I don't abandon stories once I've started working on them. Once I sit down and start a story, I'll be damned if I'm going to give up on it. But I do reject most of the ideas for stories that I come up with.

Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends.

Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.

In terms of style, too, I think I've been working with a somewhat limited -- although intentionally limited -- set of tools. So I'm attempting to be a bit looser as I start stories off. To digress. To make interesting mistakes.

We are sitting on our honeymoon bed in the honeymoon suite. We are in a state of honeymoon, in our honey month. These words are so sweet: honey, moon. This bed is so big, we could live on it. We have been happily marooned -- honey marooned -- on this bed for days.

Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl.

Becka was almost good looking enough to be on a reality dating show, but not funny looking or sad enough to be on one of the makeover shows.