I’m moving to a new virtual space! I’ve been thinking about a second site for a while — one where I can post the odds and ends that inspire me in my creative work, which is primarily fantasy and science fiction writing. The Domesticated Muse started out as a place to help people reach their…
Category Archives: Just Do It
Double Rainbow
Today I finished revisions on the final chapter of my YA/older Middle Grade novel The Violet Lens (working title). I want to be all professional about this, but actually I’m squealing with joy. It’s off to my trusty beta readers now, who will tear bits apart and make it better. Hopefully they won’t say things…
The Tiger’s Wife: Wash the bones, bring the body, leave the heart behind
I’m reading Tea Obreht’s new novel The Tiger’s Wife. This is the sort of book that makes a writer cry with both joy and sorrow. Joy because the writing is so luminous, so simple and beautiful, the stories within stories so straightforward and timeless, and yet not trite. Sorrow because the author was born in…
Loving goblins and elves and nasty monsters
“Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead…” Photo by John Holbo I’ve finished edits on the first four chapters of my book. In order to stay on track with the YA challenge, I need to get another chapter…
YA Novel Challenge
I recently connected with Theodora Goss, a fantasy writer of luminescent short stories whose work I discovered a couple of years ago when I read her book In the Forest of Forgetting. I’m very excited that she has decided to write a Young Adult novel over this summer and has made her plans into a…
Getting back on the horse after blinding myself with Le Morte D’Arthur
Last evening was a pleasant ending to a frustrating day. The boys and I went to the library, where I retrieved the John Matthews edition of Le Morte D’Arthur that I had ordered, and the guys took out No Such Thing As Dragons and the Unsinkable Walker Bean. We found a well-lit window table at…
