Patricia A. McKillip: 1948-2022

 It's always a little startling when you're mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and stumble on shocking news. That happened to me yesterday when I found out Patricia A. McKillip, one of my favorite authors, passed away last Friday. She was 74. 

I think the first McKillip book I read was The Sorceress and the Cygnet. I was drawn in by her wondrous prose, which raised every work of hers to the mythopoetic realm. The Cygnet duology remains one of my favorite works of hers, but I also particularly like The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. I met her at WisCon several years ago and have her autograph.You can see it, along with other books of hers, pictured below. 

Many authors can write fantasy, but there are few who can consistently infuse their work with a sense of wonder like McKillip did. She will be missed.

Insecure Writer's Support Group: Writer Highs and Lows

 

 

 

May the Fourth be with you! Late April to late May is my favorite time of year will all the flowers in bloom. It's also a busy time of year as I prepare to celebrate my son's birthday at the end of the month and attend WisCon (which I will probably do virtually this year). Despite all this, there's still time to talk about writing and post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Learn more about them on their website and Facebook page. 

Our hosts this month are Kim Elliott, Melissa Maygrove, Chemist Ken, Lee Lowery, and Nancy Gideon.

 

This month's post is inspired by Charles Dickens: It's the best of times; it's the worst of times. What are your writer highs (the good times)? And what are your writer lows (the crappy times)?

 

In no particular order, here are some of my writer highs:

 

1. Getting together with other writers.

2. Finishing a story.

3. Selling a story (or seeing that someone bought one of my books).

4. Hearing from a reader who enjoys my work or who gets what I was trying to do with a story.

5. Solving a problem I've been stuck on or making connections within a story.

6. Getting inspired for a new project. 

7. Getting a good review or being nominated for a reward.

And here are some of my writer lows:

1. Learning a story got rejected.

2. Bad reviews.

3. Getting stuck or having to discard hours of work.

4. Unsuccessful marketing campaigns.

Writing is the main way I strive to authentically connect with others and with something better than myself. Therefore, anything that helps me build connections is a win, while failing to make connections is a setback.

What are some of your writer highs and lows? Is writing about connection for you too? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

April Writing Update

It doesn't feel like I have much progress to report this month. I've made little or no headway on revising Restaurants and Revenge or drafting Bubble Tea and a Body. However, I have a very rough draft of a hopepunk short story tentatively titled "Invasives." It's one of those stories that was inspired by an article I read recently. Depending how the story develops in the next week, I may submit it to the Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction contest, though I doubt that's the best fit for it. If it isn't selected, I have other potential markets in mind for this story.

I have made some slight progress on Jenna's story for the Season Avatars collection The Season Between. Yesterday, I came up with an alternate version for the overarching story that would link them all. The concept works better in a couple of ways than what I'd originally planned, though my characters' motives need to be developed more for it to work. 

Although it's two months too soon for my semiannual reading report, I'm happy to say I've read 49 books so far this year, leaving me slightly ahead of goal. My reading does slow down in summer when I walk outside instead of using the treadmill, so we'll see how I fare by early July.

WisCon Woes

Those of you who've been following my blog for a long time know I love attending WisCon, the feminist science fiction/fantasy convention held every Memorial Day weekend in Madison, WisCon. Unfortunately, like many other things, the convention has run into issues during the pandemic. I attended virtually in 2020, but I don't think I did last year. This year, the convention will be held both virtually and in-person. However, two of the guests of honor won't be able to appear (I'm particularly disappointed that Zen Cho won't be able to attend, since I enjoy her work), and the convention has had difficulties filling its hotel room block and selling virtual memberships. 

There is some good news in that the con has raised nearly $67,000 for expenses (read more about the details on their blog). Hopefully they'll continue to raise money leading up to the convention. I haven't registered yet this year because I'm not sure yet if my son will be attending Scholastic Bowl Nationals that weekend. His birthday falls on Memorial Day this year, so any celebrations he wants to hold will take priority. If we can't make it up to Madison that weekend, I'll probably get a virtual membership. (If you're interested in a virtual membership, you can register here.) Hopefully this convention will be around for a long time to come.

