Writers have vivid imaginations, so I am asking you to use this creative gift and imagine, for a moment, they nominated you for a Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s a stretch, but play along so I can make my point. You did not take the prize but are gracious and want to congratulate the winner…. Read more »
As I write this article, I am in the company of my two spider plants. They live in a corner where they get some light from the overhead tape LEDs when I work during the day. My office does not have a window for them to receive direct daylight. They are surviving but not necessarily… Read more »
I live in a house built in the 1800’s, so you’d think it would be easy for me to imagine the life of the 19th century character in my new novel Long Shadows. Tom Smiley is now a ghost in his boyhood home of the same vintage who is so deeply scarred by his time… Read more »
Time management is an important skill that can be difficult to achieve for authors. You can’t just hope it will happen, you need to work on it. This can be difficult when you have a busy schedule and you’re trying to balance work, school, extracurricular activities, and family. Fortunately, there is an alternative to traditional… Read more »
Most of us have memories of fairy tales. Maybe your parents told you a story of a princess who saves a prince from a curse with her kiss, perhaps a babysitter tucked you in while recounting the exploits of a very sly fox and how he came to the lion’s court to face judgment, or… Read more »
All authors dream of their own version of success: perhaps it’s making a living from their writing; or resonating with their readers; or receiving rave reviews… I have done all of these things and more by writing in a series, and today, I want to share my top five tips for doing just that. What… Read more »
So you want to write a young adult novel, but what exactly does that entail? Maybe you fell head over heels for the all-encompassing magic of first love in Twilight, or the pull yourself up by your bootstraps and conquer the world heroine in Hunger Games, or maybe it was the found family and self-discovery… Read more »
Romance writers, listen up. Are you planning to attend a future writing conference? You need ammunition to nab an agent and/or publisher for your amazing romance novel. So, here you are, skimming the pages of your favorite writer’s magazine. You see an advertisement for a writing conference with awesome workshops and agents who seek your… Read more »
In grade school, my sister won our science fair with a project about putting sponges in the dishwasher to kill bacteria. She had a good hypothesis, ran a solid experiment, and had lots of imagery on her presentation board. She had very clearly (and successfully) applied the scientific method. I like to break the scientific… Read more »
A good story needs a great ending. No matter how interesting other parts of the story are, without a solid ending, the audience usually remembers the story as boring. This sounds harsh but it is fair. Think of the end as the reward for following you on a journey. After getting to the end of… Read more »
