I’m on deadline at the moment, writing something that’s due September 1. Sometimes, being on deadline leads to procrastination (shocking, I know!), even though I’ve learned that keeping my head down and plunging in is the best way to get things done. I should probably invest in a sensory-deprivation chamber. Sometimes, when I am on [...]

Last month, I posted about attending an academic research conference on popular romance. The IASPR conference was held just prior to Romance Writers of America’s national conference; I attended both. The academic conference was small, held in a single location, with no more than 50 or so participants at any given time; RWA was held [...]

In a couple of days, I’m going to be attending a conference. Not a writing conference, but an academic conference, hosted by the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. I’m not an academic, and never completed my Ph.D., but I still retain interest in scholarly work, and have managed to keep fairly up-to-date [...]

When I first finish a novel or story, I feel good about it. It’s as if, once the revision letter is addressed and the manuscript is out of my hands, it slowly begins to gather to itself a sort of halo, a glow of being done that automatically makes it “better” than any novel or [...]