Field Notes.
Tommie Whitener’s Wanda and the Watch
I first met Tommie Whitener in Madison Park when he was up from San Francisco visiting family. He told me about a few writing projects that really sparked my interest. But what truly connected us was our conversation about families. Both our kin are from Arkansas, and...
The Hero’s Brother Audiobook Launch!
Another writer of ours has published his first book. In an absolute first for us, this book has already been transformed into a downloadable audiobook. In The Hero’s Brother, M. Scott Anderson presents a rollicking adventure with a very literary bent. It’s a fantasy...
Seattle7Writers Reading at Elliott Bay Books
The capstone to the residency I just completed with Seattle7Writers was a night of public reading. The charismatic and wonderful Jennie Shortridge hosted the event at Elliott Bay Books. There I joined past residents Janet Buttenwieser and Sierra Nelson to read...
Building Community with the Editors Guild
This brief post is to announce that I've taken on the volunteer position of Vice President of Member Services with the Northwest Editors Guild. The Northwest Editors Guild promotes the craft of editing and helps organize and educate member editors through meetings and...
Joshua Arsenaux’s YA novella The Devil’s Last Breath
I first spoke with Joshua Arsenaux in Café Solstice at the end of last year. We met again at Slate Coffee for another conversation recently. This time Joshua handed me a book with his name on the cover. Between the end of last year and the end of this, Joshua wrote,...
The Fiction Editor: Sensibility, Craft, Art
Thomas McCormack’s The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist (Paul Dry, 1988) is a standard guide for editors of novels. Similar (and better) works now offer a more schematic approach. I'll review the related Self-Editing for the Fiction Writer (William Morrow...