My dear friend Helen keyed on a phrase I used in my last entry: tenants of storytelling. She asked me to enumerate them, and since then I’ve been trying to come up with a list of commandments for writers. Now, keep in mind that there is almost always a time to break the rules, but...Read More

I recently encountered someone asking why so many literary writers poo-poo happy endings. After some evaluating I realized that many literary writers’ books do have rather miserable endings. However, I don’t think it’s a categorical denial of happy endings so much as it is a reflection of the person, and many famous writers weren’t all...Read More

This is a fantastic breakdown–I recommend everyone take a look at this. If people aren’t reading your book, you might be making one of these mistakes!Read More

I have seen a lot of Facebook questions and posts about passive voice that don’t quite explain it. Almost everyone who knows what passive voice is (or thinks they know what passive voice is) knows it’s bad, but they often have trouble identifying it. Given how prevalent the problem is, I thought I should address...Read More

I had the pleasure of reading “They Call Me Murdered” by author Cyndi Lord as my first review. While some parts of the book challenged me, it was worth it, and the book was a roller coaster of emotion and human experience. Without spoilers, let’s dive into the world of Sandra Derringer. Unable to ignore...Read More

So, after much consideration, I have decided I am going to start providing book reviews. My hope is to both build traffic on my blog as well as provide a leg-up to indie authors. Obviously, I’m not going to charge for these since that’s immoral. But it’ll give me some fun, new reading material and...Read More

As you all know, whoever reads this, there was a large chunk of time when I didn’t post here at all. All my posts went to another website because I had devoted time to that project. When that project went downhill, and I left that group, I now had the unenviable chore of building this...Read More

All of us have moments when we are neck-deep in one story and have three others pecking at our hair. Keeping focus on one story at a time can be a challenge sometimes, but it’s extremely important. Think of it this way: you can’t probably play three different musical instruments at once, right? Or three...Read More

I’m going to preface this by saying I’m not dumping on NaNo or the people who participate. I’ve done it, and I had a lot of fun with it. However, there are things about it that aren’t ideal and create misconceptions and even bad habits. Let’s start with the good, though. NaNoWriMo is great for...Read More

The longer I’m in writing groups the more I detest certain behaviors, and this is one of the most insidious. I’m sure most of us have been in writing groups and heard people say “spelling doesn’t matter, just get the story out!” or “who cares about grammar; that’s the editor’s job!” Unfortunately, this attitude fosters...Read More