Heidi Cullinan's Blog

I’m late to the party with Red Envelope. It was first published in 2016, but I only saw it recently, and I’ll tell you, I pounced. It’s been sitting on my phone waiting for a moment when I had a free moment to read, but even though I wasn’t done with my deadline yet, last night […]

If you’ve been under a rock (or wisely don’t get lathered over publishing drama), you may have missed the prompt for this post, which is the misunderstanding between a rising star of critical acclaim and Nora Roberts, the former thinking the latter copied the idea for her book. That’s a super awkward accusation on so […]

Here is a current screenshot of my progress bar. It’s one thing for me to have spent the entire month barely above the minimalist line. It’s another thing entirely for me to fall absolutely under the bar this late and say, basically, “Eh, maybe I’ll hit it, maybe I won’t.” It definitely grates for me […]

I’m pretty sure I mentioned in another one of these diaries that somewhere between 20-30k I get my hands around the story. Well, I’m at 29,550, and instead of writing this morning I got out my huge pad of grid paper and started graphing. I don’t know how to describe what this phase is for […]

So I haven’t updated this in ten days because I’ve been laser focused on trying to keep my novel updated but also trying to keep other projects going at the same time and let me tell you it’s not my favorite thing in the world, this arrangement. The “other projects” tab has varied, but at […]

I didn’t get a diary update in yesterday because I was busy writing and preparing to go to my region’s Write All Night event. Prep involved baking brownies, travel to a Des Moines area library (I live in Ames), and because it’s me, assembling portable support gear. I literally rolled in with a suitcase and […]

I’m starting up NaNoWriMo this year after a long hiatus from the event, and I’m going to blog through my efforts for my own process, for the curious, and in case this helps someone else. To give a quick background, writing cold in case someone comes here from a tag; I’ve written regularly since I […]

I wanted to write this post a week ago, but as things go with me, especially this past year, it took a bit of time. So forgive me as I am incredibly late to the RWA national conference recap party.

I had an incredible time.

Quite possibly that is the most understated statement I’ve ever made, but I must begin somewhere, so we’ll start there. I had an incredible time. The theme was rethink, revitalize, renew, and they hit a homerun with me. For anyone to understand what a watershed that is, however, I have to tell you a story.

So here we go.

I have written some tough cat eulogies in my day. I have written plenty of cat eulogies in my day, all of them chronicled here. None of them are easy, and all of them are sad. But writing a eulogy for Walter is a sorrow I have been dreading. I knew it would hit us like […]

I’ve made this announcement to the organizers and on the Facebook loops where I think most people will see updates, but for anyone who might not follow there and was hoping to see me in Denver in a few weeks; it is with regret I must report I will be unable to attend this year’s […]