Mid-Month Mysteries: Birthday Parties

 Since my birthday falls in April, I thought it would be fun this month to look at cozy mysteries set at birthday parties. Here are a few that I found with a quick search. I haven't read any of these yet, so it looks like my TBR pile is going to grow again.

Birthdays Can Be Deadly is the first book in Cindy Bell's Sage Gardens Cozy Mystery series. It's set in a retirement village, where the guest of honor at a birthday party falls dead. Three members of the community join forces to figure out who did it.

Another birthday party ends in tragedy in Berries and Birthdays: A Cozy Murder Mystery. This is part of Leena Clover's Pelican Cove Cozy Mystery series. (The series actually starts with Strawberries and Strangers.) The victim just turned 100, and the mystery in this book is apparently generations old.

In Birthday Party Murder: A Lucy Stone Mystery by Leslie Meier, there are actually two parties being planned: one for a ninety-year-old former librarian, and one for a fourteen-year-old girl. The death happens during the planning stage, but Lucy must solve the murder before the librarian is targeted. This book is the ninth in the series, which starts with Mistletoe Murder.

Finally, Isis Crawford offers up recipes and a mystery in A Catered Birthday Party (A Mystery with Recipes), Book 6 in the A Mystery with Recipes series. (The series starter is A Catered Murder.) In this book, the birthday party is for a dog, but it's the owner who pays the ultimate price and the caterers who have to sniff out the criminal.

Here's hoping the next birthday party you attend doesn't end with someone facedown in the cake!

April IWSG: Audio Books

Welcome to April! If you're participating in the A-Z Blogging Challenge, I hope it's going well. These days, I'm challenged enough to keep up with a weekly blog, but I still have time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Learn more about the IWSG on their website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed.  

Our hosts this month are Joylene Nowell Butler, Jemima Pett, Patricia Josephine, Louise-Fundy Blue, and Kim Lajevardi.

 Here's our question for April: Have any of your books been made into audio books? If so, what is the main challenge in producing an audiobook?

My science fiction books Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes are available as audiobooks. I produced them myself through ACX, which is no longer available. It's been several years since I made them, but I remember the main challenges (besides paying for them) were finding a suitable narrator (especially on a budget) and reviewing the audiobooks. I haven't sold many audiobooks, so I probably wouldn't bother doing it with my other books unless they become popular enough to justify the expense. If you're an indie author who wants to make audiobooks, Draft2Digital partners with Findaway Voices to create them. I would take that route if I decide to produce more books in that format. 

Have you created audiobooks of your work? If so, feel free to share the details in the comments.

 

March Writing Update

 I've worked on multiple projects this month:

Restaurants and Revenge: This one (the second book in my cozy mystery series) is still in revision. I was stuck on a particular scene, and there were some other things I wanted to change. I think I've figured out what I want to do, but it will mean going back earlier into the story to make changes.

Bubble Tea and a Body: This will be book three in my cozy mystery series. The word count is a little over 17,000 on the first draft. However, the victim died in time and manner I hadn't planned for, and I still haven't decided who the murderer is from my list of suspects. I guess no matter how hard I try to plan, I end up pantsing.

The Season Between: I've decided to link the short stories in this collection as stories being told to a journalist interested in the Season Avatars, who are telling her about events that took place after Summon the Seasons. This would be considered a composite novel or a novel-in-stories, and it's something I haven't tried before. I've already written the first scene with the journalist and Gwen. I've been stuck on Jenna's contribution for a while, as I didn't like what I've drafted. I've outlined a new plot for her story, but as I've noted earlier, planning my fiction isn't my forte. At least it's good to be writing in this world again.

How's your writing going this month? Feel free to share in the comments.

Getting Together with Writers

I'm currently reading a cozy mystery series that features a writer's retreat. The main character is an author who hosts week-long writer's retreats in her Victorian house each month. I have to admit the premise sounds idyllic, particularly when you include all the treats the main character's best friend bakes for the retreat (though I imagine the writers gain a lot of weight over the week!). I also like the idea of being able to hang out with other writers and talk about craft. 

