My Guest Post at Chris the Story-Reading Ape’s Blog Is Up…

Folks, as promised, here’s the link to the guest post I did for Chris the Story-Reading Ape’s very busy blog. Here’s a bit from that blog post, to whet your interest:

So I wrote for my graduate collegiate newspaper as well, the Daily Nebraskan. I wrote more poetry. And I started, haltingly, writing a bodyswitch story I called CHANGING FACES; it quickly morphed into a transgender romance, with aliens who may as well be angels…I’d anticipated the market about fourteen years too early. (Quite literally, as the story will be coming out later this year…but I digress.)

Something good happened while I was writing this first draft. I met my husband Michael, who was already an accomplished writer and editor. He loved what he saw of CHANGING FACES, and he was encouraging. I was making all sorts of mistakes in fiction – you name it, I probably made it. But he gave me excellent feedback (not all of it was positive, but all of it was constructive), and I learned.

I also fell in love with him, which changed me as a writer. It gave me depth, and resonance, and made me believe love was possible. (After two failed marriages behind me, I’d kind of lost sight of all that.) And because Michael and I laughed often, I wanted to make other people laugh, too…so I wrote a huge cross-genre book called ELFY. (And I do mean cross-genre: it’s young adult comic fantasy/mystery/romance with alternate universes and Shakespearean allusions. Say that five times fast.)

Now, if I had this to write over again, I’d say “college newspaper” rather than collegiate. (Ah, Editor Voice never shuts up.) But otherwise, I’m happy with what I said here.

Because Chris likes a different sort of approach than other guest blogs, I tried to give his audience an introduction to who I am along with what I do. I found it very difficult to do this; as I said at the top of this blog post, I’d rather hide behind my saxophone than talk about myself (at least in this way).

It’s far, far easier for me to talk about ideas. Things that matter to me. Or better yet, the people who have mattered most to me — my husband Michael, and my best friend Jeff Wilson first among them.

It’s very hard to explain why I do anything, other than that I find it important and I hope others will like what I’m doing as well.

Anyway, I do hope you’ll enjoy my guest blog over at Chris’s busy web establishment. Let me know what you think.

A Quick Wednesday Round-up

Folks, I’m busy writing and editing. Plus, I’m working on a book review for Thursday and perhaps another one for Saturday…lots to get done, and very little time to do it in.

So I figured I’d give you a quick, “drive-by” blog, just to give you an idea of what I’m up to this week.

I’m working right now on a short story plus the rewrite of CHANGING FACES, plus I have two edits in train. (One will finish by the end of this week. The other I hope will finish the second pass by the end of this week; it’s for a relatively new writer, so I agreed to do three passes for him. Most professional editors tend to do two.)

But I have some exciting news…want to know what it is?

OK, I’ll tell you.

Chris the Story-Reading Ape’s blog is going to feature a guest blog, from me, sometime tomorrow. As Chris is a few hours ahead of me, time-wise, I can’t tell for certain when my guest blog will show up. But once it does, I’ll skedaddle and get something up over here, so you all can meander over and read it.

What’s it about? Well, Chris’s website is a little different from other blogs, in that Chris wants you to introduce yourself as if you’re speaking to a room where you know not one, single soul. So I called my piece “An Intro to Barb Caffrey,” figuring that might make some sense…that means most of you will know everything there, but maybe the way I’m putting it will still intrigue you?

For the record, it’s because I’m going to be featured at Chris’s blog that I decided to put “A Dark and Stormy Night” up as a free e-book for five days starting on the 23rd (tomorrow), and it’s also why I decided to drop the price of “To Survive the Maelstrom” to ninety-nine cents for five days, starting again on the 23rd. Chris’s blog is very well-read, so maybe I’ll find some new readers.

In addition, Nicholas Rossis asked me to do a guest blog for him as well. I’m not exactly sure when this will come out. But when it does, of course I will let you know about it, soonest…as always.

Aside from that, the Racine Concert Band will be playing again on Sunday out at the Racine Zoo, and it’s absolutely free (don’t you just love that word, free?) If you’re anywhere within reasonable driving distance, do come and check us out.

So that’s about it.

Have a great rest of your week, folks!