Blood Alley Diaries

Commentary on hiking, backpacking & fiction writing from California's San Joaquin Valley

Coming soon: updates about my forthcoming novel Ripening the Times.

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First draft

My forthcoming novel Ripening the Times began as a 2012 NaNoWriMo project. For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and is celebrated by the personal challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month—the approximately length of a novel.  I had started writing a novel in 2001—a manuscript that languished throughout the significant changes and upheaval in my life in the intervening years. The NaNoWriMo organizers suggest that rather than picking up an old project, writers should begin a new manuscript with a fresh idea. Start at zero words and write something new. [Read more]

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Recent reads

Disappearing Earth
Right After the Weather
Strange Fits of Passion
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Light on Snow
Testimony
The Stars Are Fire
All He Ever Wanted
Sea Glass
Fortune's Rocks
Forever is the Worst Long Time
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The Pilot's Wife
The Weight of Water
The Hired Man
The Red Address Book
Happiness
Where Oceans Hide Their Dead
Breathing Lessons
Where the Forest Meets the Stars

Recent Posts

  • Life is reflected well in Leslie M. Rollins’ The Man Dance
  • Split-Level by Sande Boritz Berger surprised me
  • Carol Anshaw’s Right after the Weather is a good read
  • Hetch Hetchy Valley: If the plan is plunder, keep it under
  • Binge-reading Anita Shreve

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