New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Excerpts from a Q&A with author & guest lecturer @maggiestiefvater.bsky.social, who talks about four-act structure

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: excerpts from a Q&A with award-winning author & YPO grad & guest lecturer Jill Tew, who talks about finding comp titles & how she prioritizes her reading choices as a professional author

Yay exciting space stuff! A welcome distraction from (gestures at everything down here). Also: space stuff!

How your email finds me.

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: author & graduate Shay Kauwe talks about her Your Personal Odyssey experience with "Developing a ‘Second Sight’ for Writing"

I have yet to see 1) a consistent definition of cozy horror or 2) examples that aren’t actually just straight-up horror of some flavor. Having a sense of humor doesn’t make the horror “cozy” IMO.

Haven’t done much other than pimp Odyssey blog posts on here lately. To sum up: Weird-ass short story written. New novel draft in progress. Rehearsals. Concerts. Tech-related headaches. Teaching prep. Too much snow. Too little reading for fun. Swearing incoherently at the news. Internal screaming.

Seeing people complain about 15 minutes of music in another language and I’m like (laughs in opera)

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: excerpts from a Q&A with author & Your Personal Odyssey guest lecturer @henrylienauthor.bsky.social, who talks about nonlinear storytelling & the relationship between unreliable narrators and linearity odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/q...

I'm a writer. I should be able to articulate things clearly. But right now my thoughts on current events are mostly an incoherent string of cussing.

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: interview with graduate, author & Your Personal Odyssey instructor E. C. Ambrose, who talks about teaching YPO, shifting from pantsing to plotting, and how critiquing and teaching have helped her own writing.

i know we're all busy but i just overheard a plumber say "parlez-vous français ? non ? you motherfuckers don't even speak french, do you" to a pair of french bulldogs

I'm teaching an Odyssey Online class, and there are 10 days left to apply! No actual acting in front of anyone involved, just writing.

I’ve been interviewed about my upcoming Odyssey Online class, All the World’s a Page, over at WOW! Women on Writing! A short read if you’d like to learn more about the class or want to procrastinate on holiday-related drudgery.

Thanks to @sfwa.org for being so responsive to concerns around the Nebula Awards and LLM use. The Nebula should honor human creativity, as the revised rules now state. However, we also don't want to see writers tripped up on eligibility or hit by witch hunts over minor LLM usage like spell check. 1/

(finally looks up to see what’s happening in the world after recovering from Christmas concert hell week) 👀 (immediately looks down and thinks that horrible Christmas on Broadway medley wasn’t so bad in comparison)

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Excerpts from a Q&A with award-winning author, Odyssey grad & YPO guest lecturer @cornellwriter.bsky.social, who talks about her revision process and getting a character's voice across through body language odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/12/08/q...

The project board has gotten a seasonal upgrade for the new month

Odyssey's 2026 online classes have been announced & I'm excited to be teaching one of them: All the World’s a Page: Adapting Acting Techniques to Strengthen Your Fiction. Because I am a theater geek & will gladly talk your ear off about how useful acting techniques can be when applied to writing.

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Part 2 of "Selling Your Shorts: Submission Considerations Amid a Changing Market" by graduate & author akatherineblack.bsky.social odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/g...

I PETTED ALL THE HORSIES

It’s publication day! I would appreciate it if you would have a read.

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Part 1 of "Selling Your Shorts: Submission Considerations Amid a Changing Market" by graduate & author @akatherineblack.bsky.social! Part 2 to follow next week. odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/g...

Been experimenting with ways to use my dry erase board for tracking projects. I’m not sure how useful this current iteration is, but it does perfectly capture the vibes of my current to-do list.

A vampire and paranormal museum only a little over an hour from my house yet it's amazingly taken me this long to get there.

This week’s awesome thing: it’s almost Halloween, so how about cool things about bats? m.youtube.com/watch?v=46sv...

Today in I Am A Serious Writer: just Googled to see if dickbag should be written as one word or two.

Marching behind a frog, as one does.

Weekly writing accountability: finish the proofread/fine tuning read through of the novel(la)!

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: Odyssey Online graduate @jadecannon.bsky.social talks about finding the heart of her novel through Barbara Ashford's Getting the Big Picture class odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/g...

This week’s much-needed awesome thing: Mars the baby pygmy hippo at Tanganyika Wildlife Parka

Weekly writing accountability: read through and fine tuned first 12 chapters of the novel(la). 15 more to go! And eventually I’ll stop changing my mind about the prologue. (Cut! Nope, putting it back! Cut again!)

This Week’s Awesome Thing: Reading Rainbow is back! bookriot.com/new-host-of-...

Weekly writing accountability post: finished major revision overhaul of the horror novel(la) climax! This week: go back to tackle some smaller issues that need tweaking before printing this sucker out for an old-school read through on paper.

This Week’s Awesome Thing Doomscrolling Break: CHONKY BEARS! If you are not already familiar with Fat Bear Week, I am sad for you. Go remedy that. explore.org/fat-bear-week

How the hell did Fall get here? Anyway, weekly writing accountability: got a good chunk of my novella-maybe-novel’s third act revised last week. This week: at the very least, finish the new scene I started as part of that revision, then hopefully get to reworking what follows.

Doomscrolling break aka This Week's Awesome Thing: book nook! I was given a DIY miniature book nook kit as a thank you gift at Odyssey's TNEO workshop this summer. Behold the cuteness I have wrought! It even has lighting!

If you see this, quote with the energy you bring to BlueSky

For accountability purposes, this week’s writing goal: now that I’ve gotten the villain situation sorted, revise the climax of my The Red Violin meets contemporary gothic horror novella-borderline-novel

My feed could sure as hell could use something to break up the doom right now, so for This Week’s Awesome Thing, I give you goats running. Because I will never not feel better watching goats run around like the adorable little chaos goblins they are: youtu.be/0KoXoDjTdZg?...

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog: “What Counts as Writing” by Your Personal Odyssey graduate Chloe Smith: odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/09/08/g...

Monday Monkey: That time Super Great dressed up for a wedding yet still refused to wear pants.

Taking an evening walk, it’s dark, and from the opposite direction comes a group of kids with flashlights. And as we passed them, I noticed one kid had a scythe. Not unsettling at all.

The world is a dumpster fire, so to counteract the doomscrolling with some hopescrolling, Fridays I shall present This Week’s Awesome Thing. Today: the crest-tailed mulgara, a bitty little marsupial predator that has found its way off the endangered list AND WHY IS IT SO CUTE

More on the sad state of contracts with Analog, F&SF, and Asimov's

Where the hell did September come from?

Was recently reminded of this dark gem from my childhood: youtu.be/A0na4KldsMc?...

show me your getaway vehicle

New on the @odysseyworkshop.bsky.social blog! Interview with Your Personal Odyssey graduate & critically acclaimed children's author Leah Henderson: odysseyworkshop.wordpress.com/2025/08/11/i...