He smiled as he strolled along the parkway, casually nodding greeting to the other people who had decided today was a beautiful day for a walk. That his fellow pedestrians smirked or recoiled from his appearance meant nothing to him. No, that was incorrect. He winked ludicrously at a little girl, almost laughing when her mother tugged her sharply away. It’s actually quite entertaining. 

Continue Reading…

She wasn’t the first to arrive at the restaurant. As Bertrada Nijmege was ushered into a private dining area, she saw two of her colleagues already seated. Samuel McCall and Aiden Cassidie rose at her approach and remained standing until she was seated by their maitre’ d.

“Bertrada.” Cassidie raised a glass of wine. “Try the merlot. It has a unique fragrance.” Continue Reading…

Just got the go ahead for The Strange Path cover! Uploaded to the site in all its glory.

In other news – the writing community, Forward Motion, is working on a “Blog Tour”. Several published and aspiring authors are coming together to blog on a specific topic in a given month. We’re still in the planning phase, but we hope to be able to begin next month. I’ll probably add another link section beneath ‘Frequent Visits’ just for this.

What if the mythical Vampire of horror novels was a genetic offshoot of humanity just as the Neanderthal…only much more successful on the survival scale? Continue Reading…

This is the last week of my writing vacation. I couldn’t get into the swing of things after Tinker, but now I’m beginning to get bored anew. It’s time to get started on the third installment of the Sanguire series.

As a bit of a tease, here’s an excerpt from the first book, A Strange Path. This scene was the inspiration for a short story I’ve written, Want. Continue Reading…

Primarily because my slacking has gotten the best of me, and I don’t have anything prepared this week. Nevertheless, I said I’d post every week, and here it is!

Almost done with the second round of edits for Broken Trails. One thing I’ve learned in this process of writing, editing, and publication is this: putting words on paper is similar to putting make up on. When I’m done, it’s THERE, baby! I might look like a clown, but I’ve got the foundation, the eyeliner, the mascara and the rouge all in their proper places on my face. EDITORS are the professionals who sit me down at the make up counter, and clean up the mess. By the time I’m done, I look drop-dead gorgeous! But I could never do it alone. Continue Reading…

And so it goes — the first draft of Beloved Lady Mistress is complete, weighing in at 80,800 words! YAY! My alpha readers have it now, and I get a few days off. Then I do a line-by-line edit before sending it to Bella Books. Next step is to begin outlining book three.

No takers on last week’s contest. Small wonder. This website has gathered so much dust over the years, it’s hardly surprising that not many read it anymore. Ah, well. Such is life. While a part of me wants to play the petulant child and stop updating the thing, the grown up in me plans on being stubborn. Besides, I made a promise to myself at the beginning of the year to post every week barring emergencies, even if I am talking to myself.

Besides, talking to one’s self isn’t crazy. It’s gossiping to one’s self about what one said is crazy. Which takes me to this week’s topic! Continue Reading…

Scored pretty good at work a couple of weeks ago! Our policy is to hold lost & found items for up to a year, depending on how expensive it is. Two months is average for most items, but higher priced ones remain for a lot longer. Someone left a laptop a year ago. Due to privacy and confidentiality, we had to find a way to destroy the files on it. Since I’m the tech wiz in our department (and honestly, I’m not THAT good,) it was given to me. I couldn’t hack my way into the hard drive to wipe it, so I had to remove it entirely for destruction. As a reward, I got the laptop — an IBM Thinkpad X40 with an attached dock! Looking online, I’ve found compatible hard drives for $80. I’ve always wanted to play with Linux, so it look like I’ll soon have that opportunity. Can’t wait for the tax refunds to arrive!

I’m telling you, this month has been fantastic as far as word production — 22,000 words! (And I’ve yet to take a day off this month.) Beloved Lady Mistress is still pouring out into the computer. It’s making me a little nervous, actually. I mean it’s going so smoothly right now, and I’m just about finished with the first draft. What’s going to happen when it’s time to sit down and write book three? ACK! I’m worried about jinxing myself. Continue Reading…

...that exciting news I promised a couple of weeks back? Well, here it is!

The Sanguire Series by D Jordan Redhawk comes to Bella!

“...It would be a dream come true for a homeless teenager: suddenly the wealthy cool kids can’t wait to lavish money, motorcycles, club nights and sumptuous beds on you. That is, it’s a dream come true if it weren’t for the nightmares. Hardened by the brutal streets, Whiskey is wary of her newfound status among the powerful cliques that dwell in Seattle’s murky night world and clings to her motto: Take more than you give. But when you have nothing, anything can be tempting.

