Raven Oak's Blog, page 2

Art in Progress

I just finished a new art piece for the Seattle Worldcon Art Show coming up in August, which I’ve titled Freedom. The piece is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy as I pulled in one of the cat-like creatures from my Boahim Trilogy because who doesn’t love cross-genre?

I love doing these “art in progress” pieces because it lets you into my process and my brain. Working digitally means that besides hitting the “undo” key, I can zoom in a LOT and work with much finer details than I could with a canvas, ...

Riley Loves Cheese

Riley loves cheese and not just the kind in Beth Cato‘s new book, a cozy mystery involving lots of cheese and cheesy murder. If he could, Riley would eat cheese until he popped. In fact, if Molli and I have any sort of cheese, he is all up in our business trying to steal a piece or three. So it fits that he sat beside this book I just finished…

Beth’s tales are always good, as are her blog posts about cheese and baking bready things. I’m fairly picky about cozy mystery as too many of them...

Speed Date a Book

Last December, I was part of Strong Women, Strange World’s Holiday Extravaganza Event, which included my participating in “Speed Date a Book,” in which folks who attended got to speed date Amaskan’s Blood.

It was a ton of fun and I didn’t do too badly considering I was barely a week out from major surgery to remove a necessary organ! I was so swollen and my voice really scratchy, but it turned out good! They just uploaded the video clip of my speed dating portion to YouTube for you all to see...

Cycles

Most authors have cycles or a process they use when writing a novel, myself included. Over the years, mine has changed here and there as my abilities and knowledge in my craft changed (aka improved), but nothing changed it more than COVID. (I promise this is not a post solely about the pandemic.)

Prior to COVID, my novels ranged from 80,000-140,000 words depending upon the genre and reader expectations. Something of that length took me four months to create. For a book that’s 100,000 words or...

Your Best

All you can do is your best when it comes to your family. Molli and I try our absolute best to do right by our three kitties—goodness knows we’ve spent enough money on them and their medical issues over the past eighteen years—but sometimes we goof. Like yesterday morning…

Medicating the cats is an ordeal that takes place four times a day. Two of the times are easy-peasy, but the other two times are complicated. I’d like to say that mistakes don’t happen but they do. It’s occasional, but some...

A Journey

I’m about to say something really cliche, but bear with me. 

Writing is a journey, and it should be.

So why the cliche? This comes from a conversation I was having this past weekend with my wife, Molli, about how challenging it is to write a novel or a story. Even when the words come speeding out my brain like I’m on a race track, the process isn’t easy, and I don’t believe it should be.

If I’m doing my job correctly, telling a story shares pieces of myself with you. If the soul is an a...

Some Data

I’m a huge fan of data, so I have some data for you.

I seem to have made it through some long COVID brick wall or over the hump or whatever you want to call it. My creativity has fired into overdrive in a way I haven’t had since I got COVID the first time around back in 2020.

Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, back in the before times, I could write 3000 words in a day EASILY. Many days, it was 4-5,000 words. When I really pushed, my most in a day was a little over 12,00...

Talking Cats

As a reader, I’m a HUGE fan of books with talking animals. After all, I cut my teeth so to speak on Valdemar with talking horses and swords. I love Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams and The Ghatti Tales by Gayle Greeno. If it’s a piece of speculative fiction involving cats or horses, I’ve probably got it on my bookshelves. That’s not limited to the realms of sci-fi or fantasy either. Books like Pet Semetary by Stephen King and Bunnicula by James (& Deborah) Howe are also favorites. When I’m not...

Edge of the World

I don’t write poetry often, mostly because I don’t think I’m all that good at it, but some-what because of an asshole professor in college. It was an Introduction to Poetry Writing course as an undergrad and for our first assignment, we were to write a personal poem, which I did. While I was 19 years old, I’d lived through a LOT by this point. My poem was about mental illness and my own struggles with it, which is a common poetry theme with folks that age who’ve lived through what I have.

Thi...

The Power of a Good Song

My Monday began with a panic attack as my anxiety would not let me get my day going without reminding me of every single stress on my plate. Without fail, it listed every task and every way I was failing to keep up with…everything. It’s hard enough to function as an autistic person in a neurotypical world but toss in anxiety and ADHD and I’ve said before, it’s a recipe for chaos.

I thought my day was ruined until I got into my car to run a few errands. A song I love came on the radio and tha...