title: Mugging the Muse: Writing Fiction for Love AND Money: Second Edition: New and Updated
author:  Holly Lisle 
description: Holly Lisle is the author of more than thirty published novels (and counting), including the recent re-release of her award-winning first novel, Fire in the Mist, and her upcoming re-release of Cadence Drake: Hunting The Corrigans Blood, which will kick off the ten-book Cadence Drake series. Holly had an ideal childhood for a writerwhich is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows: So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where wed tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Childrens Home, where we lived. My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks. It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, Thats a bear footprint. From the size of it, its a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bears still around. Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next.  I dont have the gun with me that will kill a bear, he told me. I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, Im going to shoot him so hell attack me. I want you to drop what youre carrying, run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened. The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, Im sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home in the dark down the Kwethluk Rivers looping, slough-crossed course, because I did not want to let him down. We were not eaten by a bear that nightbut neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life Ill ever forget. I keep that story in mind as I write. If what Im putting on paper isnt at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra following us and our bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesnt make my cut.
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  ALSO BY NANCY HERKNESS
  
  
  
  
  
  The Consultants series
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Money Man_
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Hacker_
  
  
  
  
  
  Second Glances series
  
  
  
  
  
  _Second to None: A Novella_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Second Time Around_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Second Act_
  
  
  
  
  
  Wager of Hearts series
  
  
  
  
  
  _The CEO Buys In_
  
  
  
  
  
  _The All-Star Antes Up_
  
  
  
  
  
  _The VIP Doubles Down_
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Irishman’s Christmas Gamble: A Novella_
  
  
  
  
  
  Whisper Horse novels
  
  
  
  
  
  _Take Me Home_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Country Roads_
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Place I Belong_
  
  
  
  
  
  _A Down-Home Country Christmas: A Novella_
  
  
  
  
  
  Stand-Alone novels
  
  
  
  
  
  _A Bridge to Love_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Shower of Stars_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Music of the Night_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![title](../images/00005.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events,
  and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
  fictitiously.
  
  
  
  
  
  Text copyright © 2021 by Nancy Herkness
  
  
  
  
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  
  
  
  
  No part of this book may be reprodu