Month: April 2024
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Ink Transfer to Polymer Clay Using a Laserjet Printer

If you follow trends and tricks in the polymer clay community, you’ve doubtlessly seen a storm of transfer designs. Anything from pretty florals to groovy abstracts—you can print and transfer those designs to your clay masterpieces. I recently received a commission to make magnets with text included in the design. Initially, I thought I’d handwrite…
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Easy Self-Editing – Redundancies (Pleonasms)

The first draft of A Study of Ash & Smoke was riddled with redundancies, AKA pleonasms. My editor, Nerine Dorman, took to my debut manuscript with a kill-it-with-fire vehemence and likely mumbled a million curses at the ceiling as she removed them (among other issues) from my very *cough, cough* unpolished novel. I’ve said this…
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Writing Playlists

My high school art teacher believed music helps us create. She once said you can’t paint sunshine and daffodils while listening to metal, but you needed those angry sounds to paint thunderclouds. And those words have burrowed in my heart. I need music to set the scene while I write. I find it impossible to…
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Simple City Map Take Two

I wrote the predecessor to this post in July 2017. The sad news? I never finished my pencil-and-paper city map. The good news? It took me only seven years to pick up where I left off and finish a digital version. So, booyah. 😁 I see this as the heart of Downtown Roicester, with suburbia…
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Updated Planning Methods

Planning a novel doesn’t always come easily. As a hybrid planner/pantser and an ADHD’er, I often find myself super excited at the beginning of the planning process, pouring myself into putting every minute detail to paper. Until the impatience sets in, at which point I must write. Once I’ve abandoned the planning, I hurl myself…
