A Twelfth of Carrabis (November 2024 Newsletter)

November marks the return of my Brother Orion and his dog’s slow march across the northern night skies. I go out late in the evenings and greet him, ask him to tell me tales of where he traveled and what he’s seen while away. Often he invites me to journey with him and we travel to places humans will not know of until after the sun grows cold.
It is a raw, rainy, autumn day as I pen this. I should write “…as I type this.” and the gray in my hair forbids it. My professional (ie, paid) writing career started with a typewriter, my non-professional with pencil and pen in spiral-bound notebooks (still have them). For a brief period I composed on a remote terminal over a 300baud modem via phone line to my university’s mainframe.
Young people scratch their heads and frown with confusion when I use such words: “Typewriter?” “Remote what?” “300baud?” “What’s a modem?” “What’s a mainframe?” “What’s a phone line?”
I also know my long time editor, Jen “The Editress” Day, will see the colon in the above and wince. I’ve yet to master the proper use of the dash (em and otherwise), the colon, and semi-colon. I understand their use and purpose, and Jen tells me she can tell when I’m crafting because I type so quickly punctuation goes out the window (swiftly accompanied by spelling). Fortunately, after ~20years, she knows the rhythms I invoke with language and punctuation and manages to make me look good.
I recommend her to any who need a top level editor. (PS any errors and tyops you find here are on me, not her)
“A Twelfth of Carrabis” is getting good feedback from readers. Thankee! It means a lot.
Last item before we get down to it; I’m thinking of redoing my website based on some conferences and classes I took this month. Any suggestions? What would you change if it was your website?

November-December 2024 Announcements
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A Twelfth of Carrabis (October 2024 Newsletter)

Fall continues its march into Winter and draws me to my studies with North American indigenes, to tales of WinterMan, SnowWalker, and the Northern Lights being the spirits of unborn children waiting to come to earth. We were lucky enough to get a good look at Comet A3. It’s next trip around the sun is in 80,000 years. I suspect many of us will be Joni Mitchell’s stardust when it returns.
Votes were cast and “A Twelfth of Carrabis” won for the newsletter title moving forward.
The Book of the Wounded Healers: A study in Perception Is currently scheduled for a late Oct-early Nov release. In 2024. Never hurts to be specific.

October-November 2024 Announcements
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A Twelfth of Carrabis (Sept 2024 Newsletter)

Fall approaches here in New England and its signature is everywhere; leaves change color and fall from trees, geese form arrowheads across the sky, woodland denizens bulk up for winter, hummingbirds no longer grace our feeders. I don’t mind time marching on, and it seems the clock ticks faster these days.

My reworking The Book of the Wounded Healers: A study in Perception continues, now with several first readers, and the feedback is marvelous (especially the “when can we get more” comments).

Last month I offered “My Writing Life” as my newsletter’s title and asked for your thoughts. Responding thoughts included

  • Writing My Life Away
  • A Writing Life
  • A Twelfth of Carrabis (mighty partial to this one, myself)

Let me know which of the four (which includes “My Writing Life”) works best and I’ll use it moving forward.

September-October 2024 Announcements
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August 2024 Newsletter

New England temperatures broke this week and we’ve enjoyed seasonable 70s° weather. I continue to rework The Book of the Wounded Healers: A study in Perception. One first reader noticed I dropped the novel’s throughline several times in the first 100 pages. Ouch! The rewrite continues…slowly (I’m having author-ego issues). Still looking for first readers. Let me know if you’re interested in first readering.
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July 2024 Newsletter

It is maddeningly hot here in central New England. We’re going on three straight weeks of official heat wave temps (90+°F). Aside from melting, I’m working on The Book of the Wounded Healers: A Study in Perception, a novel about communication and originally written in 1992 and reworked every few years since. My last posts on it are dated in late Spring-early Summer 2022. Each rewrite made it incrementally better and not enough. Thanks to some gifted reader-friends’ suggestions, I’m reworking with publication scheduled for late September-early October 2024. Leave a comment if you’d like to be a First Reader.

July-August 2024 Announcements

  • SideHustles and Sidegigs – What do you do to support your art when your art isn’t supporting you? That’s the core of our discussion at our next RoundTable 360° meetup. Come & join us on Thursday, July 25th, 10:30amPT, 1:30pmET, 6:30pmLondonTime, 19h30 CEST.
    Reserve your space here.
  • I’m hosting a writer’s month long workshop discussing many if not all phases of craft and storytelling. The next class runs Wednesdays, 7-28 August 2024. Sign up here.
  • My Medieval mystery, Tag, is available at 99¢ Kindle, $12.99 Print now until 30 July 2024:

    Eric and Julia seek tree grafts on the outskirts of their medieval eastern European village as a summer storm gathers. Sullya, a witch hiding among the trees, grabs Julia. Eric swings his axe and severs Sullya’s hand from her arm. The witch seeks refuge in the deep bole of an old oak. Her hand falls onto the same oak and crawls up the trunk to join her.
    Eric wants to flee but Julia, believing they’re safe, torments the witch. Sullya curses them, their families, their crops, their livestock, and their village.
    Soon crops wilt, livestock die, and much of village falls ill. The village priest, Father Baillot, seems ignorant of church ways and proves ineffective against the curse.
    The village elders seek help elsewhere, specifically from a distant priest, Father Patreo, who knows the Old Ways as well as the New. Patreo is out of favor with the Church because he makes no effort to hide his belief that progress comes from exploring all paths, not just those the Church decrees acceptable.
    He and Verduan, one of the village elders, investigate and encounter witchcraft, devil worship, murder, a coup d’etat, and the clashing of three great cultures. What they discover changes the face of Eastern Europe forever.

  • Last item – Have an announcement you’d like to include in my monthly newsletter? Leave a comment with details and we’ll see about getting it in the next one.

That’s it for July.

Want to sure you get future newsletters? Easy-peasy: join my blog. Most of it’s free and I’m told all of it’s fun.

Enjoy!