I've attended a couple of cons virtually over the last couple of years, but it's been a while since I've hung out with other writers. That's part of the reason I plan to join Sisters in Crime this year. I'm still pretty new to the cozy mystery genre and would like to learn more about it, and networking with other authors would also be helpful. I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to attend either WisCon or ChiCon this year, though I do particularly miss WisCon. (Some of the friends I used to see there every year no longer attend, so some of the vibe is gone for me. I also don't feel the writing panels have so much to offer me any more, though there are plenty of other interesting panels there every year.) I should also check to see if there are any regular writer chats on Discord or Zoom that I could join.

I've never actually gone on a writer's retreat; sometimes, it's difficult enough just finding the time/motivation to leave the house and write at the library or coffee shop. Perhaps once my son is a little more independent (he'll be old enough to get his driver's license next year), I'll be able to go somewhere for a weekend. Even if I get a hotel or B&B for the weekend, the change of scenery might be helpful. I'd be disappointed in myself if I wasn't able to be productive on a retreat, though I suppose it would depend on how much preparation I did ahead of time. It probably would helpful to schedule a balance between writing and doing other things.

How often do you get together with other writers? Do you do so in person or online? If you've attended a writer's retreat, was it helpful? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Mid-Month Mysteries: Spring Themes

 

 

 

 

Spring officially arrives next week, although it usually takes another month or so around here for the weather to turn fully spring-like. Spring is my favorite season, so I thought this month it would be worth looking at cozy mysteries set in spring. There are already a couple of cozy mystery sites that have created lists of spring-themed mysteries, particularly Cozy Mysteries Unlimited and April Hayman's Pinterest board. I'll try to focus on books I've read.

One series I would recommend is The Great Witches Baking Show by Nancy Warren. It's a takeoff of The Great British Baking Show, but the protagonist is a novice witch competing on a baking show set in a British small town. The show is filmed over several weeks in the spring. (I think the series starts in April and ends in June, though I'm not 100% sure about that.) This means that the entire series takes place in the spring, as opposed to a series that may stretch out over a couple of years and many seasons. Nancy Warren writes likeable paranormal protagonists and weaves a mystery well, so her books are automatic buys for me.

Another writer who is an automatic buy for me is Louisa M. Locke and her Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. As advertised, this series is set in San Francisco in the late 1880s, and it explores the lives of working women (there are a surprising variety of jobs available for women in this era). The focus is Anne Fuller, who runs a boarding house; occasionally, some of the boarders and servants get their own stories in this series. Scholarly Pursuits is the sixth book in the series, but it can be read as a stand-alone (though you get more out of the story if you're already familiar with the characters). The previous books are set in the fall and winter, so I think this is the first novel set in the spring. There may be some short stories in the series that are set in spring 1880, but I haven't read all of them yet. 

I'm Facebook friends with Vicki Lemp Weavil, who writes under the pen name Victoria Gilbert. Her Blue Ridge Library series includes the book Past Due for Murder, where the inciting incident takes place at a spring bonfire. If you love books and libraries, don't miss this series.

As for my Abigail Ritter series, the first book, Murder at Magic Lake, takes place in mid-winter, and Restaurants and Revenge is set in very early spring. (Of course, since the series is set in Wisconsin, that doesn't mean the weather is that good yet.) It's not until we get to the third book, Bubble Tea and a Body, that we get to experience the full glory of late spring. I'm still editing Restaurants and Revenge, but I've written about 14,000 words for Bubble Tea and a Body. 

What's your favorite season? Feel free to share in the comments.

Death of a Character

In 2019, I started playing a mobile game based on a major franchise (which I won't name to avoid spoilers). A few months after I started playing, I learned through a Facebook group devoted to the game that one of the characters would die at a certain point. (The group allows spoilers, and many players experienced the character death at the same time since it had just been added as part of a new chapter. I was nowhere near that chapter at the time.) Since then, I've tried not to progress through the game too quickly. I know of some players who have stayed at that chapter for a long time, refusing to play the final scene. However, I have kept on moving through the game, and now I'm very close to the point where the character dies. I like this particular character a lot and don't want to lose her, but I don't want to be stuck at this point either. I'm not sure yet if I will rush through this point to get it over with or keep stalling for a while.

