J.C. Keough

Paranormal Mystery Author

I Should Be Writing

This Week in The Cauldron October 17 – 23

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Hey Y’all,

Thank you for joining me for my weekly planning session. This is what I’m mixing up in the cauldron this week:

Writing Plans

I have been struggling to get back to writing. Because of my Not Writing Plans (keep reading) it may not happen this week either. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Not Writing Plans

The other half, Céilí, and I will be headed east for a couple of days in the country near Wexford. It will be our first trip with our new girl, so we are about to find out how she likes traveling. We have our fingers crossed for positive results as we love to travel and we have plans to take her with us as much as possible.

And I’m sharing a picture of our girl on a morning walk because I think she’s so darn cute.

[Read more…] about This Week in The Cauldron October 17 – 23

This Week in The Cauldron August 29 – September 4

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Hey Y’all,

Thank you for joining me for my weekly planning session. First off, a recap of last week.

I planned to write 10,000 words on my first draft of Whining in Wolfland along with working in the yard, meeting friends for a happy hour, and reading. I wrote 11,200 words, so congratulations to me. 🍾 No yard work or reading happened. Boo! I’m thrilled about the word count, but I need to pick up the slack in other areas of my life. Now for what I’m mixing up in the cauldron this week:

[Read more…] about This Week in The Cauldron August 29 – September 4

What’s Happening in the Cauldron August 22 – 28

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Hey Y’all,
Thank you for joining me for my weekly planning session. This is what I’m mixing up in the cauldron this week:

Writing Plans

My goal is 10,000 words this week on what I hope will be a 100,000-word first draft – give or take 5000 words. I try to write Monday through Saturday, so that will be about 1700 words a day. So, it is entirely doable, if I just sit down and do it. 😊

[Read more…] about What’s Happening in the Cauldron August 22 – 28

August 8 – 14, 2022

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Hey Y’all,

Thank you for joining me for my weekly planning session. This is what I’m mixing up in the cauldron this week:

Writing Plans

I’m plotting Whining in Wolfland, the next book in THE LARAMIE HARPER CHRONICLES, and I’ll be writing the blurb (book description) to share with you sometime this week. I didn’t plot a jot before writing my first novel, Dying in Dallas, because I had the complete story ready and waiting in my noggin. 

Spoiler alert: I did not.

[Read more…] about August 8 – 14, 2022

Ask Me A Question – July 2022

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Have you always been a writer? If not, when did you start?

No, I’m not one of those authors you read about who has always written. But I’ve always been a reader and, like most readers, always thought, “I could do that.”

In my twenties, I dabbled in poetry. Very cringe-worthy poetry. Around that time, I also made several false starts on writing novels. I quickly realized that I didn’t know how to keep going past the first few pages. I’m going to age myself here and say that this was before the Internet really took off. Which meant I had to go to a bookstore and buy several how-to-write books. Unfortunately, they were drier than century-old bones. I’ve never been big on forcing myself to muddle through misery, so I didn’t finish any of them.

Life and my career got in the way, but I always thought “someday.” Then, one day I read an interview with one of my favorite authors, Mary Higgins Clark. She said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that if you are a writer, you write. You’ll write any time you get a chance. If you say, “someday I’ll write,” you’ll never write. Since I didn’t personally know any authors, I took her words as gospel and packed away my author dreams with my drier than the Sahara writing books.

[Read more…] about Ask Me A Question – July 2022