Deby Fredericks's Blog, page 8

Today’s Task

My next planned publication is Willow Lake (Cleodora, part 2) which is due out in May. I’m through the main text’s final revision and on to one of the most difficult parts of the publication: the back cover copy.

Back cover copy has to tell what happens in this book, while also telling who is who and reviewing important information from the previous book. It gets complicated. I always have to make a couple of tries at it.

But I happen to have a day off work, so that’s today’s task for me!

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

How Long?

Believe it or not, I’ve been writing this blog for a little over 13 years. This post you are reading will be my 1,404th post! Can you believe it? Still, I’ve begun to wonder if I should thin out or delete some posts. Especially those older ones.

In the early years, I was writing mostly about dragons of myth and legend from around the world, with little jokes and such thrown in. After about 7 years of that, I felt like I was wearing out the topic. So I switched over to general news about my writing projects and related activities. During this time I’ve never been concerned about monetizing the blog. Building community and making a few sales, sure. In fact, I even published a collection called Wyrmflight. The e-book is still available, if any of this is intriguing to you. But I wouldn’t lose any income by deleting those earlier posts.

For myself, I know that I judge online sources based on how old they are. Information that’s more than two years old seems questionable to me. Even though some of my posts are evergreen, and continually get hits, I do wonder about the relevance of many posts from 10 or more years ago.

Is anyone aware of a standard practice as far as how long blog posts should stay up? I would love to hear your insights.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

Always

This is a passage from Dancer in the Grove of Ghosts, the second novella in my Minstrels of Skaythe series. I’ve found myself reflecting on these words in the context of current affairs.

“It has always been this way” is the lie our leaders attempt to tell us. They don’t want us to resist the many harmful changes that are being forced upon us. They want us to give up in despair and accept their domination. Whether they base this claim on biology or the Bible, it is still a lie.

From the outset, our nation has been changing. We have incorporated many, though often by ugly means. Those who live in the United States have always fought for our rights. Even those who weren’t directly affected have witnessed the cruelty of our supposed leaders. We have stood up with compassion and courage for the rights of others. First for blacks and later for women, later still for other minority groups and for gays and lesbians.

The overwhelming majority of Americans are willing and able to coexist peacefully with all our fellow citizens. We don’t want to go backward into a mythical “wild west” where might made right. We want to keep changing and growing.

Because you know what they say: if you aren’t growing, you are dying. And I do not want our nation to die.

If what I’m saying here resonates with you, I hope you’ll take a look at Dancer in the Grove of Ghosts and even the whole Minstrels of Skaythe series.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

Avoidance

I’m working on revisions tonight, as a way of avoiding listening to the Congressional speech. I did already finish the fourth draft of The Agency. It came in at 18,700 words, which is a solid length for a novelette. Now that the draft is printed, I also thought of a detail to add. That’s how it goes.

Next up is Willow Lake, the second volume of my Cleodora duology. This started out as the second half of a novel, and I can sort of tell. As I dug into the first chapter, I discovered that I hadn’t described either Cleodora or her spirit companion, Tef. After all, this book starts in what had been the middle, and the characters were already pretty well described. So that gives me something to work on immediately.

How about you? What are you working on to avoid having to think about politics?

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

Woman at Work, March 2025

What’s Happening? Last week, eight of my fourteen special-ed students received awards, either for academic growth or improved effort. It might not sound like much, but it really made me feel I’m making a difference for the kids.

What I’m Working On. The fourth draft of The Agency. The word count was up to 18,500 before I began. It’s going well.

What’s Next? One more editing pass on Cleodora, Book 2: Willow Lake. As soon as I finish with The Agency, I need to start the publishing process for real.

Where I’ll be. Nothing’s planned right now, except for keeping my butt in the chair.

Fun and Games. I’m doing another run of Dragon Age: Veilguard and keeping up on things in my Animal Crossing village. My current reads are my brother’s poetry book, Brute Entropy, a graphic novel anthology I supported on Kickstarter called Sidequests, and Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny.

The days are getting longer, and I’m looking forward to spring.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

Revising The Agency

Obviously I decided to wait on Willow Lake and do one more draft of The Agency. It’s only 18K words, so the read-through only took one day. Actual revisions will take longer.

It’s kind of a given that when revising you always want to cut words. That’s for sales purposes, since there are submission limits on a lot of magazines. But the thing about self-publishing is, I don’t have to try and fit another editor’s or publisher’s requirements. The Agency can be as long as it needs to be, to reach its perfect form.

Anyway, I want to relax with this novelette and try to pack in some more cool images and stuff to make it stand out from the pack. So I expect it will take a couple of weeks for the third draft revision. Better get to it!

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

Decision

With RadCon behind me, it’s time to decide what I should work on next. Two possibilities are before me.

The Agency. I feel good about the third draft of this novelette, but it isn’t quite finished yet. I might want to go through a fourth draft and firm it all up. This was the last thing I worked on, and I have good energy for it.