Character deaths are an important part of fiction. They may be used to motivate other characters to react (especially in murder mysteries), as punishment or a redemptive act, as a sacrifice, or as the climax of the story. The one thing they have to do is evoke emotion. The game designers have made this character close to main character, but the sacrificed character doesn't appear in the story as much as you might expect. I think the game designers may have blunted the impact of this character's death more than intended. Of course, with everything else going on in the world, a fictional character's death is trivial. On the other hand, fiction can help us make sense of reality--or escape it for a while.

I've had at least one character die in each of my series. The hardest one to write occurred in Twinned Universes. I've killed off major and minor characters, ones I've liked and ones that I was glad to let die. It's definitely easier to kill characters in mysteries than in other genres, especially since the victims are "designed to die." Most deaths happen "on stage," though some are revealed to the reader afterwards.

How do you feel about reading/writing character deaths? Have you ever had a spoiler change how you feel about a story (or whether you finish it)? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

March IWSG: Conflict about Conflict

Welcome to March! Hopefully it goes out like a lamb where you are. It's also time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Learn more about the group at their website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed.

Our hosts for March are Janet Alcorn, Pat Garcia, Natalie Aguirre, and Shannon Lawrence.

Our question for this month is Have you ever been conflicted about writing a scene or adding a scene to a story? How did you decide to write it or not?

 

This kind of concern was more common for me earlier in my writing career, particularly regarding scenes with sex or violence. I know it was emotionally hard for me to kill off a certain character in Twinned Universes, even though the event drove the rest of the story. I think the key here is to see if the scene really serves the story. It's not always easy for a panster to determine this, but ultimately I think the best approach is to write the scene. It may not work as well as you thought, requiring you to revise or delete it, but it's still good writing practice. The scene can always be saved in a separate file, though I've never returned to deleted scenes for inspiration.

What kind of scenes are you conflicted about writing? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

 

Writing Update

 Here's a quick update on my current projects: 

Restaurants and Revenge: After changing my mind a couple of times about who committed the murder and how, I think I finally figured out who, how, and why. Now it's time to revise.

Bubble Tea and a Body: This will be the third book in my cozy mystery series. I've written about 14,000 words so far. The murder happened in a way I didn't plan for, so now I have to rethink how my heroine will investigate.

The Season Between: I haven't made any progress on this short story collection.

Other Writing Projects: I started a flash fiction story, but I need to get back to it. I've also been seeing several open markets listed on a Facebook group I belong to, so I should see if I have any trunked stories that might be a good fit.

What are you working on these days? Are you drafting or revising? Feel free to share your progress in the comments.

My Wordle Way

Like many other people, I've made a habit of starting my day by playing Wordle, the game where you have six chances to guess a five-letter word. Here's a link to the game, along with a list of the rules. Briefly, you type your guess (which must be a real word) into the website. Each box represents a letter. Green boxes indicate the right letter in the right spot; yellow boxes represent letters in the word but in the wrong place; and gray boxes are letters that don't belong. This is my strategy:

1. Start with a word that will give you common vowels and consonants. I use STARE. 

2. Based on how you did with the first guess, choose a word that keeps all green letters the same and moves yellow letters to different positions. (I should note that I play on Hard mode, which requires you to reuse green and yellow letters. Some people like to start fresh with a different set of letters, but I prefer to focus on getting the right letters in the right places.) If you didn't have any luck with vowels, try a word with a different combination. I sometimes use PRION as my second word.

3. Once you have two or three letters, it then becomes a matter of moving them into the right spots and figuring out what the missing letters could be. Sometimes if I get stuck at this point, I take a break from the game and return to it later. Other times, I may try a "brute force" method, where I mentally test unused letters in unfilled spots to see if I make a word. I don't enter these guesses until I find something that clicks with me. Sometimes it takes me all six guesses, but I've had pretty good luck so far. Hopefully, this post won't break my streak.

