R.A. Finley's Blog

From a Long-Ago Creative Writing Class

The prompt was to write a certain number of words related to an assigned noun and adjective. I don’t remember the details of how they were assigned, but I believe every student got a different pairing. Mine are in bold print, when you get to them.

To say that she noticed it straight off would be to lie. Truth was, she didn’t know for certain when it had begun: all the hovering, the following, the darting out of reach.

She didn’t care, either, not really. Not at this point. If she had t...

My Etsy Shop

I’ve created an Etsy shop—RAFinley Enterprises. Currently, I’m selling three greeting cards to express sympathy (for grief, calamity, stress, life chaos) and signed copies of my books.

I intend to expand the offerings considerably over the remaining months of this particularly challenging, so far rather awful year. Small art pieces, notecard sets, more greeting cards (holidays, happy occasions, more sympathy, blank), and anything else that might come to mind and help support me, financially, ...

Join My Patreon

I’ve started a Patreon! If you don’t know what that is, it’s a way (in theory) to help support writers and artists and other “creators” (generally “creatives”) by making a component of their income more predictable in exchange for goods and/or services.

The way I am attempting to do mine is to offer writing advice and editing services. What members can access depends on the membership tier they choose.

The first tier is absolutely free, for which I write two posts to do with writing—tips...

Alice Madeline Finley (1932-2025)

Alice in Santa Barbara, California

On Saturday February 22, 2025 after a brief illness, Alice Madeline Finley left the ninety-two (and a half) year old body that had begun to put too many limitations on her indomitable, grand, and joyful spirit. Her daughter and other surviving family members will miss her terribly—and this includes Smokey, the feline she generously (yet reservedly) allowed into her home (and did come to admire, bestowing upon him the special name he now takes great pride in:...

Preorder

To my happy surprise, the eBook for The Vale of Silence is beginning to show up on websites as available to preorder. The expected availability is May 08, 2024. Not that far off, but it’s very fun for me to see the sales pages coming up.

I’ve updated the book’s page here on my website, but here’s what I’ve seen so far:

Apple BooksKoboAmazon Kindle

I’m waiting on Barnes & Noble. That’s really all of the places that I know to check. If you know of others, it might be worth chec...

Book Sale!

I’m a bit late for Indie Bookstore Day but not too late for this sale on my two books at Bookshop.org with free shipping through the weekend!

Normally I might push to buy direct from the publisher (I’d make maybe $3 per instead of maybe $1) but honestly free shipping is a huge deal. Plus the link above should lead to the “shop” I’ve set up with Bookshop and I’m curious how that actually works. So, if anyone needs to catch up on the series before the third book comes out and prefers to read pr...

Updated Files

Okay, so I went ahead and updated the existing book files — fixed the error in the glossary (The Darkest Midnight), added some words to the copyright pages for both (don’t use to train without permission, blah blah blah), and updated the website address (The Stone of Shadows).

The files for the print books will take some time to process through the distribution system, and really I should order proofs to make sure I didn’t completely f**k up the covers and/or interior formatting, so that’s ev...

Oh, of course.

Of course I would find an error in the glossary that I intend to include in the upcoming book, which is based on the one included in the previous, published book. Unfortunately, it costs $$ to correct the source files, and that won’t help anyone who already owns a copy of The Darkest Midnight.

Apparently, I don’t proofread proper alphabetical order well (this is not that surprising, really). Worse, I somehow swapped the definitions of the weaponized magic that some characters are able to use....

May

I don’t want to jinx it, but I also don’t want to go another month without posting a progress update since there’s a history of my posting progress updates and then another whole year goes by without any progress that’s visible to anyone but me.

I have managed to work steadily on The Vale of Silence (aka Book Three) since the end of last summer. Since there have been difficult “real life” challenges all throughout that time and I have been able to maintain a version of “writing life,” that mi...

In Progress: Excerpt

Proof of work, I suppose. The whole of The Vale of Silence has been drafted (hooray) after more years than I want to count. (Some of you know, others can get a sense from the number of “I’m working on this, I’m sorry” posts they’ve encountered here.) So, as of tonight I’m well into the editing process. There are a few more processes after that, and I have learned my lesson about estimating timeframes and publication dates.

I still hope to have the book available before the end of the year, b...