Novel Progress: homes and clothing of the future

When describing the world of my sci-fi novel, one of my inspirations was the design competition shows my mother and I used to watch. Mom liked to pause those shows as soon as the challenge was revealed, taking time to think through what she would do before watching the direction the designers took. One challenge in particular stayed in my mind for days after I watched the episode. The challenge was to design the room of the future, and it inspired ideas that came back to me as I built the world of Arden for my novel.

Destination: Glass Angels

Glass Angels is the ninth story in my Crossed Lines series. The story begins a day after the conclusion of Silent Planet in the Caffrey Conversation series, but it's not necessary to read that story first. Neal's college friends are featured in this tale of a student film project where the lines between fictitious and real supernatural events are crossed many times over.

Novel progress: Solarpunk and Hopepunk

In trying to describe my non-dystopian novel, I'd used the term "green fiction" because the setting is a future world where the environment is healthy, where hovercars mean no paving over nature, and where technology has adapted to reduce pollution. Recently I learned there's an official term for this kind of story: Solarpunk

Reboot of the Arkham Round Table

After Rolf and Klaus Mansfeld were captured, Diana seriously considered hanging up her writer's hat. The Arkham Files fanfics had been designed to manipulate the brothers, and the strategy worked. What justification could there be to continue writing them?

The Pie Hole

Many months ago, I had an idea for a stand-alone Supernatural story inspired by Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network. Host Guy Fieri has classic cars that reminded me of Dean's Impala, and of course Dean likes diners.

Caffrey Conversation: The 2006 Road Map

Silent Planet is the first Caffrey Conversation story to be set in 2006. The story is not very long, but it contains several road signs for Neal Caffrey and his friends that they'd be wise to pay attention to. Some alert to speed bumps while a few have flashing lights, indicating danger ahead.

The Dragon Update

A few months ago, Silbrith and I declared 2020 the year of the dragon, representing our goal of facing and even befriending the challenges we encounter with our writing. We had no idea...

Celebrating Ethnic Diversity

April is Celebrate Diversity Month and in my first post of the month, I'd like to focus on ethnic diversity, in particular the international element in our stories. Most of our fanfics are for the White Collar fandom, where Neal Caffrey is a man of the world. Conversant in several languages, he traveled the world until his wings were clipped by Special Agent Peter Burke. Fortunately, in Caffrey Conversation, he never suffered the humiliation of going to prison, and the world is his oyster once more.