Do you play Wordle or other word games? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Mid-Month Mysteries: Valentine Theme

 

Apologies for not posting last week. I had planned to post this on the 9th, but I scheduled it for the wrong date. I may as well post twice this week!

 Cozy mysteries often feature romance as a side plot, so it's not surprising that there are several mysteries that feature Valentine's Day. Here are a few of them.

My author friend Kelly Hashway recently published the first book in her holiday-themed cozy mystery series. I haven't had a chance to read Valentine Victim yet, but it looks interesting. It's about a psychologist whose Valentine's Day date is murdered, making her the prime suspect.

The St Valentine's Day Cookie Massacre by Elisabeth Crabtree is a novella featuring a murder in a cookie shop. It's free on Amazon, so I added it to my collection.

Another food-themed cozy mystery is A Catered Valentine's Day, by Isis Crawford. It includes chocolate, wine, recipes, and the death of the chocolate shop owner.

For a non-food related story, there's Death of a Valentine by M.C. Beaton. Two detectives find romance while solving the murder of a woman who received a mysterious Valentine's Day gift.

For a more extensive list of Valentine's Day mysteries, check out this link.

 

IWSG: Missing Mentors

Happy Groundhog Day! Here's hoping you're not seeing lots of snow where you are. I'd hate to deal with that over and over! Today is also blogging day for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Learn more about them on their website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Our hosts for this month are Joylene Nowell Butler,  Jacqui Murray, Sandra Cox, and Lee Lowery. 

Our question for this month is Is there someone who supported or influenced you that perhaps isn't around anymore? Anyone you miss?

The first person who came to mind when I read this question was Kathleen Massie-Ferch, who taught the first writing class I attended. After the writing class, I maintained contact with her at conventions like WisCon. She mostly wrote short stories and had edited two anthologies. She passed away of breast cancer about twenty years ago before she had a chance to finish the novel she was working on--and before I sold my first short story. 

This question also reminded me of some of the friends I've made through writing workshops, though I still have contact with some of them through Facebook. Hopefully this year we can have more in-person conventions. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to attend either WisCon or ChiCon this year, but it would be great to see some of those writers again.

Do you have any writing mentors who've passed on to the Eternal Convention? Feel free to discuss them in the comments or share a link to your own posts about them. 

"Glass, Wool, Paper" Is Live!

I don't normally blog on Mondays anymore, but I have a special announcement: my flash fiction short story, "Glass, Wool, Paper" went live at Flash Fiction Magazine on Friday. With themes of objectification of women and their resilience, it seems to be striking a chord with readers. The site is free to read, so please check out the story for yourself if you're interested. If you like the story, please comment on the Flash Fiction Magazine site itself, and feel free to share the link. (I think the most popular stories may be selected for an anthology, so that's why it would be most helpful to comment on the story over there.) I hope you enjoy it!

Reading/Writing Update

 I decided to make my blog post this week about my reading and writing progress so far this month:

Reading: My goal for this year is another 150 books. As of Sunday afternoon (when I'm writing this book), I've read eight. The non-fiction books I'm reading are pretty hefty, so they take a lot of time. Once I finish Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, I should be able to catch up.

Writing: I've written about 9,000 words of my third cozy mystery, Bubble Tea and a Body. I'd like to get at least 10,000 done this month. However, my plans for this mystery have already gone off course. (I intended to have the victim die one way, but when I reached a certain point in the story, my instincts told me my heroine should find the victim already dead.) I'm debating whether I want to discard some of what I wrote to have the death happen the way I originally intended. Alternatively, I can use that type of death elsewhere in the series.

Regarding the Season Avatars series, I have a rough draft of Ysabel's short story written, but while I have some ideas about Kay's story, I haven't decided on the focus yet.

Revising: I have two projects that need revision: Gwen's short story "To Heal the Healer" and Restaurants and Revenge, the second cozy mystery in the Abigail Ritter series. I've read Gwen's story all the way through, but I still need to finish reading all of RaR. The first part of the book seems fairly solid so far, but I had issues with the second half. It's hard sometimes to find the time to write new words and revise old ones on the same day.

