Happy new year, lovelies! I hope the 2015 dance around the sun bring you joy, health, peace, and prosperity. Let's all pray for daily bread and peace in our time.

One of the really great things about being a novelist is having a writing group. I couldn't function without mine. Really. Oh, sure, I need absolute peace and quiet and solitude for the actual writing part, but if I'm not writing for someone to read, I just don't write. I need to have an audience in mind. Someone has to actually read this stuff other than me.

A member of my group recently posted a question to our top-secret page where we share tips, ideas, problems, and insight with each other. (No, I won't tell you where. Don't ask.) The question accompanied a long excerpt from another writer, and was essentially, what does this mean: Writing may start out as self-serving (kind of like an emotional eruption or first-time therapy session), but in order to achieve any level of greatness, a writer will have to detach from her personal interest and begin to look at the bigger picture.

Great question, and it relates to my second paragraph: literature of all kinds is a relationship between a reader and a writer. There has to be both, or else the writing isn't literature.

Do I hear some of you saying, huh? Isn't it possible to "just write for myself?"

You can, but not if you want to write well.

Some people say the difference between a writer and an author is publication (usually traditional). I disagree. I think the writer becomes an author when he opens the dynamic of his writing beyond himself to include the reader, regardless of his publishing status.

I'm wholly supportive of independent and small-press publishing, but I'm also the first to say, there's a lot of utter crap out there. Well-intentioned, earnest, eager crap. Yes, there are "novels" full of typos, historical anachronisms, unresearched "facts," wretched dialogue, and even more wretched plot - but those are all symptoms of the abrogation of the basic tenet: the reader is missing from the equation. The writer was writing for himself.

Those of you who know me well, know that I'm 1) a huge fan of paranormal adventure and alternative history; and 2) a stickler for getting things right. Okay, we all make cock ups now and again, but when they get in the way of my enjoyment of a good spectacle, I get annoyed.

I've been enjoying the ridiculous fun of Fox's Sleepy Hollow. After all, it features a RevWar hottie with a pony tail and great boots, AND a headless horseman - what's not to like? But in last week's episode I found I couldn't concentrate on Tom Mison's awesome cuteness when he was running along machine-milled hollow steel catwalks in his "18th-century" underground tunnels and and when he struck a match to light a lantern. And then his modern-day co-star referred to being "so far down a rabbit hole," and Mison's Ichabod Crane seemed to understand the reference.

Seriously? History PhDs are a dime a dozen out there. The screen writers couldn't pay one of them in Starbucks gift cards to review the script for basic accuracy? Heck, they couldn't use Wikipedia? Sheesh. (For those of you playing at home, extruded hollow steel pipe is a post-Civil War-era material, the first modern, self-igniting match was invented in 1805, and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865.)

And, when I saw a novel entitled Spank Me, Mr. Darcy, I was not offended by the subject matter or premise, but by the fact that the cover image featured a modern reproduction of a Victorian corset, NOT a Regency-era one. Again, c'mon, people, just do a little research! That's all the fangirls are asking.

Ok, enough ranting! Peace, everybody.