It’s a year since I last posted to this blog.  Where has the time gone?

Let me tell you:

September 1st, 2011, I began a one-year novel writing intensive workshop led by Devon Ellington and hosted by Savvy Authors.  I’d taken several of Devon’s shorter writing workshops during the previous year and learned a lot; more than all the other workshops I’d taken put together.  Devon is a knowledgeable, tough and motivating teacher.  I’m also pretty sure she was a drill sergeant in a previous life.

It was an incredible year of learning and growth.  We were expected to write 1000 words a day, seven days a week – no excuses. On top of that, we wrote short stories, studied writing books together and completed two assignments a week. Those of us who made it through the entire twelve months finished at least one novel and started a second one.

Earlier this year, the entire class wrote a prompted short story, and we each included the same sentence: The diamond necklace dangled from the dead woman’s hand. (For more about our story writing processes, see the round table discussion on Devon’s blog.) Later, we decided to publish the diverse results as an anthology.

Death Sparkles came out on October 12th. It’s available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and iBooks, and all proceeds will be donated to literacy charities (for a related blog post on why writers need to actively care about literacy rates, click here).

My contribution, Shiny Things, is the shortest story in the collection.  I wanted to try the epistolary form and explore some of the incongruities of literary success in a world of instant communication.

We are trying our hand at a rolling blog tour.  Yesterday, PJ Friel posted about Murder & Mayhem in Nine Voices. Tomorrow, check out Nina Benneton’s interview with PJ.

I invite you to check out Death Sparkles and I’d love to hear your thoughts on short story writing, writing from prompts, and your experiences taking writing workshops (on-line or otherwise).

I’m pleased to be back writing for this blog.

KT  (Katherine )

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Here are the links to the other stops on the Death Sparkles tour:

Kelly Whitley

Faith Dincolo (scroll down)

Devon Ellington

Nina Benneton

Diana Holdsworth

Killion Slade

Watson Davis

A huge thanks to Draconia Publishing for formatting and publishing the anthology, Devon Ellington for acting as editor, and PJ Friel for the wonderful cover art.