Category Archives: My Books

The Portable Laura Roberts

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I’ve been half-jokingly saying that I’ll publish a volume entitled The Portable Laura Roberts for a while now. At one point in my life, a then-boyfriend had dedicated a website to the notable quotables I had constructed in my various letters and emails to him. Since this was in the pre-Facebook and pre-blog days, back when only important Ivy League university students were allotted FIVE WHOLE PAGES of their own, this was highly complimentary. Even though most of the quotes were totally absurd, especially when taken out of context, and the page was itself a hideous green color (probably because no one knew the hex codes except for computer science majors), it made me laugh.

Hell, it still makes me laugh. And I’m kind of peeved that the Wayback Machine can’t seem to locate it. But, alas, the web is all too impermanent (despite The Social Network’s claims otherwise).

So, in the spirit of nostalgia and utter silliness, I have compiled an ebook instead. I have titled it The Portable Laura Roberts, made its cover (a not-too-hideous) green, and it currently contains a sampler of my various writings, along with a completely absurd introduction. Eventually I may also add more of my nonfictional works (columns, book reviews, etc.), à la The Portable Dorothy Parker, but for now you’ll have to be content with my fictional works, as well as the first chapter of my forthcoming novel, Naked Montréal.

You can snag a copy for just 99 cents, only at Amazon. Enjoy!

Book In A Week: May 7–14

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Last month I joined the Book In A Week online writers group, with the aim of taking my novel writing goals more seriously. Since I had such a blast doing the 3-Day Novel Contest and actually finished a novel, I figured this group—which offers writers a monthly chance to reach specific page counts of their own choosing, from 1 page per day to an entire book done in a week—would help me get back on that track. Setting aside a week to work on a new manuscript (or finish up an old one) seemed like a great idea.

Of course, I still can’t really set aside an entire week devoted to nothing but noveling. I live pretty much from paycheck to paycheck, so I still have to do my regular writing work each day. But since I met last month’s goal of 10 pages in a week, I decided to get serious this month and try for 60 pages, as the start of a new novel.

Naturally, this blog post is some serious procrastination, as I ponder why I didn’t finish my outline for the novel last night instead of watching an absurd Dr. Seuss movie entitled The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T…

Still, I thought I should publicly announce my goal, if only to shame myself into getting my ass in gear this week.

The manuscript I’ll be working on this week is a sequel to my first novel, Rebels of the 512. It doesn’t yet have a working title, but it features more ninjas… plus an army of robots!

Okay, time to BIC HOK TAM, as they say over at Book In A Week. (That’s “Butt In Chair, Hands On Keys, Typing Away Madly.”) Wish me luck!

P.S. If you’re interested in finding out what my ninjas are up to in the meantime, check out my post about Wildflower Week over at Rebelsofthe512.com where the concept of “ninja kryptonite” is introduced for perhaps the first time in human (or ninja) history.

Houston Writers Guild thinks I’m special

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While I didn’t win the Houston Writers Guild Genre Contest, I did score a 141 out of 150 points on my 15-page novel excerpt. That’s a 94%, which is still totally an A, right?

The comments I received on my novel excerpt from Naked Montréal were “strong entertaining voice” and “well-written.” They also gave me 15 out of 15 in the section of the grading rubric that said “Quit reading the MS the moment you lose interest in the story. Give the manuscript one point for each page that you read… if you made it all the way to the end, give it 15 points.” Go me! I am not boring! W00T!

I did enter in the “mainstream” genre, which I suspect had the most competition (y’know, since it’s basically the catch-all for anything that’s not mystery, romance, sci-fi, historical or YA), so I’m not too upset about this non-win (I prefer to consider it a minor setback on my ultimate road to victory, not a flat-out defeat). And two ladies actually won this genre (congrats to Pamela Hutchins of Houston and Annie Daylon of Chilliwack, B.C.!), so that’s encouraging in a world where men still seem to take most of the top writing prizes.

So basically, even though I didn’t win anything, I feel like I got something out of entering this contest. Other people have read my work and enjoyed it, plus I got some useful feedback on what needs to be improved to make the book even better.

Thanks, Houston Writers Guild!

P.S. If you’re interested in reading the sample I sent, click the “Naked Montréal” cover photo or this link.