So that's what I've been up to the last few weeks. How about you? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

As a naturally speedy reader, I can finish a typical novel in a few hours. This is one of the ways I'm able to read so many books every year. Sometimes, though, I want a change of page and am willing to read something longer and thought-provoking. This is the case with The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by the late David Graeber and David Wengrow. It took me almost two weeks to read this book, and I'll need still longer to digest it.

The Dawn of Everything (hereafter to be abbreviated as TDoE), proposes alternate ideas for how civilization (specifically, agriculture, cities, kings, and the rise of states) developed--or, in some regions, was deliberately rejected. They discuss a variety of cultures and archeological sites, from Egypt's First Dynasty (around 3100 BC) to 17th and 18th century encounters between Europeans and Native Americans. They look at cities from Mesopotamia to Central America, slaves in ancient Rome and along the Northwest Coast, and more topics than I could possibly list. I can't summarize all the key ideas the two Davids discussed, but here are a few that I remember:

• Many cultures experimented with farming but didn't settle down to do it full-time. They might spend part of the year at one site and spend the winter fishing or hunting.
• Women may have been the ones experimenting with agriculture and textiles.
• Care-giving used to be valued more highly. However, slave-owning cultures may delegate this work to slaves.
• Two settlements close to each other may deliberately adopt opposite values to distinguish themselves. 
• Some ancient cities lack palaces or other signs of an elite class, suggesting the occupants may have governed themselves through networks of obligations. There are prehistoric sites where people may have temporarily gathered for rituals or big projects, but there are no signs they were forced to do this by a leader.
• Kings come to power by control of violence, control of information (administrators), or personal charisma. 
• The classification of a group of people as a tribe or state is less important than how they organize themselves.
  

Most importantly, many Native American cultures defined freedom as the ability to relocate, the ability to disobey or disregard orders, and the ability to imagine alternate ways of organizing themselves. (I think of these as freedoms of body, will, and mind.) For example, a chief may have absolute power in his village, but the rest of the tribe may choose to live out of his reach. Tribes may choose to be ruled by a council and require representatives from every clan to be part of the decision-making process.

With so many sweeping generalizations in this book, there were a few that I thought went too far (specifically, saying Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries who were taken into Native American groups unanimously returned to them when given a choice. Another statement I didn't agree with was the idea that animals never accumulate a surplus of food. What about bees or ants? A New York Times science article from last week states that in some species, animals can inherit high status or even tools from their parents, which give them an edge.) It would have been helpful to have footnotes on the page with the text instead of at the end (though since the Notes section was about 80 pages, that might not have been practical.) Still, in a world where most of us are not able to relocate easily or disregard orders, a book that restores the ability to imagine other lifestyles is invaluable, especially for speculative fiction writers.

Mid-Month Mysteries: Excerpt from Restaurants and Revenge

For 2022, I thought I'd try different formats for this series. Perhaps in the next couple of months, I'll schedule interviews or guest posts from other cozy mystery authors. Today, I'll share with you the opening scene of Restaurants and Revenge, Book Two in the Abigail Ritter Cozy Mystery series. This scene may change since I still have to revise, edit, and proofread the book. I hope you enjoy what I have so far!

“Another day, another delectable drink created by Abigail Ritter, owner of the finest restaurant in Magic Lake!” I declared to Sherlock. “How does that sound?”

Sherlock, the crocheted fox I’d found in my grandmother’s apartment, was a stand-in for a camera audience. Someday I planned to post YouTube videos to bring customers to Isabella’s, my bubble tea restaurant named after my late grandmother. But before I felt brave enough to do that, I wanted to gain some experience recording myself. Sherlock, always willing to play with my phone, acted as both cameraman and critic.

Sherlock tapped the phone with a pencil held between his front paws. “Could be punchier,” he said. “How comfortable do you feel about talking and using a knife at the same time?”

I looked down at my fingers. I was still experimenting with drink recipes, but I was sure I didn’t want to add a super-personal touch like my own flesh to them.

