I set ambitious writing goals for this year. Goal 1: Finish the first draft of BENEATH A SUNDERED SKY (150,000 words) Goal 2: Finish the first draft of WHAT’S BEHIND THE CROOKED DOOR? (15,000 words) Goal 3: Finish the third (first final) draft of PRINCE OF CATS (50,000 words) Goal 4: Rewrite BLACK MAGIC AND…
If you haven’t been following the story from the beginning, here’s the summary. In 2009 I challenged myself: finish a novel or give up writing. I had way too many starts and way way way too few finishes. So this was it. I had a new job. I had a long commute with dedicated writing…
What what? Two posts in a week? That’s crazy! The Mayans were right! Run for your lives! …wait, never mind, that last post was on Friday, so this is technically a new week. Move along. Nothing to see here. I used to post much more frequently. Technically I’m supposed to be past my busy time…
I used to be a podcaster. That’s like public speaking except in private and with a record that people can reference years later. For that reason, there are certain words one needs to eliminate from one’s vocabulary to improve at public speaking. The biggest culprit is “ummmm” and “uhhhh” which we tend to default to…
If you were lucky enough to be Liz Poole, a hotel night auditor named LurkerWithout, or an agent with incredible literary sense, you would have had the opportunity to read my manuscript JEHOVAH’S HITLIST. This is a manuscript where I explain why just because the protagonist is 15 years old doesn’t make it a young…
I am not anti-social. In fact, I love being the center of attention. I have wanted to be the storyteller since I was five, lying about the size of the frog I caught1. The trick is, there are a lot of social situations where I cannot be the center of attention, and in those cases…
The general rule is that no sign exists until after someone does what the sign instructs not to do (thus my favorite sign is “Do not lick the C-4”). You should consider the Bill of Rights to the American Constitution much like a sign. The reason why those 10 items were enumerated? Because they happened.…
Let’s begin here: If you’re writing in a contemporary setting, referring to certain foreign nations can rip a reader out of your story if you incorrectly describe that location because you’re an American and you don’t really understand how X country works. Example: United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. It is not a republic or…