The Girdle of Melian

ew round of A Round of Words in 80 Days starts on 2 July! " What Is ROW80? A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life. We are all different and we all have different demands on our time.  Why should we all have the same goal?  The simple answer is that we shouldn’t.  If you want to be a writer, then you have to be able to roll with the punches and adapt to your changing circumstances.  If that means changing your goals when your life blows up, so be it.  ROW80 is the challenge that champions the marriage of writing and real life. For more on why I started it, see this post . So here’s the skinny: We have 4 rounds a year, each running 80 days.   Your goal can be anything you like as long as it is measurable (e.g. number of words/pages, specified amount of time to spend on writing per day/week, number of pages edited, etc.– for more on what makes a measurable goal, see this post ). Once you have settled on a goa

nd of another ROW80 round! I'm not ready! My goals and progress seems to have gotten a bit scattered since the last round. The full set of goals and their various stages of completion look like this: enter handwritten edits to The Handful of Time (working title) and reread: still trying to finish this query Druid's Moon : haven't done this yet query The Charm of Time : I did! No bites... keep editing Mystery at Bertram's Hotel (working title) on paper: I finished this! enter handwritten edits to Mystery at Bertram's Hotel : not started yet because -- enter handwritten edits to Captive of the Sea : a new goal, because Harlequin have put out a call for medieval romances do required research for stories and come up with proper titles back to school !: this is what took up most of my time. But I'm all done my first year! think about short story anthology: I did a cover mock up. It needs work I'm also really far behind in updating my l

odge podge post! It's been a while since I've written one of these hodge podge posts . Thinking of ROW80 goals, I am still not where I'd like to be, editing-wise. This popped up as a timely reminder: Things To Say While Doing Final Revisions To Meet A Deadline , from Dr Throop (on Twitter) On the other hand, I don't think I'd ever say no to more maps... I need to finish entering that last round of edits for The Handful of Time , but I might shelve that for a few days to look over, again, Captive of the Sea . Harlequin has a call out for historical romance, including medieval ones! My current earworms, from Johnny Marr: In other news, the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth exhibition is now open at the Bodleian in Oxford. "Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth explores Tolkien’s amazing legacy from his genius as an artist, poet, linguist, and author to his academic career and private life. The exhibition takes you on a journey throu

laylists! I made a playlist back when my characters hosted the writers' houseparty in Constantinople, but for some reason didn't make any other playlists until the houseparty in San Francisco. Since then, I've made a playlist each time! Given that our characters come from many different periods, with writers taking their inspiration from all kinds of music and musicians, they make very eclectic lists. Enjoy! Constantinople, 1492 San Francisco, 1860 Grand Finale, Christmastime Never Have I Ever Today is Insecure Writer's Support Group Day! This month's question is: What's harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names? The title, I suppose. It takes a bit of research and some thought, as I try to come up with something symbolic to the story, never or hardly ever used before, and with an element of mystery. They're all working titles until they find a publisher, though! I find both aspects lots of fun.