C.K. Combs's Blog

Adventures with Words, September 2024

Though I enjoyed the cooler days of False Fall, I don’t mind the Return of Summer before Actual Fall arrives – tomatoes are still trying to ripen, and the heat helps. I’ve been collecting them as they turn orange so that they can ripen inside and away from any ill effects the weather could bring. The rest of the garden is getting its end of summer clean-up with some spaces planted with fall crops – carrots, beets, kale and lettuce. I’ve never done a fall garden before, so I have no idea how it w...

Adventures with Words, Newsletter 18, August 2024

I’ve had a very busy summer with gardening, hiding from the heat and working on the book. This is typically a season where my writing goes through a lull, but that’s not happening this year. I’ve gone through the manuscript YET AGAIN looking for repetitious words or similar words, little gotchas where that need to be removed or fixed, and hunting down filler words. I’ve gotten feedback from a few people (Thank you, Mol, Keith, Isabel, and Maile!) and will be working through changes suggested by ...

Adventures with Words, July 2024

I started writing this back in June, when I was visiting Mom in Chewelah, spending my mornings stacking firewood. When I got back home, I went full-press on finishing the Elephant Ears manuscript version 6 or 7 or billion – I’ve lost track. My goal was to get everything done and out to the next round of beta readers by the end of June and I sent it out to twelve folks on June 2nd.  Close enough for me to call it a goal met.

What three mornings of wood stacking looks like

My feelings ab...

Adventures with Words, April 1, 2024

Here we are at Sweet 16 and things have definitely been sweet lately. I’ve met goals, gotten outside to work in the garden and felt my winter-fed mental-miasma shift to spring fever.  

Goals Met – Update on the WiP

I’ve sent my query materials to Jenny Bartoy for her editorial review and feedback. The bundle is made up of the first 50 pages of the novel, a query letter, a synopsis and a list of search terms to use in finding prospective agents and comparative titles to use in my query....

Adventures with Words, Newsletter 15, March 2024

Hello, this is being written in late February, but Feb being a short king, it will likely be March before this newsletter goes out. And that’s alright because March is my favorite month. Of all the days in the month of March, the 14th is my favorite. Not just because it’s Pi(e) Day – which is awesome all on its own – and not just because it’s Albert Einstein’s birthday – but because it’s also my birthday. And this year my birthday number is 60 which doesn’t seem possible. I mean, I was just 30 s...

Adventures with Words – February 2024

Hello, friends. 

It has been a while since I sent out the last newsletter. I guess I needed a break. I hope you all had a good holiday season and that you have gotten a good start with 2024.

Do you listen to podcasts? Seems like everyone has at least one, unless they’re not listening to podcasts to be purposefully anti-mainstream. One that I enjoy a lot is 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, hosted and narrated, and pontificated about, by Rob Harvilla, a guy who is about 10  or so years younger...

Adventures with Words – November 2023

During the summer, the day fades slowly into twilight where it lingers for a while before turning things over to the night. The sun doesn’t want the day to end any more than the rest of us. Winter is completely different. In the winter, night falls. Abruptly. Without warning or fanfare. One moment it’s day and when you look outside a moment later, it could be anywhere between 5 pm to midnight. Winter sun doesn’t hang out, it heads home to slip into something comfortable underneath layers of fuzz...

Adventures with Words – October 2023

#12… does that mean I’ve been doing this for a year already?

*checks notes* Ok, not quite because at first I was doing two a month… That started December 2022. And I skipped September.. I was busy. Busy with what? Keep reading.

PNWA Writers Conference 2023

I went to my very first writers con a couple of weeks ago. I had a great time and learned a lot. And I pitched to a lit agent, which I’ll tell you about in a little bit.  I went to some workshops and learned a lot and got some great w...

Adventures with Words – August 2023

I’ve got a bad case of the summers… don’t want to do the job, don’t want to cook dinner, just want to lie around and read. This newsletter almost fell prey to my inertia. Fortunately, it has clawed its way out in spite of my efforts to ignore it until September.

Writers Chat

You may have noticed that the August writer’s chat didn’t happen. I took a break to think about the hopes and expectations I had when I started it earlier this year, and considering how I might return to that goal. The...

Adventures with Words – July 2023

Today, as I wrap up this month’s newsletter, it is cooler than it has been since the beginning of the month, which I don’t mind. I am a hot weather wimp and have a much better time when the hot days come in short runs bracketed by cooler weeks. The only drawback to this kind of weather is that I am even more tempted to get outside which often interferes with writing work.

Alright, so what’s been happening in the past month? Here we go….

Ko-Fi vs. Patreon

Patreon and Ko-Fi are platforms ...