“I’ll just take it nice and slow.” I smiled for my audience. “Today, I’m going to make a Citrus Delight. It’s going to have oranges, lemons, basil, sugar, and a couple of other key ingredients that will make this the most refreshing drink you could have on a hot summer day. So, let’s get to it.”

I already had all my tools—measuring cups and spoons, citrus squeezer, and, most importantly, the wooden spoon I’d use for stirring my creation—spread out around my cutting board. The fruit was in a mixing bowl I’d borrowed from my mom’s kitchen. I grabbed an orange and sliced it into quarters with a knife I’d found in this kitchen. After scrubbing and sharpening it, it sliced through the orange like the fruit was paper. Then I squeezed out the juice. The orange quarters didn’t quite fit into the squeezer, but I managed to get most of into the measuring cup. I grinned. Compared to what I’d seen chefs on TV do, this was so easy. I should have left my old job and opened my own restaurant a long time ago.

Sherlock held up a paw. That meant the recording was already at a minute. I couldn’t expect people to watch me all day. I had to hurry this up.

Rather than slice and squeeze each fruit individually, I chopped up the next couple of oranges. As I grabbed the second one, my grip found a soft spot. The sweet scent of orange soured. Sherlock sat up, muzzle in the air. He must have noticed something wasn’t right. I glanced down at the pieces. The insides of the oranges all looked the same. I could stop the recording and try to figure out which section had gone bad, or just keep working and hope it would be diluted out when I added the rest of the ingredients.

It’ll be fine once I add the sugar, I thought as I extracted more juice. It was just a small bad spot. It won’t make the entire drink bad. Besides, the Magic Spoon will fix it. The spoon had been carved from Magic Island wood and was supposed to make my bubble tea shop a success.

I added some lemon juice, fresh chopped basil, sugar, then diluted it with sparkling water and mixed everything with the Magic Spoon. The color was a cheery yellow-orange with green basil bits, though slightly pale. I poured the drink into a glass of ice. All I could smell now was the basil. If I’d gotten the proportions right, the herb should complement the citrus without overpowering it. I took a sip. There was the basil, the lemon, the orange, the sugar—and then a foul aftertaste that made me run to the sink and spit my drink out. I grabbed the sparkling water and chugged it down, but the taste lingered in my mouth.

Sherlock hopped down from the shelf with my phone to the kitchen island. He prodded through the discarded peels and flipped one over. The outer part of the orange was grey-white.

Apparently even the Magic Spoon couldn’t fix a rotten orange. I raced for the bathroom, hoping that getting sick now would keep me from being really sick later.

IWSG: Writing Regrets

Welcome to 2022! Here's hoping it's a better year for all of us.

This isn't just the first post of the year, but also the first Insecure Writer's Support Group post for 2022. Learn more about the IWSG on their website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. 

Our hosts for this month are Erika Beebe, Olga Godim (no link available), Sandra Cox, Sarah Foster, and Chemist Ken.

Our question for this month is on regrets, not resolutions: What's the one thing about your writing career you regret the most? Were you able to overcome it?

I would say my biggest regret is not finishing and publishing more of my work, specifically, Catalyst in the Crucible, which would be the third novel in the science fiction Catalyst Chronicles series. I got stuck on a story set between Twinned Universes and Catalyst in the Crucible, which made it difficult to move forward. (I have actually drafted part of this novel, but it's not finished yet.) Part of the problem with the novel is that although the first two books feature time travel, Catalyst in the Crucible would (a) throw some life-changing problems at my characters and (b) move into a new subgenre of science fiction. I'm not sure how fans would react to a mid-series change.

Of course, as long as I'm still able to write, there's always the possibility that I could go back and finish the story. I think about it occasionally. It's hard to accomplish when there are so many other writing projects I want to work on. (My writing goals for this year are to publish two books in my cozy mystery series and a collection of short stories in my fantasy Season Avatars series--so I can move forward and write more books in that universe.) Perhaps I should say my biggest regret is not being more productive, which would mean the best way to overcome that would be to stop blogging and return to fiction.

What are your writing regrets? Feel free to share them here--or, if you're here for the IWSG, leave a link to your blog post. I should also visit more bloggers this year!