Tag Archives: Sam Flegal

Fiction, Weekly Update

Weekly Update: Thanksgiving

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Greetings all

One of the things I’m most thankful for is all of you who subscribe to this email. Thank you very much.

I’m also thankful as Where Now the Rider is flowing along. I actually cut a bunch out that I did not like but I’m back up to 77k words with a number of scenes percolating. I’m now to the waffling about the bad guy stage.

Yes, I write mysteries without knowing who the bad guy will be. Oh, I usually have an idea but I’m not wedded to the idea. I get close to the end and then I figure it out. I also let my alpha readers guess, and if they guess my idea too easily then I need to change the mystery somehow. My initial bad guy in A Lake Most Deep was too obvious so I changed who it was.

Does that mean I have to go back and add and change clues? Yep, but I actually don’t know how to write a story without going back and changing stuff to meet the final ending. Often, it’s merely adding flavor words here and there. Maybe a sentence or a paragraph. Sometimes, it’s creating or filling out characters to make other potential suspects.

It might not be the “right” process, but it’s a process that works for me, and I’m thankful for that too. For more that I’m thankful about, check out my Thanksgiving blog post at: https://robhowell.org/blog/?p=517

Quote of the Week

I haven’t read it in decades, but I loved Erma Bombeck’s The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank when I was a kid. Maybe it helped her sense of humor, but she was one tough lady. She dealt with a kidney condition for most of her life and still beat breast cancer. I’m thankful she lived long enough to give us her sense of the world, and this quote has always spoken to me.

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”
– Erma Bombeck

News and Works in Progress

  • – Where Now the Rider is up to 77k

Recent Blog Posts and Wiki Additions

Upcoming Events

  • – 10 December: Kris Kinder, Kansas City, MO
  • – 22 January: ChattaCon, Chattanooga, TN
  • – 27-28 January: Market Day in Birka, Manchester, NH
  • – 3-5 March: CoastCon, Biloxi, MS
  • – 12-20 March: Gulf Wars, Lumberton, MS

Spotlight

I’ve been doing a lot of re-arranging of late, and that has included putting up some of the art that I’ve gathered along the way. One of those pieces was this one by Sam Flegal: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5714279c7da24f0475e0cfe3/57142ba47da24f0475e0e9e7/57142baa7da24f0475e0e9fd/1461937124629/LibertyorDeath_watermark1.jpg?format=1500w

You can see a bunch more cool art from him at: http://www.samflegal.com/

Let me know if you have any suggestions on the website, this email, or cool story ideas at rob@robhowell.org. Especially let me know of suggestions you have for the Spotlight section.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Rob Howell
Author of the Shijuren-series of novels

Currently Available Works

Weekly Update Archive