I don't know what it is about this month, but in all the hubbub and bustle before the holidays, I just want to take it easy. I'm finding it tough to work on anything - word count on BotBK has been zero for three weeks, though that was partially due to having been sick. And I... Continue Reading →
vacation: time to work!
Vacation means different things to different people. To some, it means travel. To others, a break from school. To me, it's a respite from my job, and a chance to do my work. (There. is. SUCH. a. difference.) I like my job as much as anyone can like a job that's not their calling, but... Continue Reading →
Published!
If you'd been with me yesterday, you would have heard a lot of nervous deep breaths, followed by excited squealing. Why? Because I hit "publish" on FOLD, my first ebook through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). It was, I'll be honest, a little scary. I'd bought ISBNs, but when I registered the title with the... Continue Reading →
Reflections on a Cover Shoot
Thursday was a good day for photography. The light was beautiful, and it was warm but not super hot out. My photographer friend Rebecca and I ventured to a nearby private boys’ school that’s set in a woodsy area, because the forest is a pivotal setting in the book I’m publishing, and we wanted to... Continue Reading →
Getting Ready to Self-Publish
Hey there! So, you might have heard (or maybe you didn’t) that I’m soon to be embarking on a grand adventure. That is, I’ll be self-publishing a short book (based on word count, it’s a “novelette”) this fall, and it’ll be the first legit (non-blog) thing I’ll have ever, ever put out into the world... Continue Reading →
Filling the Well
Writing has been slow for the past week and a half or so. The slowdown started when I hit a bit of a roadblock because I needed more information. I’ve found myself writing EHPpretty much chronologically, start to finish, so without that information my art was blocked – not by lack of inspiration but by... Continue Reading →
Mortal Coil
In my current WIP, the protagonist is a girl who can walk and talk with the dead. As a psychopomp, her job is to ferry spirits of the recently dead across the border from life. In the course of doing that job, she comes across many deaths – some accidental, some of old age, some... Continue Reading →
No excuses for slackers
Last week sucked. I got this new super-high-priority project at work, and it's got us running around like mad trying to get things done in a compressed timeframe. Now I don't mind challenging work, but it's draining; by the time I'm on the road home every day I've developed a massive headache, and writing -... Continue Reading →
An Embarrassment of Riches
I never thought I'd be in a situation where I had to decide which book to write first, but that's where I've found myself over the last week. On one hand, there's Emmeline, who has taken more than a year to mature enough in my head to be ready to come to the page. On... Continue Reading →
Nothing good can come from stealing a ring from an open casket.
Or can it? That's what I'll set down the road today to find out. I have the next 2 days off from work and am planning to spend most of both digging in to a new story with a new protagonist. This one has been stewing around in my head for over a year. I... Continue Reading →
Leila A. M. Martin 