Casi siempre me quedo en casa. Mi padre prefiere que esté dentro de las cuatro paredes, porque como dice, “Cuando tu estás aquí, yo sí puedo vivir.” No es que sea cruel, mi padre, solo es que me quiere proteger. Me despierto la primera pero no me muevo. Mis pasos en...
Please see the lovely photo which inspired this piece, Kyle 3099 on Genoa Hill From High Plains Hogger on Flicker The conductor, Kyle 3099 according to his embroidered nametag, slept peacefully on the cabin floor. “Sleeping peacefully,” in this context, meant...
14 February 2017. For Chuck Wendig's weekly Flash Fiction prompt. My Random Number Generator chose 10. Long way home. April hoisted her lumpy backpack up on her bony shoulders. It should have weighed more. The dehydrated food packs she’d selected and tallied at the...
I'm a bit late getting to this piece of news, but I just read a story about Virginia Woolf's suicide. I've never read any of her work. I need to catch up. (Pics from Getty, via the BBC article link.) Woolf and her husband criticized Victorian rules. I saw the...
Survey results are in! Thanks to so many for participating! I thought you might want to know the outcome! Yep, it's goats and AKs from Peshawar. Thanks to all who participated! Percentages of the top six qualifiers are below: One does not normally...
Hello word fans! Can you help me with a sentence? Just one little subject, predicate, object, some punctuation, and bingo! These are from my forthcoming novel, Spy Act. I'm keen to hook a particular agent. Here are a few of my faves: please vote for one you like....
I'm back in Bogota and working feverishly on new queries, new agents, new chances. At the advice of a particular editor, I queried one last week and was almost instantaneously rejected. But she was nice about it, I suppose. It just reminded me how unpleasant it is to...
What does it mean when something has been self-published that on its face has no literary merit? Does it mean: a) the publishing world is f&%$d? b) readers have no interest in something deep and pensive, but will buy whatever is simple and clich'd? c)...
Stage actor and part-time hairdresser Nathalie Qadir befriends three polite young Muslim men in her immigrant neighborhood in London; they fill a hole in her heart where her brother once was. She doesn't realize that terrorist financier and ideologue Abn Al Sadr has...
With the help of the Book Doctors, I've worked on my query to see if there's a way to get more interest. They said the text is great - it's the query that's not grabbing the agents. I am not sure if this does the trick: I'm really eager to get Nathalie's personality...