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The Art of Sleeping Alone by Sophie Fontanel I picked up The Art of Sleeping Alone by Sophie Fontanel in early 2019, in the early and extremely painful days of separation from my ex-husband. I knew in my bones that my life couldn’t stay the same, that I needed to be out of that marriage,…
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Things My Beta Reader Says To Me “I NEEEDDDDDD book two. But not yet.” “You fucking slor.” (Slor is a word in the fictional language of the book. It means unintelligent.) Regarding two characters’ will they/won’t they: “Emotional. Dipshits. ED” “I was getting so frustrated. That paid off beautifully.” “I both love you and dislike…
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5) Imposter Syndrome. My lord am I riddled with self-doubt. And if I’m honest (which, ugh, do I have to be), part of that self-doubt comes from ego. This is a me problem, and I’m working on it, okay? I promise I receive the feedback my critique group and beta readers provide with an open…
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Me and the semicolon need some space, but I can’t stop using it. I like sentence fragments for emphasis, which is not really a correct thing. I’ll go through and remove as many being verbs and adverbs as I can, then go back and re-add them when I’ve made my sentences super convoluted. I over…
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More specifically, why space opera? Maybe – probably – because I was raised on Star Wars, and I love the idea of playing around in space. Maybe because it’s fun? But I think what really did it was all the sci-fi I started reading in 2023. A friend recommended that I try the Expeditionary Force…
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Entire Murderbot Series by Martha Wells Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto Psychopomp by Maria Dong Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar You Made a…
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These are books I read in 2025, not necessarily those published in 2025. I’m focusing on recent publications, though. My third favorite book I’ve read (listened to) this year was This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Motar and Max Gladstone (2019 from Simon & Schuster). I started this book in October…
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I used to teach First Year Composition. For ten years at various colleges and universities, I sat down in front of bright eyed (and not so bright eyed) college students and tried to give them tools to succeed in a broad range of writing situations. It took me an embarrassingly long time to take my…
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5.) Not Enough Feedback: Trying to revise without an outside perspective is so difficult for me. I try to imagine what other people would think or feel about the action or the characters, but I just can’t. I miss a lot of mistakes and potential plot holes because I’m filling in the blanks in my…
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One of my character’s is a worm. Not a literal worm, but just an arrogant, controlling, coward. Mr. Worm is, from the outside, a handsome and generally pleasant character, and the main character’s resentment of him seems to be simply an immature reaction. But I don’t like him. It’s hard to let nice things happen…
Katie Anderson Howell, Author 