FAQ

The What’s Cooking? section on the homepage has information on my current work in progress and is more frequently updated than this page. Time frames are just an estimate, though. Although as an indie publisher I have more control over my timelines, I am notoriously bad at estimating how long projects will take. In the meantime, you may enjoy the other author’s works listed on my recommendations page.

It’s always changing, but in general, spreadsheets… I adore spreadsheets. Rachel Aaron’s book 2K to 10K was enormously helpful for me. I’m still a pretty slow writer, but in my case going from 0K to 2K was the big accomplishment! I’ve also found CS Pacat’s essay on building and sustaining tension is one I regularly reread for inspiration.

Other than that, I dictate the first draft of most scenes. I ran across the recommendation on Joanna Penn’s blog, and it is some of the best writing advice I’ve encountered. Walking gets my brain juices flowing very reliably.

Not at all. I’ve adored reading ever since I was very small; I grew up without a television, so some of my earliest memories are crawling up on the couch to read books over my father’s shoulder. However, being a writer never crossed my mind. I got involved in politics as I was graduating high school, did a bachelors/masters program in Political Science and Public Policy in college, and then took a sharp left turn to teach high school math when I realized I should know something about education policy before heading off into the policy world. Eight years later, I was still at it when I had my first child and took several months off for maternity leave. Purely by coincidence, this was just after the 2016 election, and I started writing political science non-fiction simply trying to make sense of what had happened. That work has yet to see the light of day, but it did make me realize how much I start to go stir crazy if I’m not thinking and writing (as a teacher I did an enormous amount of curriculum writing). A few years later, I got the bug to create and write the world my fiction books are set in, and by the time my husband’s work moved us across the country, I was in a position where writing full time was a viable option.

Being outraged at people being wrong on the internet has its uses. While I was teaching, my writing urges came out in fits and spurts of non-fiction on the weekends as introverted me tried to recharge. I remember sitting at the dining room table one weekend furiously typing up a response to this essay, which essentially argues that gender dynamics in our society are the way they are because of biology. And then I had to stop. The whirl of family outings, lesson planning, and packed weeks of teaching intervened, and I never got to finish what I was writing. The anger stuck with me, though, and eventually crystalized into, essentially, “see you and raise you!” What if there were a world that took the exact same biological variation related to reproduction that exists in current humanity (and even many of the same stereotypes) and used it to justify entirely different patterns of dominance? Playing with the ramifications of that grew into an entire world.

Sure! Some authors have had bad experiences with fanfic, but I haven’t, so you’re welcome to go for it as long as it doesn’t cause problems for me. Naturally, such work may not be published for profit, may not represent itself as cannon or being approved by me, and should credit me as the originator of the setting/characters.

Note that this is my policy, and I fully support the right of other authors to limit or prohibit fanfic. This is absolutely one of those consent things, and authors don’t need to have a “good reason.” Anyone who feels entitled to write fan fiction in an author’s world and gets angry at them for saying “no” needs to work out their issues with consent, boundaries, and entitlement ASAP. Buying an author’s book (or even being their number one fan) does not create an open-ended entitlement. It’s the author’s sandbox, and anyone who doesn’t like the rules can make up their own world. Also, please do not send me fanfic, it can create snarly legal messes for authors. Basically, back in the day some fans sued some authors when the authors’ subsequent work seemed too similar to fanfic they had seen earlier, and now everybody has to deal with the fall out.

I moderate the comments on my site and need to approve new comments. It may take me a few days to get to it. I also reserve the right to not post or to delete comments that don’t contribute to what I am trying to do with my site. While I am quite opposed to censorship by the government or by the social media platforms that form the modern public square, this website is my sandbox and runs on my rules. I will generally post (and appreciate) thoughtful comments by people who disagree with me, but I have no qualms about censoring comments that make it unpleasant for myself or my target audience to spend time on my website. Anyone so censored is welcome to post non-threatening/harassing comments to other forums.