 15 Talk about an experience you've had sharing your writing with a group. There's only been one, the creative writing course I took in college. We had to write short stories which were critiqued by the entire class. Each critique session had 2 stories. The day of mine, a fellow student met me in the hallway & just said "Wow." Another student told me he hated that his story was scheduled for critique with mine. It was a needed ego...

• Post #503125

  #WordWeavers Mar 2 Do you write scenes out of order? If so, how do you decide their arrangement? I used to do this, but it's been a long while. Nowadays, my process works easier going in order. Back then, I would sometimes write critical scenes as they came to me, but I always knew where they fit.

• Post #499631

  #Today my Tales of Ardonna ebook series is on sale at Smashwords. More info, plus purchase links, can be found here: https://crcollins.org/ #Bookstodon #Fantasy #HopePunk

• Post #452586

  #ScribesAndMakers Feb 27 splat! Lightning crashed, frying a clump of offenders. Jez sent a whirlwind to throw others back. They smacked into the mountain walls or tumbled off the path, filling the air with cracks, splats, and screeches.

• Post #387776

  #WritersCoffeeClub Feb 23 What techniques help you write a difficult second act? I honestly don't know what this means. Okay, yes, I am aware it relates to some formal template for writing. But I've not studied these, nor do I think about them. If I find myself struggling to advance at any point, going back & reading/editing from the beginning kicks my brain back in gear.

• Post #351100

  #ScribesAndMakers #TTMD @Firlefanz@writing.exchange It's your day!! 🥳 Hope it's going great. Just waking up here, but I can actually think of 2 questions: (1) I've wondered why you decided to set your wolf books in the American south. Do you have some attachment or connection to the area? (2) I see on your website that you're starting to delist from Amazon. I'm pondering that as well & not planning to list any more of my work there. What site do you find best for sal...

• Post #220322

  @HeliaXyana@mastodon.nl @therivercrow@bardicperspiration.club We all pay too much attention--give too much space--to other people's opinions, even people we don't respect. I know I've been guilty of that. Growing old has one perk: you already know you no longer fit their standard & are freer to be yourself.

• Post #220147

  #WordWeavers Feb 2 Do you enjoy writing good, bad, or morally gray characters more? Writing full-on villains can be fun cause there aren't guard rails for them, but I don't have many because they don't feel as "real" as conflicted sorts. For MCs, all of mine but one have been firmly on the good side. My current MC is firmly gray & she's been fun to play with, striking that balance for likeability. I guess I like challenge.