I returned last night from a whole two days away, deciding that a houseful of visiting Kings might e sufficient to keep catastrophe at bay. Two entire days, driving down to Big Sur and talking to the redwoods. And although I didn’t take my laptop or a writing pad, and only took a cell phone…

Sorry for the delay on this promised conclusion of Jamie You’ll’s remarks. Over 36 hours this weekend I flew to LA and spoke with a couple hundred librarians, flew home and fed 60 guests, and attended the world’s most perfect wedding. Since then I have realized that my brain is going through a period of…

My soldier son is home, a civilian at last after 40 months in uniform. He survived Iraq, Afghanistan, Ranger training school, more jumps out of airplanes than a mother wants to know about, and the Army’s idiocy. His only scars are the invisible kind treated best by a full refrigerator, many paperback novels, and plans…

Last spring I received the proposed cover art for Touchstone (which I would post here if anyone could teach me how to do that, but since no one has figured it out on this machine all I can do is link to it. Sigh.) The cover was flat-out gorgeous, eye-catching and evocative. That cover was…

In the past month, since finishing Touchstone, I’ve worked on the house. I’ve had it power-washed and had the shingles stained and the trim paint touched up, ditto the deck. I had a new section of deck installed so there are no steps in a circuit of the house, necessary for someone dependent on a…

In the discussion about Doris Lessing’s Nobel for Literature, pundits have weighed in on various aspects of her life and career, including the furious declaration that here is a woman who wasted considerable talent on (gack, spit) genre fiction. Oh, woe. But there’s another thing that came up that I thought more interesting, and that…

Today’s post concludes an interview with Madeline Hopkins, who copyedited the manuscript for Touchstone. Madeline Hopkins first entered the publishing world over a decade ago as a temp at a weekly thoroughbred racing magazine and worked her way through most of the facets of magazine and book publishing at a variety of companies in several…

Today’s post continues an interview with Madeline Hopkins, who recently copyedited Touchstone. Madeline Hopkins first entered the publishing world over a decade ago as a temp at a weekly thoroughbred racing magazine and worked her way through most of the facets of magazine and book publishing at a variety of companies in several different cities.…

Copyeditors are a writer’s last bastion of defense against typos, inconsistencies, and plot holes. The book’s editor is the primary reader, but she or he is generally looking at the larger field of battle: is there a slow part that could be trimmed? Are some of the characters flat? It the plot stale and in…