“You’ve been smooth as a baby’s butt since you were gored three years ago,” Victoria said.
“You’re supposed to be smooth,” Emilio replied, suddenly irritated. “That’s the point.” Read more
Paso Doble
Thoughts on Facebook
I have been increasingly frustrated with the way Facebook has been hiding what I post from people who have requested to see what I say. For those of you who don’t know (maybe don’t even care), this is a good explanation: Getting Facebook Slapped: Understanding Facebook’s Big Lie
Pertinent points: Read more
I am an expert witness because I say I am*
Someone sent me to an interesting article on a book I haven’t read, The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset. I hesitated to write this because I haven’t read the book, but I’m actually commenting on the post itself. Read more
We Were Gods cover
We Were Gods
Étienne’s ex-father-in-law: “I have faith in you, Étienne. You can fix anything. I would like to see my two favorite people together again. And building. You become gods when you build together.”
Oui. Gods. They most certainly had been.
Once.
★★★
WE WERE GODS
A Dunham Novel
Release date: May 1, 2014
A Dunham Novel
Release date: May 1, 2014
On the creation of man
Étienne looked down at his pop can. “I’m building a time machine,” he said abruptly.
Knox snorted in amusement.
He shrugged. “I won’t be able to. If people could travel through time, it’d be— The universe would implode. The Big Bang theory? Totally true. It was because somebody traveled through time.”
One day I started writing a book.
That day was November 6, 2013. I finished it December 8, 2013.
I haven’t done THAT since I was working graveyards at a convenience store, but Sabrina Darby kept poking at me.
Whatcha workin’ on?
NOTHING! I’M DRY AS A BONE! DUNHAM DRAINED MY WELL! I’LL NEVER WRITE AGAIN!!!! WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
So … what’s in your idea folder?
OH, FINE. Here’s a list. I don’t know what to do with ANY of this stuff.
Tell me about THIS one. It seems most fully developed.
It’s just sketches. I have no idea what to do with it.
Hmm. *reads* So, um, why does X character do Y thing?
And that was pretty much all it took Read more
Being honest with your fellow man
Jennie Hansen is a respected reviewer/writer in Mormon fiction. She reviews at Meridian Magazine and (I believe) is a judge for the Whitney Awards.
She is also a LIAR. Read more
No.
“Heroine decapitates someone in the first scene”
I am proud to announce my first 1-star review for Dunham, which you can find here. But I will quote it in its entirety for your convenience:
This book contains some shocking and gory scenes of violence that, for me, were difficult to get past. It seems more like historical fiction masquerading as romance, which isn’t my preference as a reader. I found little to recommend the heroine (she decapitates someone in the first scene), and the hero’s introspection was clouded by odd lines that were stream of consciousness? Bad poetry? I’m not sure what it was, other than that I didn’t like it. I’m surprised that kind of thing got past an editor, as it should have been punctuated or scrapped entirely. In all, I just didn’t like the book—it seemed a little too in love with itself and was weighed down by too much needless dialogue that I couldn’t be bothered to wade through. This one was a DNF for me, unfortunately.
(bold is mine)
Dunham: The Past
It is finished. I will now wring out my brain.
Now, you! Go go go! Get it and enjoy Revolutionary War swashbuckling on this Independence Day!
Tales of Dunham #4
© 2013 Moriah Jovan
280,000 words (740 pages)
READ THE EXCERPT
Side note: A bit of this book occurs on the Barbary Coast. Celia, the heroine, has spent some time in Egypt. So I am finding the Egyptian uprising today particularly poignant. Independence Day for Egyptians too?
Not that I blame them …
After hours and hours of XY Tax Deduction running his mouth and being told repeatedly to be quiet:
Me: “Look. You need to get some imaginary friends and talk to them.”
XY: “I don’t have any.”
Me: “Make some.”
XY: “Well, I did have some, but they ran away.”
Me: “Why?”
XY: “I talked too much.”
A professional milestone
It may or may not be common knowledge that, under my real name, I run B10 Mediaworx, an author services / digital formatting company, which I’ve been doing for the past … mmm … four years. I think. Anyway, before that, I was an at-home medical transcriptionist for six years. I haven’t worked out of doors in ten years. Read more
Back to blogging, maybe
- Dunham’s wrapping up and going into production, which means I’m right on track for my July 4 release date.
- I have the attention span of a gnat, and I’ve always thought/spoken in bullet-point lists. It just got worse since I fell in love with Twitter oh so long ago. 140 characters is just about perfect.
- I had a midlife crisis recently when I turned 45, realized I might not actually die young like a lot of people in my family do, AND realized I’d done everything I intended to do and that Dunham is the culmination. It’s the book I’ve worked on sporadically since I caught the idea in 1990 and had no idea what to do with it. That may have been a miscalculation.
Crashing my own kitchen
A 23-year gestation
A few interesting stats:
Total new words of narrative written from idea to publication: [8/8/2026: I couldn’t figure this out.]
Total number of narrative words discarded: [8/8/2026: I couldn’t figure this out.]
Total word count of final version: 296,500 words
Total number of narrative words discarded: [8/8/2026: I couldn’t figure this out.]
Total word count of final version: 296,500 words
The making of Dunham
And so begins a post (or series of them) (you know how wishy-washy I am) on Dunham, the privateer-heroine and pirate-hero Revolutionary War swashbuckler, which, for those of you not following the serial, will be available for sale JULY 4, 2013.
To kick it off, here’s the final cover for the official book: Read more
Veni, vidi, vici.
I had several ideas for this post’s title:
“I’m not one of you.”
“Repeating myself”
“Tired of the sound of my own voice”
“Being silent”
“Serial starter”
“Repeating myself”
“Tired of the sound of my own voice”
“Being silent”
“Serial starter”
Anyway, all of them are pertinent to my point, but they all mean different things. I’ll take them one by one. Read more
Of artists and assholes
Orson Scott Card doesn’t make a hill of beans’ worth of difference to me. I never read him until I was an adult (and haven’t read Ender’s Game), I was underwhelmed with the Alvin Maker series, and aside from his strong views on homosexuality, he has some other truly whacko ideas that also thoroughly and completely offend my libertarian sensibilities. Read more
Magdalene and Publisher’s Weekly
For an author, a Publisher’s Weekly starred review is one of the holy grails of reviews. It’s one of those things that, for a writer, is right up there with The Call (“Hi, Mojo. I want to offer you a contract for your book.”). I’ve had pretty close brushes with getting The Call, which (three times, to be precise) ended up to be “I love this book and I want to buy it, but I can’t because of Freak Things 1, 2, and/or 3.” What I have never dared aspire to (especially once I started down the self-pub path) is a review in Publisher’s Weekly at all, much less a starred one. But then Tuesday, this happened: Read more