Willow Lake. My next publication is scheduled for May 15, 2025. I feel the novel could use one more pass. I haven’t looked at it in a while, and there are always little things to fix. Plus, May might seem far off, but it will come up more quickly than I think.

What’s your advice? Should I get ahead of my publication for May, or focus on the nearly-finished novelette?

One final note, I’m changing to a more secure email provider. So for those who correspond with me outside this platform, you’ll notice that change going forward.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

Writing in Dark Times

The RadCon SF convention went very well for me. I brought two tubs of books for my table and came home with one. But the “Writing in Dark Times” panel was the best part of the weekend.

I had expected two others to join me on the panel, but I ended up going it alone. It snowed all day Friday, and I suspect the other writers couldn’t make it over the mountain passes. So I ended up inviting the audience to share their thoughts and ideas. That’s part of what made the panel such a success.

First, I explained that when I suggested the panel in September, I was thinking more of “AI” and book bannings and how the largest publishers seem focused on shareholder profits much more than any literary merits. But then the election happened.

We talked about how we are feeling now that Project 2025 is being imposed on us. Not only the ill-advised mass firings, but nationwide censorship of disfavored terms like DEI and attempted erasure of trans citizens from reality.

Talk moved on to protecting ourselves from the potential of threats, harassment and legal actions for our writing and art. We talked about using pseudonyms and removing direct contact information from our online presence. Not only to make it more difficult for trolls to find us, but to allow us space to review comments at our own pace.

We talked about activist burnout, and how important it is to pace ourselves. Project 2025’s aim is to overwhelm us so that we can’t respond. And anyway, nobody can do everything at once. We have to choose the issues to focus on. One small action a day is better than having massive tantrums that embarrass us later.

All through this, the audience had a chance to talk about their particular craft or art. We discussed how, sadly, there may be people around us who dismiss our art and try to make us stop creating. They might be overtly Republican supporters, or they might just consider the arts something childish to be put aside in favor of “real work.” I emphasized how our arts make us complete human beings. We can’t let anyone else stop us from finding peace and relaxation even at these times.

The last part, I invited the audience to share if they have any plans to write or craft something in response to the crashing of our democracy. Almost everyone did, in some way. (Also there was a large fighting demo right outside that kept interrupting us with their cheering, and I said, “They agree with us!”)

That was Saturday afternoon. All through the rest of the event, people kept coming to my book table and saying how inspired they were by that panel. Some new poems, letters to the editor, and even costumes might come of it.

Like I said, “Writing in Dark Times” was the best part of the weekend.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

Teaser: Acorn Canyon

I’m traveling to a convention this weekend, but I can’t leave you empty-handed. (Empty blogged?) So here’s a teaser from my most recent release, Acorn Canyon (Cleodora Book 1)

There was a presence. Sharp, with harsh angles. Cleodora whispered a warning. “Mother, something’s here.”
With sly humor Navaire replied, “A lot of things are here.”
Why would adults never believe her? Irritated, Cleodora looked around. She scanned the canyon side and up into the huge oak trees. Her gaze swept through the thick foliage, where so many leaves overlapped. The sense of warning didn’t fade.
She tilted her head to search higher. There! In the branches that swept down directly over them, she saw… What was it? Another kind of spirit, not at all transparent. It looked a bit like a bobcat, but with six legs ending in big paws and two tails that were longer than they should be. But something was wrong with it. The fur was streaked with pale gray instead of a spirit’s rosy hues, and it was all straggly and crumpled. And the eyes… Two of them were jet black, while the center one was reddish and swollen. Cleodora felt cold under its lightless gaze. Tufted ears tilted back, and the spirit showed needle-like fangs in a nasty hiss.
Without thinking, she reached over to grip Navaire’s arm. Her voice trembled. “What kind of spirit is that?”

Interested? Acorn Canyon is available in ebook or paperback through Books2Read.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.

RadCon Schedule

RadCon is this weekend in the Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, WA). I’m going to be there! These are my scheduled panels.

Saturday at 1 pm, it’s “What is the Cozy Genre?” in Rm. 3127. What defines the cozy genre? What are some of the tropes? How does it cross pollinate with other genres: mystery, ghosts, romance, fantasy?

Saturday at 2 pm, “Writing in Dark Times” in the Harvest Room. The world is always changing but some trends are more scary than others. Disinformation, book bans, so-called “artificial intelligence.” How can writers address these perils?

And at 4 pm Saturday, there’s a Dragon Age Meet-Up in Rm. 3123. At long last, Dragon Age: Veilguard. Fans gather to talk about the action, drama, companions, lore and more! Caution: there will be spoilers.

Darn it! I just realized I didn’t ask to have a reading. Ah, well. The rest of the time, I’ll be at my table in the Artist Alley, hoping to move a few books out of my den closet. And I hope I’ll have a chance to wander the dealer’s room, visit the art show, and the rest of the convention’s activity.

Given this, I may or may not have a post on Saturday. For sure I’ll be talking at you again next week.

Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook or Pinterest.