Book one of D Jordan Redhawk’s gripping Sanguire series is The Strange Path and will be published by Bella in early spring 2012. Book two, Lady Mistress, will be published later in the year…”

Time to celebrate! (After Book Two is written, anyway… LOL!)

Can I get your assistance? If you have any questions for me, or suggestions on what you want me to write about, please let me know! The comment form below will require a valid email address to ensure you’re a real person. (I don’t collect the addresses or do anything with them, so you won’t be getting future spam from me.) If that’s not to your taste, you can email me — the link is up above on the left.

Hope you like the new look! I’ve been wanting a change, and found this wonderful template for WordPress. Thanks to Katie for the assist, too! She helped me find the widget I’m using for the books in the right column!

It’s been a wild week, particularly at work. There was a slight dip in numbers as a result. I got my ears lowered, took a day off writing, and then remembered I had a Safety Committee meeting. Whoops! More time off than I’d planned! I’m still above goal at 6,249 words for the week.

Lady Mistress is coming in at a hefty forty-five thousand despite the ragged writing week. Still going strong, too. The writing’s tight and concise, unlike earlier drafts. I’ve been able to snag a few scenes from the early attempts, too, so that will help down the road. Continue Reading…

Wow! This week’s been quite productive! 9435 words!

It’s been so long since I’ve sat my butt in the chair to write that I wasn’t certain about my abilities any more. Rather than set the goal at a thousand and fail, I set it at five hundred. Since January 1st, all but two of the days I’ve written has been over a thousand! Yay, me! I think for March 1st, I’ll reset my goal to 1k/day.

The second Sanguire novel, Lady Mistress is at the thirty-eight thousand mark. I’m shooting for eighty thousand words, but I think it’ll go over a bit. I’m at the stage in the novel where scenes are spawning new scenes, expanding things beyond the outline. Not too awful, really, when the first book, The Strange Path clocked in at eighty-eight grand. Continue Reading…

Thanks to Fran for reminding me to get a move on and update this site!  LOL!  Seems I’m a total slacker these days (which everyone here knows at this point, I think.)

The Sanguire novel is complete.  It went out on April Fool’s Day (no foolin’!) to Daw.  No word yet, but I wasn’t expecting it.  Their website states three months before a response, so I’ll wait until July before moving forward.

Edits to Iditarod are fair-to-middling.  We’ve moved into another apartment, and getting time to write has been difficult.  We’re still skirting around boxes and luggage and whatnot.  Tomorrow afternoon, the overflow goes to a storage unit (thank the gods!)  It’ll be nice to actually see the new floor, doncha know?  In any case, it’s been a little rough attempting to insert back story and alcoholism into characters that were initially trouble-free…  I will get there, though.
Work has been hectic, but what’s new?  The economy sucks, and more people are being hit hard.  It hasn’t helped that I volunteered to be the Safety Committee chair person.  I’ve been taking a lot of OSHA training courses to catch up to current regulations.  It’s been over ten years since I’ve done this job!  LOL!

Reading has taken up the rest of my time, mostly J/7 fanfic online.  Hmmm…  Can’t remember when I last picked up a book.  April?  March?  Ah, well.  I’ve about exhausted the online opportunities, anyway.   Just foolin’ around, I’ve written a first chapter to a J/7 fanfic.  We’ll see how it goes.

And recently?  Two words:  Star Trek  OMGs!  Whether or not you enjoy Trek, you really should see this flick.  Those that are into the series (especially the original) will have a great time!  Anyone who doesn’t care one way or the other will still enjoy themselves with the action packed movie.  Go.  NOW!

I’ll leave you with a snippet from that J/7 fanfic:

Tuvok studied her weary frame. He knew she’d never lie to him – though that didn’t preclude her from lying to herself. Unlike Vulcans, Humans needed to speak of their emotions with others for their continued good health. Voyager’s current circumstances didn’t allow her this opportunity. She held a rigid set of protocols when it came to command, something he had always respected regardless of her occasional brash actions. He suspected it was this inflexibility that caused her to remain aloof from the rest of the crew, and it was this emotional distance that caused her harm.

Of all the individuals aboard, he was the only one close enough to qualify as a friend. They had a long history that, while beginning on a somewhat adversarial note, had deepened into esteem and loyalty. Despite his distaste for the messy necessity of Human emotional discourse, he saw no other option than to elicit such a conversation. Over the past six years, Janeway had become more and more withdrawn. If the ship and crew were to survive their sojourn into the Delta Quadrant, they needed their captain mentally and emotionally sound.

“Kathryn.”

Her eyebrows shot up at his use of her given name. She blinked at him, biting the inside of her lower lip in what he knew as a subtle nervous gesture.

