Dark, soulful tales that haunt long after the last page.
Life as a Writer
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The Thin Wall Between Life and Death in Nursing Homes
Nursing homes have always creeped me out. My first experience in one was in maybe the 4th grade as a Cub Scout. Our den mother took us to a nearby nursing home to sell raffle tickets or something. I remember old women sitting in a lobby like they were waiting for us. Waiting to take…
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Six Novels and Their Lessons: A Writer’s Reflection
Driving home from the dog park tonight, a random image from my past popped into my head. It was a scene from the fourth novel I finished sometime back in about 1992. You probably know that Shara was my first published novel, originally released in 2003, but it was the seventh novel I’d completed. I…
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From Failure to Flow: My Writing Revival Story
Writers are emotional creatures. Some of us have hot tempers, fragile egos, narcissism, and a host of other issues. These often come with unhealthy coping mechanisms such as drug and alcohol addiction. I’m lucky in that I don’t have the temper, the narcissism (I think) or the addictions. But, yeah, sometimes my ego takes a…
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How to Fail as an Author: A Memoir and Guide by Steven E. Wedel
If you’d told me at the beginning of the year that I was going to write a how-to book for authors, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. But I have been reading so many of them that just didn’t seem to cover my situation, that I decided to outline one. Then I wrote a chapter.…
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How to Fail as an Author ToC
In my last post I told you about the book I was working on, a sort of instruction manual for writers called How to Fail as an Author. I shared the first chapter of the book in my blog. I have finished the first draft of that project! It’s a relatively short book at about…
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How to Fail as an Author
I learned what the dreaded “form-letter rejection” was. “Dear Author, thank you for your recent submission to Boogity-Oogity magazine. Your writing shows great promise but our editors decided this story is not right for us at this time.” It was maddening! What was wrong with the story? How can I make it right for you?
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Sycamore Souls finished
Late last month I finally finished the project I began in November as my National Novel Writing Month project. It’s a literary novel I’ve called Sycamore Souls. The first draft came in at a little over 93,000 words and, while it is a pretty rough draft, overall I’m pretty proud of it. Sycamore Souls is…
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Trusting the Muse
On Tuesday I’ll release another new book into the world. The Broken Man is my second Western. It’s just a novella, only a bit over 20,000 words, but is the first in a series called The Travels of Jacob Wolf. This post is kind of about the new book, but it’s more about the writing…
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Late May Update
So, I’m officially retired as a teacher. It’s been a week out of the classroom so far. I thought I’d have a lot more written by now, but I’ve mostly been working on formatting The Saga of Tarod the Nine-Fingered, which is up for pre-order now. Amazon’s KDP won’t allow pre-orders for paperbacks, but the…
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OWFI Recap 2023
It had been more than 10 years since I last attended the annual Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. conference. The main reason was cost and return on investment. I’ve always been poor, and when I did attend OWFI in the past I seldom felt like I learned enough to justify the expense. So, I had no…
Steven E. Wedel 