It’s not too late to sign up for Linnea Sinclair’s online class, Character Torture 101, over at WritersOnlineClasses . Linnea is a dynamite lady and I had the privilege of taking several courses from her back in her private eye days. She shared her knowledge of investigative techniques and her exquisite sense of humor during her COFFIN courses. I’ll be spending March learning new “torture” techniques for my characters.

My how time flies! Linnea has given up her PI work and is now an award-winning author. She writes mostly sci-fi with a nice blend of romantic suspense. Her new book, Games of Command, will be out this week. More info on Linnea on her website.

Writers are encouraged to be voracious readers, but I don’t think the original intent of that advice was to read email lists.  I’m subscribed to 22 email lists (as of today) and several of those lists generate over 50 messages per day. Now who has time—really—to read all that chatter?

 The key thing should be to evaluate each list and determine it’s “cost-benefit” rating.  

• How will it benefit my writing craft?
• How will it benefit my writing career?
• Is it a resource that I need for my current WIP? Can I find the information elsewhere?

Just answering those questions makes going no mail an easy decision on more than half of my lists.  I can even put my resource lists on no mail until I actually need to ask questions or do research. (Getting organized for research is grist for another post.) That just leaves the announcement lists (sporadic posts), and my RWA chapter lists.  Hurrah!! There’s hope for me yet.

A few days ago I upgraded to WordPress 2.1 and it promptly “broke” the blog theme that I had spent countless hours modifying from a beautiful design created by Patricia Mueller.  Thus this new, simpler look which I uploaded today. Perhaps it’s all for the better because now I can stop obsessing about my blog theme and get back to working out the theme for my novel.

Actually I tend to write with an eye toward an underlying theme of redemption. I don’t deliberately set out to do that; it just seems to develop that way when I begin creating my characters. Somehow each character’s “wound” requires some form of redemption.  Heaven help me not to analyze it! Any time I start analyzing what I’m writing or why I’m writing it…well, let’s just say that the work is soon abandoned. I never hear “why are you doing that?” as anything other than a demand for explanation and justification. LOL

For a helpful article on theme and premise, check out Vicki Hinze’s writers’ library. That woman is amazing!

For all of you who want to see your name in print, here’s your chance.

Readers Station is having a “Name Our Anthology” contest and the winner will have his/her name mentioned in the dedication of the anthology.  The anthology has a travel theme and will contain fiction and nonfiction works by the Readers Station tour guides. The winner will receive a copy of the e-book edition of the anthology, which will be released in the Spring. The winner will also get a a free promotional page on the Readers Station website for one month.

Find all the details in the Readers Station newsletter.