Madeleine E. Robins's Blog: Madeleine Robins: Journal, page 15

Distraction and The Sistine Chapel Effect

Sometimes, when the writing is being uncooperative, you need to do something else. It's a nice thing when someone asks you to do that something else, so you can pretend that this isn't a tactic to outrun your inability to figure out what comes next. This is where the cake making comes in. I don't wake up and decide "hey, I'm going to make a Green Man cake!" or "gee, wouldn't it be fun to make a Wedgewood Regency cake," but if someone says (as someone did) "My birthday is coming up and I...

Bedtime Stories

My younger daughter, a high school freshman, has hit one of those adolescent patches where she can't go to sleep.  Given that this makes her soggy to the point of uselessness in the morning (getting her out of the house can be a little like rolling a boulder composed of Jello uphill), we're working with her, as the jargon goes, to help her get her sleep mojo back.  Some of this involves impounding her computer at 10pm and suggesting that she do something quiet and non-screen related: read...

Let Them Have Their Say

In the last year I have finished and turned in two books.  Because the watchword of writing is "What have you done for me lately," I immediately started thinking of new things to write.  I have ideas for more Sarah Tolerance books; I have a fantasy set in contemporary San Francisco I'd like to write.  And I have half a dozen short stories I want/need to get going on.

I chose one of the short stories to begin with.  Writing a book (for me) requires research and a good deal of forethought...

I wrote my first book because I couldn't find anything I ...

I wrote my first book because I couldn't find anything I wanted to read.

Really, it's as simple as that.  And as complex as that, too.  I had just graduated from college. I was somewhere I didn't want to be, sharing a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles with my mother. It was a trying time all around, and writing became my refuge–if I was writing I didn't get into spats with my Mom; if I was writing I didn't have to think too much about what I was going to do when I left LA and started out...

News on the Sarah Tolerance Front!

I am delighted to announce that in Fall 2011 the long-awaited third book in the Sarah Tolerance investigations will be published by Plus One Press.

In The Sleeping Partner a young girl of good family is missing, and Sarah Tolerance is hired to find her. Did she elope? No one seems to know, and the girl's father is hell bent on not taking her back. Then Miss Tolerance discovers there's a link between the girl and herself, and a possible link to treason and the deaths of thousands of British soldiers.

Be warned: I had a lot of fun writing this one.!

More news when I have it!

writer*editor*occasional baker

Writing gives you the illusion of control,

and then you realize it's just an illusion,

that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

–David Sedaris

Welcome.  If you've just wandered in, please feel free to browse, or check out my Sarah Tolerance related site.