Sara Donati's Blog, page 14

Mathematician Update and Statutes of Limitation

This entry is part 12 of 17 in the series Memoir

The Mathematician now has three honkin big screws pinning femur to pelvis on the left side. He spends one more night in the hospital and will be home tomorrow, once he’s completely comfortable with crutches and the negotiation of stairs. His spirits are alarmingly good. Opiates will do that, I guess.

Here is one of the best Mathematician stories, ever. I am telling it now because (1) the statute of limitationsexpired long ago and (2) it provides...

GIlded Hour Q&A Page Updated

Some questions came in, and I’m answering them one by one on the page you may not want to look at if you haven’t read The Gilded Hour. First question answeredhere.

Tweet

The post GIlded Hour Q&A Page Updated appeared first on storytelling.

We have a Winner in the Favorite Couples Giveaway

Thanks to everybody who participated. The poll was a lot of fun for me, I think because it givesme a sense of how people feel about the Wilderness series as a whole, and how Jack and Anna are seen at this early stage. And I was thrilled to see some other couples pop up, as well.

In a random drawing Pilar has won the bundle of books attached to the post Favorite Couples. Her comment:

I went with Elizabeth and Nathaniel. I just started rereading the series (for the 100th+ time) and the early st...

In Which the Mathematician Fractures his hip

Yesterday evening the Mathematician was tooling around logging roads on Chuckanut Mountain, when his mountain bike hit a rock and dumped him, really, really hard, on his left hip. In true Mathematician fashion, he walked home. Took him about forty minutes.

At the ER they said, wow, that’s a great hematoma. It will go away on its own, but let’s get a film, first.

Then they said, wow, broken hip. Didn’t see that coming.

It’s the neckof the femur, to be exact. And he walked home on that. So some...

I’m home again

The road home

…But it will take me a day at least to get back to normal. Lots of questions have piled up, and I’ll start answering them tomorrow.

Tweet

on the road, briefly: upcoming readings

I leave early tomorrow to read at bookstoresin Oakland, Portland and Bellevue (details below) so you won’t see much of me online until the weekend.

In case you are wondering: I plan to close the current contest next Monday,

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

7:00 PM A GREAT GOOD PLACE FOR BOOKS A GREAT GOOD PLACE, LLC

6120 LA SALLE AVE
OAKLAND CA 94611-2802

Thursday, September 10, 2015

7:00 PM POWELL’S BOOKS

3415 SW CEDAR HILLS BLVD
BEAVERTON OR 97005-1337

Friday, September 11, 2015

7:00 PMUNIVERSITY...

Story or Plot?

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Craft

Note: This is a reworking of an earlier post. I am making an effort (slowly) to gather all the posts about craft into a series.

The distinction between story and plot is a deceptively simple one.

Story: what happened

Plot: the artful rearrangement of what happened in a way that keeps your readers engaged.

A police report is a story told as a series of facts, in chronological order:

August 29 2008. At approximately 10:16am Officer Rodriquez and I w...

Favorite Couples & Yet Another Giveaway

First, a poll. The list that follows is of couples whose stories are told in nine of my ten novels (I’ve left Homestead out, as the story arcs are so short).So the novels covered are the six in the Wilderness series, Tied to the Tracks, The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square,(these last two published under Rosina Lippi) and The Gilded Hour. You may not have read some of these, and that’s fine, you can still answer the poll and get in on the giveaway.

Question:which of these couples would you call...

The things that slip by you, pre-publication

When I’m waiting for a novel to hit its publication date, I always anticipate criticism. This is a hold over from academia, where it’s important to consider flaws or counterarguments while you’re putting a paper together. Anticipating criticism is the first step toward either avoiding it or preparing a response.

Writing fiction is different, of course, but I still try to anticipate where I might alienate or lose readers. ForThe Gilded Hour my concerns were pretty straight forward: it’s a lo...

Last winner in the big big giveaway

All the prizes have been claimed, and congratulations to the winners. Thanks to everyone for participating and helping to get the word onThe Gilded Hour out there for people to see.

Irene Knight a signed first printing edition of The Gilded Hour Petzi. The Gilded Hourunabridged audiobook Seona a new Kindle Paperwhite withthree of my favorite novels onit Lori M. onecoupon entitling the holder to an evaluation of a twenty-page double-spaced fiction manuscript. Kim T. a copy of the 20th anniver...