by Linda Rodriguez As we move beyond the one-year anniversary of our pandemic lockdown and the beginning of National Poetry Month, I’m posting a poem to remind us all that, even if we’re isolated from our social circles, we have companions if we can get outside–even in large cities. THE WILD CITY Sprawling across the […]
by Linda Rodriguez According to astrology, I am a Scorpio. In fact, I am a quadruple Scorpio, which is about as Scorpio as you get. The animals that symbolize the sign of Scorpio are three in number, unusual or the zodiac, which normally only uses one animal to represent each sign. Scorpio is represented by […]
by Linda Rodriguez Happy 2020 to all of you! At this time of year, many of us are dealing with snow and ice storms. We are also often reflecting on how we want to live the rest of our lives or how we want to improve our handling of important relationships. For the new year, […]
by Linda Rodriguez The great technique of freewriting (setting a timer and keeping your pen or fingers on the keys moving until it goes off) is one I use often as I build my novels. It helps me dive deeper into the characters to develop the often-conflicting motivations that will drive the plot. Freewriting for […]
by Linda Rodriguez People are afraid of many things. The saddest is the fear of black cats and dogs. Because of this fear, more black cats and dogs are euthanized by kill shelters than other colors. People are afraid to adopt them because they’re black, and these shelters, which usually have to euthanize because they’re […]
by Linda Rodriguez ((This is an older blog that I am reposting for two reasons. The first is that I have been quite sick and have no voice, so am not able to write a new blog, since I must use voice recognition software to write more than a few lines, and the second is […]
by Linda Rodriguez I have kept journals for many decades. Even before my creative writing professors encouraged me to keep them, I kept writer’s journals after reading that writers I respected, such as Virginia Woolf and Madeleine L’Engle, had kept writer’s journals. I have stacks and stacks of them, and periodically I wade through years […]
by Linda Rodriguez I’m a poet and novelist of Cherokee heritage who writes about a Cherokee protagonist and also reviews books, so people send me just about every novel written that has a major Indigenous character in it. A terrifying number of them are romances with generic spray-tanned hunks on the cover, love interests who […]
by Linda Rodriguez I like to read other writers’ blogs, because I can often find out new ways of doing things, get tips on all aspects of the publishing game, and just find someone who understands what we’re all going through. Sometimes, a writer will do unusual things with her or his blog that really […]
by Linda Rodriguez I have a new best friend. Well, not really new. We’ve been very close before, and then as the press of daily life and work took over, we started to see less and less of each other. You know the way these things happen—not because of anything either of us did but […]