Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Read all about it here . Since I've transferred my insecurities for the time being to things like not falling out of a raft into the rapids and not stepping on a rattlesnake* while on shore, I'm sending you to read about the writing insecurities of my fellows! *I'm not really very worried about this. The rapids, maybe. The snakes, meh. Rattlers give warning :) The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer's Support Group day. Members post on our blogs, discussing our doubts and fears, struggles and triumphs. We visit each other and offer a word of encouragement for those who are struggling, or cheer for those with a success to celebrate.  Today's the day--Let's rock the neurotic writing world!  I'll see you in May!   Remember, writers--slow and steady and you'll get there in the end! (Endangered desert tortoise, Joshua Tree National P

Continuing my search through my earliest blog posts, I found this one from November, 2012, and it tickled my funny bone. In the intervening 9 years, the kids who wore me out have grown into wonderful adults who will carry some of my stuff if we are backpacking, but the issues with gravity have grown more troublesome. Friday, November 2, 2012 Random Absurd Theories Revisions are on track!  I've finished the first rewrite, aside from some typing.  Bouncing between that and my activities aimed at getting a bond measure passed for our suffering local schools has me exhausted but feeling like I'm at least doing something. So, for amusement, I'll offer some of the random thoughts that occupy my brain at off moments.  Sometimes, just for fun, I like to invent absurd theories to explain things.  Here we find a few: Pay the Gravity Bill  There's an old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in which Calvin discovers his Dad didn't pay the gravity bill

This story first appeared on this blog in December of 2012. I've touched it up a bit, and wondered about the amount of borrowing from Douglas Adams, but decided to let it stand with the original "reverent apologies to Douglas Adams." I'm not sure about the origins--I'm pretty sure someone challenged me with that title, but I kept no record. About the only thing I can be pretty sure of is that I was rereading the Hitchhikers Guide and sequels. We can probably chalk this one up to fan fiction. Elegant Apocalypse With reverent apologies to Douglas Adams   Sunrise on Planet X-4732B is 7th most stunning and beautiful event in the Universe following, among other things, sunset on X-4732A and the eruption into the sea of an unnamed volcano on an undiscovered planet. This is a well-established fact, determined by a complex algorithm developed by the Ultra-Computer housed on the 4 th Moon of Planet G-7512, known to locals as Home. The lunar location w

This post was supposed to have gone up before I left home nearly a month ago! I’m going to share it anyway, since the writing hasn’t changed much.   And now I am off the river, with a 3-day drive to get home.  The writing has been going well(ish), but is about to grind to a halt--heading out for some wilderness time. While I'm exploring the CA deserts and rafting the Grand Canyon, I'll leave you with "flashback fiction" posts and some photos on Fridays. Feel free to comment, but I mostly won't be able to respond. Sixteen days in the Canyon may turn me into a travel blogger yet, and will certainly provide some photos worth sharing. Meanwhile: Death By Donut will be released May 16, which will also kick off a blog tour--watch for more info on that! You can pre-order the ebook now from your favorite source. There is no pre-order for print books, but I hope to make one on this blog--when I return from the Canyon :)   Publication of Clues, Cops, and Corpses (the fourt

  The Influencer (Professor Molly Mysteries) by Frankie Bow About The Influencer The Influencer (Professor Molly Mysteries)   Cozy Mystery 10th in Series   Publisher: Hawaiian Heritage Press (March 17, 2021) Print length : 205 pages   Digital ASIN: B08QW3QL54   In Which Professor Molly Learns There Is, In Fact, Such a Thing as Bad Publicity It's spring break. Donnie's taken the baby to visit relatives on the mainland, and Professor Molly finally has time to catch up on the assessment paperwork she owes the Student Retention Office. Molly's new renter is a social media star seeking privacy in remote Mahina. The arrangement seems to be working out--until her celebrity renter disappears. Molly and her best friend Emma dutifully call in the Mahina PD and try to stay out of the way. But when fame creates its own reality distortion field, everyone has an angle and nothing is as it seems.   My Review: Frankie Bow knows how to spin a story, and her writing is top-notch. If I fel

 Yup. Missed that "Friday" thing once again! Back to Patagonia... Moving on from Patagonia National Park, we drove north up the Carretera Austral to Puerto Rio Tranquillo, where the Marble Caves (Cuevas de Marmol) are found on the shores of Lago General Carrera. We arrived at lunchtime after about 2 1/2 hours on the gravel of the Carretera, just in time to gobble our lunch and catch a tour. The caves are truly marble, in its natural state, of course. As marble (metamorphosed limestone) is slightly soluble in water, wave action along the lakeshore for some 6000 years has carved out low caverns into which you can take a boat. It is possible to rent kayaks in the town for a multi-hour expedition, but as we didn't have time, we took the commercial tour in a small open boat. Sadly, the guide's constant stream of interpretation and information was all in rapid Spanish with no pauses, so I was able to catch only a bit of it myself, and couldn't pass any along to my compa

 It felt like about time to write about the writing process again, not just about me! Though of course anything I say about the process is actually about me--about my process, which is by no means "the" process, or even one of the best. Since my new Pismawallops PTA mystery is being proof-read, I'm moving on (sort of) to the next project--developing a new mystery series. Since the last time I developed a new series, rather than a new book in an existing world, is a fair ways back, I'm figuring out how to do that. I was going to say that I'm figuring it out all over again, but I remembered that when I wrote the first Pismawallops PTA book I didn't have an outline for the book, much less any sort of pre-developed world. Since I also remember the mess that created, I'm trying to go at this one in a more orderly fashion. I've read a lot about how to develop your characters by thinking about their needs/wants/desires, how to develop setting, and so on. Play