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What I'm writing in YEAR OF THE DOG

I just finished writing Year of the Dog ! It had a massive plot hole that I had to fix which turned out to be more work than I expected. Here’s a snippet: “Hey, Auntie Nell.” He wrapped his arms around her, bussing her on the cheek and breathing in pikake flowers and shortbread cookies. And suddenly he was nine years old again, and her solid presence had made his chaotic world stable once more. “What are you doing here?” He usually took her to dinner on Wednesday nights, but today was Tuesday. The edges of her smile faltered a little before brightening right back up again. “What, I can’t visit my nephew?” She angled around him to enter his home. “Is this your new house? Looks lovely.” Which was a blatant lie, because the fixer-upper was barely livable, much less acceptable to a neat-freak like his aunt. She also left four matching pink and purple floral suitcases on the stoop behind her. Only then did Ashwin notice the cab driver standing slightly to the side of the walkway. “Can ...
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Pictures up from Mt. Hermon conference

Okay, enough people nagged me (ever so lovingly) to get these pictures up, so here they are.

The first few are when a group of us went out to dinner at Stagnaro Bros. restaurant in Santa Cruz.

The next bunch are other people from the conference. I wish I had more but they all came out really blurry. I couldn't even recognize Randy Ingermanson or T. Davis Bunn. I also didn't get a good picture of me, Cherise and Lori, who all took Davis' Fiction track together. Cherise and I met last year, Lori was my roommate. Another picture that turned out all blurry was the one with me and Shelley Bates, who is in my San Jose ACFW writers group. :(
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