O'Gaea the Writer

12/30/2024

has not posted on this page in over a year! I've been active on my personal page, though, and I've been writing. For 2024's National Novel Writing Month, I drafted "The House-Haunting House," and am taking a break from it before I do a second round of editing.

In the meantime, I am working on the drafts of seven other novels. Two of them are ghost stories, one's a semi-Victorian family saga, another's about a P.I., another two are sort of urban/otherworld fantasies, and one's a murder mystery solved by a bagpiper.

The one I'm reworking right now is one I started back in the late '60s, when I wanted to be Tolkien. (Spoiler: I wasn't.) It's close to 90K words about citizens standing against despots and evil sorcerers. Yeah.

I'm hopeful of making all these books available in 2025, and writing more along the way. If I'm going to be hiding in my office from the news, I might as well keep writing - and hope ~not~ to be inspired to a full-on horror story.

I am working from a new office now, in our new home in Gresham, Oregon. We moved from Tucson this last summer, and no, we're still not completely unpacked. But my computer's up and running now, and I'm back at the keyboard again.

Hope y'all had a great holiday and that 2025 doesn't kill you!

08/21/2023

is having an interesting experience! Yesterday I recycled a "renew your subscription" notice from Writer's Digest, a magazine to which I subscribed for a few years - several years ago. Can't renew a subscription I no longer have, right?

Well, today in the P.O. box was an issue of "Writer's Digest," proclaiming itself to be my last issue unless I renew! This pretty strongly suggests that I've been getting issues, which I haven't. Hmmm. I've emailed them asking for an explanation.

Wouldn't it be great if I got a delivery of all the issues since my subscription expired? That would be dozens of issues! I kinda doubt that's how this will resolved, but ... a writer can dream, can't she?

04/01/2023

reminds you that if your taste runs to romance or paranormal mystery, one of these two books will fill your morning or afternoon.

04/01/2023

is happy to say these four books - about a Wiccan priestess in SE Arizona - are still available on Amazon. For some light entertainment about real witches, give any or all of these a try!

02/09/2023

01/05/2023

Yup, stop it.

11/30/2022

"I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do — the actual act of writing — turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

"I tell my students that the odds of their getting published and of it bringing them financial security, peace of mind, and even joy are probably not that great. Ruin, hysteria, bad skin, unsightly tics, ugly financial problems, maybe; but probably not peace of mind. I tell them that I think they ought to write anyway." -- Anne Lamott

11/25/2022

11/15/2022

made it! I've just topped 50,000 words in this year's NaNoWriMo - my 16th. (There are many who've been participating longer.) I'm almost to the end of the story, too. Yay!

11/13/2022

needs 500 more words to reach today's goal, and the little buggers are hiding. My characters, who've been giving me good dialog all day, have either broken for dinner or gone to bed or something. Gaah!

11/10/2022

must've misadded/subtracted somewhere in the last few days. Word shows my word count at 26,069, but NaNo stats show me 2,000-ish words less than that. That's okay. I recreated the chapter I accidentally deleted, and I'm pretty much where I want to be now, so I'm ending the day happy. :-)

11/10/2022

Blast!
I'm writing away, doing reasonably well on my word count. My notes say "chapter 16 - 2215 words." My screen shows Chapter 16 as a blank page! Um .... Pretty sure I want/need those words. Bu**er all!

11/10/2022

has finally gotten to her page!
Now, in addition to having been visited by my new friend, an as-yet-unnamed jumping spider, one of my characters - who was slated for utter destruction, has saved herself!
And the jumping spider had moved to my glass of juice, and I startled it when I took a drink. She's climbing up the side again as I type. :-)