“It is 0326 hours. You are not scheduled for duty until 0800. You are in full uniform, imbibing in what I believe is your second cup of coffee.” A quick, skittish expression crossed her face. “Correction, your third.”

An unrepentant grin teased the corners of her lips. “Busted, am I?”

He drew himself up with a deep breath. “That would be an adequate term.”

I promised myself that I’d update this blog at least once a month.  I mean, why pay for a website that never gets updated? Waste of money—and with the economy in shambles, I can’t affort to let what I have leak away.

So … Happy February!  LOL!

The first Sanguire book is still in my hot little hands. I’ve been scouring it for recurring words, thereby beefing up the narrative. (At least I hope that’s the end result.) My wife has suggested that I’m procrastinating (true) because I’m afraid to send it out… Well, okay. She knows me pretty well after two decades. There might be a small iota of truth in that belief… Oh, alright, alright! I confess! I have a very wide yellow streak!

To that end, my personal deadline is the end of this month. If it’s not out by March 1st, everybody who reads this has my permission to nag, rag, cajole me, and beat me about the head and shoulders until it is in the mail.

Besides, Iditarod is beginning to burn a hole in my mind. I can’t ofer it to my publisher until it’s rewritten…

Speaking of procrastination, I’ve certainly found a lot of things to assist me in the endeavor! Singe Yule, we’ve acquired a Wii console, the Wii Fit board, and Band in a Box with Guitar Hero. Ah, bliss! We haven’t had a gaming cosole since the kids were little (read ‘fifteen plus years’!) I’ve already burned through Guitar Hero World Tour on the easy setting. The medium level is a pain! Whew. (Please blame this particular distraction on my best friend who hooked me on it last month.)

And then there’s Facebook and, by extension, Mafia Wars. Again, this isn’t entirely my fault. Certain individuals lured me there, and then stooped to addict me to the game. (Linda… Steph… uh huh.) So, that’s been a distraction, too.

Finally, there’s the Obsidian Fleet, a conglomeration of PBEM and SMS Star Trek role-playing simulations. After months of research—reading mission posts, studying ships and personnel, etc.—I’ve joined up. I’m playing a security officer on board a small vessel patrolling the Romulan Neutral Zone. I’ve only had access to their forum fo a week, but I think I made an excellent decision. My TrekGeek yearnings have been soothed, and I now have a venue to vet future characters. (The one I’ve created is one I have in mind for a future space smuggler series. By running her against other people in different situations, I can better write her in a book.)

So, that’s my month in a nutshell (no peanuts!) Hope everyone else is a little more motivated than me these days!  LOL!  I’ll try to curb my growing gaming habits.

Take care!

What with the economy crashing, the hundreds and thousands of jobs going by the wayside, and the looming homelessness occurring in our society these days, my best wish for everyone is to maintain…  I hope we all can keep the money rolling enough to pay the necessary bills, to buy the food for ourselves and see to our loved ones, and that families and friends band together to support each other during these difficult times.  I wish everyone the best possible year!
~~~

Snow in Portland, Oregon was actually fun the first day or so.  Haven’t seen a blizzard like that since I was living in Idaho as a child.  I’m glad I was home for the worst of the snow days.

Our Yule celebration began on Mother’s Night.  My wife and I lit our Yule candle at sunset (though you couldn’t tell it from the dark outside!)  We swapped our gifts that night, and had a quiet evening together.  I found a box of cards at Powell’s earlier in the month, and we went through them for a couple of hours.  It’s amazing how many surprises we had for each other after twenty years together.  (The number of questions we answered for each other wasn’t surprising.  LOL!)

I stayed up the entire night on vigil, mostly reading.  I’ve found a new post-apocalyptic series my S.M. Stirling that takes place in Oregon.  The Emberverse series.  Very cool.  I highly recommend them.   When not reading, I downloaded music from iTunes with my gift cards.  WOOT!
The next day—with the worst of the snow coming down—was the feast.  Oddly enough, we had quite a few show up, despite the weather.  We thought we’d only have those invited within the apartment complex, but one showed up from several blocks away, and another couple drove in the white stuff to get there.  We watched lots of movies, visited with friends, and everyone left stuffed to the gills.
~~~
The next two weeks in my neck of the woods were chaotic at best.  When not snowed in at home, I was snowed in at work.  (Thank the gods I work in the hotel industry!) All I could do at work was wish I was home, and at home stare out the window wishing I could leave the house and do something.
As a result, I’m about two weeks behind on my edits.  I’m still working on repeated words—the current one I’m working on is ‘was’.  Ugh!  It’s only used 868 times according to Concorder!  I’m only on page sixteen of the Sanguire manuscript, and have pared the couple dozen down to three…  Only three hundred pages to go!

Speaking of which, I should get back to work…