Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! This week marks the achievement of a blogging milestone for me. This is the 52nd week in a row I have posted a blog on Tuesday. Hooray! Now, blogging isn’t the powerhouse it once was in terms of garnering engagement, especially in my simple words on a page …
Author: rodericktmacdonald
Writer, pool player.
Find me at rodericktmacdonald.com
A poorly researched partial polemic about reading standards
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I'm 44.4-46.6% of my way through the copy edit, depending on criteria used, no graphic as usual. A word of warning: this is not my usual blog, it goes slightly longer, and takes a left turn along the way. Though you might think me discouraged by what I …
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The Writing Life: I got the re-read blues
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! How many times shall I read thee? Let me count the ways. Again. Minor advice column for writers this week. Lessons learned from my own repeated experience as a fellow traveller in the writing trenches. Copy editing progress continues. Depending on how I measure it I am …
Sifting dust for diamonds on the Long Road.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Good news bad news this week. The good news is that despite a barrel-load of distractions hitting me, I managed to review sixty pages of copy-edited text this week, well over a fifth of the entire manuscript. The bad news is that is not proofing is it? I …
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Story Fragment #7: Snow
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! It is story time once again. BUT, before I get to that I want to let those of you waiting with bated breath for a book update: the book is complete. Proofing is go. We are into the next, one step closer to final, phase. This week I’m …
The Writing Life: Promises kept, with a tiny caveat
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! It is very cold here, and I write to delay going out into brittle, shard-like sunlight to shovel my drive. Being stabbed in my wincing eye by too-bright light is infinitely preferable to having to shovel in a storm, however, a brutal necessity I have only had to …
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The Writing Life: Endings and Adjustments
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I have rewritten one of the penultimate scenes in the book. I know where it starts, and how it ends and re-enters the previous narrative. It serves a lot of good purposes, and includes a great deal I had not fitted in before in my mad rush to …
The turn of the year. Objectives and Awareness.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! We have entered 2024. My books are on sale until the fourth day of this year, just a quick reminder! What are my objectives for this year? Publish The Slaves and The Djinn/The Gardener and The Goddess/The Title of The Book by March 31st, unless a delay caused …
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Just received an Amazon gift card? Buy my books! (And other writers’ – but buy mine first! 0.99 from December 28th-January 4th!)
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Pushy headline, eh? Well, I meant it! If you have random gift cards/cash all of a sudden, (for mysterious unknown but possibly calendar related reasons), then splurge a little and help a writer out! If you or someone you know likes dark, grown-up fantasy for adults, then indulge, …
The Writing Life: Rushing to the next roadblock
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! And here we all are, rushing toward a day that passes all too quickly, months of anticipation dissipating in a confetti of bright shards, leaving us bloated and queasy. I love Christmas, by the way, though it was an eternal disappointment to the child I was, never receiving …
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Roderick T. Macdonald 