Arianne "Tex" Thompson's Blog

Litopia fans! If you're seeing this because of the Pop-Up Submissions video/podcast we just recorded - welcome, welcome, welcome! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did - and if you need manuscript development help, I am HERE FOR YOU.

If you would like a whole-manuscript review of your work in progress, please let me know! I regularly offer this service for Writing Workshops Dallas and on LitReactor - and I would be happy to bring it to you. I will:
plug your entire manuscript into my Kindle...

Happy December and a pre-emptive Merryween, y’all! I suspect this will be my last message for the year, so buckle in – there is more than my usual one-paragraph parable here this time.

Actually, what I have for you today looks an awful lot like a box of granola bars. Exhibit A:


This box box of granola goodness was gifted to me at Bouchercon at the beginning of November. And you know, you just can’t keep a thing like that all to yourself.

So I brought the box with me to Steampunk November, where...

This gnarly yellow safety cabinet is not much to look at, I realize. But y’all, BLOOD AND THUNDER IS COURSING THROUGH MY VEINS.


The cabinet belongs to the jewelry and small metals division at the Dallas Makerspace (where I office most days of the week) and they needed a key made for it. Your favorite red-hatted junior locksmith took up the challenge, but I quickly realized that I was out of my depth (didn’t have the right key blank, didn’t want to order a box of 50), and dutifully took the lev...

Howdy y'all! If you are here at the Willamette Writers Conference this weekend, this post is for you!

Three Useful Things:

1. If you are attending the Conquering the Freshman Fifteen intensive on Sunday afternoon (and you should!), make sure to download, print, and read through both of these first chapters: The Nightingale (first 15) and The Martian (first 15). Please bring them both with you on Sunday!



2. If you would like the slide decks from my weekend presentations (No Mustard on Your Shirt:...

Oh my goodness gracious.

Y'all, it's been a trip. As a matter of fact, it's been several. In the past two weeks I have driven a thousand miles, visited with more wonderful writers than I can count, and read-and-critiqued 678,000 words. That is no imposition - I LOVE reading stories and getting a chance to visit with their authors - but like... you know how you have three platefuls at Thanksgiving, and when you belch afterwards, you can kind of taste everything at once?

Well, let me tell you: I...

Confessions of a serial socializer:

Lately I find myself enjoying someone a whole heck of a lot, before realizing what a mission they have undertaken to make that possible. Whether it's saving up spoons, medicating, meditating, clawing out a precious pocket of free time from the hurricane-scribble of other obligations, or just working inch by painstaking inch to zip yourself into the too-tight "fine, thanks" human-suit you are expected to wear in public... y'all, thank you *so much* for doing...

Okay, so guys. You know that one friend you have? The one whose life would be five million percent better if they would just listen to you and [dump that worthless mofo / see a therapist / try the diet or program that changed your life / etc]?

Let me be that friend for a moment. And let me confess: I don't mean to be obstinate or ungrateful. It's just that even if your advice or solution is absolutely correct, I can't make the leap from where I am to where you want me to go. The gap is too bi...

You know, I have never felt smaller than I did when I was trying to be a big name. Now I am a small name, and I have never felt bigger. HUGE love to Nancy Golden and the entire Carrollton League of Writers, and big congrats to Jennifer Rabey Crippen, Lauren Bass, and all the winners. It is an honor to be adjacent to your greatness!

So while I was in San Francisco, I took the subway to go visit my friends. It was the end of rush hour, so not very crowded once we got into the city proper. Then a guy got on, carrying a little portable speaker and a microphone, and arranged his gear in one corner.

And then he started rapping.

The song was something about peace and harmony - it wasn't very loud, and I couldn't quite make it out. Of course, my first thought was "God, what a jackass. Doesn't he know nobody wants to hear that?"...

On the bus back to San Francisco after a fantastic too-short weekend at SMOFcon (The SMOFs, of course, are the Secret Masters of Fandom). It's a "convention runner's convention", where the programming and presentations are all about hotel negotiations, crisis management, codes of conduct, and so on. But it's also a fraternity of sorts, with traditions both hallowed and deeply silly.



I tell you what, though: for me, the coolest thing was to sit down at a workshop about social media, or softwar...