HOW exactly do you miss a giant herd of buffalo near your house? I have no idea. But we've been living in this same house for ten + years now (omg really!?) and I didn't know they were there. There is also a giant herd of elk in the same area. And a "town" straight out of 1855. Which is incredibly relevant to my life right now, considering I'm working on a steampunk western series modeled after the mid-to-late 1800s. SO imagine my surprise and indignation (indignation because ... View Post
What We’ll Do for a Duck…
As you may or may not know... I have pet ducks. I say PET ducks, because no way and no-how are we going to eat them. (Except for in case of the Apocalypse and/or the Zombie Apocalypse. But even then, we'd likely hatch some new ducklings for the express purpose of eating, and raise them with the intent of eating, and not, you know, name them and stuff, so that the guilt of eating them is somewhat lessened. The main point being... we're NOT going to eat our adorable ducks unless ABSOLUTELY ... View Post
Friday Factoid: Gangs of the Old West Actually Had Mostly Boring Names
Friday Factoid is a blog feature where I’ll be sharing a little bit of background behind something from one of my books: ideas, characters, environments, pieces of research, you name it, it’s all fair game for the Friday Factoids! If you have a specific question, feel free to leave it in the comments or email me at jrfrontera@gmail.com! What will be featured this week? Read on to find out… about the rather boring names of gangs in the old west, and how that influenced my writing! Well, ... View Post
Writing “into the Dark” for NaNoWriMo 2019: The Set-Up
So as I mentioned in my last post, I'm not entirely starting with a blank canvas for my NaNoWriMo project. I'm not sure if that officially still makes it a "pantsed" novel or not, but I'm not here to argue semantics, so we'll just roll with it! Let me first say that this writing process, what Dean Wesley Smith calls "writing into the dark", is actually my natural writing process. When I sat down to write my first novel at 14 (in 1996), this is what I did. It worked for two novels. And ... View Post
NaNoWriMo 2019: Boldly Going Where No NaNoWriMo Has Gone Before!
At least for me. I've been doing NaNoWriMo since 2012. And I've won every year so far. Except I probably won't win this year. But that's okay. I debated not participating, but that seemed no fun, so I joined in despite the fact I have no real expectations of writing 50,000 words this November, given what else I have going on during that month. (Now watch, this will be the year I totally effortlessly crush it, or something.) Anyway, this fact that I'm not gun-ho to win is not what ... View Post
There can be no story without “The Spark”
Wait, am I about to get all "woo-woo" on you (to borrow the term my Writer Mom Life Podcast co-host Daphne uses and which I love)? Am I about to go on some long, poetic diatribe about how a book can only be properly written when the stars are aligned and your writing space is fengshui and The Almighty Muse is in-house and humming you soothing songs whilst rubbing your shoulders and pouring words lightning-fast into your fingers? No. Not at all. BUT I AM here to tell you that I ... View Post
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