We hear it all the time. How just “be you, and everything works out!” It sounds like a platitude after a while. Especially when you’re not one of the people society usually wants to hear from. The disabled, the neurodivergent, the minority, the queer. While being entirely authentic to ourselves in public spaces is a...Read More

All right, so when writing one of the main goals is to draw the reader through the piece. This is done any number of ways with story and characters and plot, but that’s not what we are here to talk about. Instead, today, I’m going to forge into straight up writing craft specifics that are...Read More

When I first did the math to see how much editing per book cost, my heart just about jumped out of my chest. Holy crap, it was that much? I know how my clients feel the first time they see the numbers for an estimate. It’s not cheap. Not at all cheap. Or, if it...Read More

Okay, so last week we talked about tension. How to use it, what it is, and how I define it. Now that we’ve gone through that, let’s talk about this new method of story crafting I created accidentally for the conference while planning my talk on story structure. Yes, I did plan it late at...Read More

I don't identify tension as the stakes of a story. The stakes are the stakes. They can be high or low. That's sort of dependent on the story itself and its ins and outs. But tension is more akin to potential energy.Read More

This year has been a nail-biter from the start to the finish. Lots of ups and downs and life changes and figuring things out. To bullet point it rather than write out everything long form (because you’d be here for hours): Released Fallen in January Had my shoulder surgery in March and was able to...Read More

As we hit the middle of NaNoWriMo, many of you are shooting for your 1,667 – 2,000 words per day and trying to meet your deadlines. Fear of falling behind and the constant, looming sense that you aren’t writing fast enough dogs many writers at this point in the process, and I want to step...Read More

One of the things that I realized was never taught in any of my creative writing courses in college or even discussed a lot in most of the writing groups I’ve been in is exactly what it’s like to work with a professional editor. So, since I have been on both sides of that experience,...Read More

Writers are typically categorized into two camps: plotting and pantsing. And never the twain shall meet. These two categories have been around as long as I’ve been in the industry (over fifteen years now), and they’re talked about in countless books about writing and publishing as the two primary methods used to craft a book....Read More

This is part one of a three-part series I’m doing over the next three weeks where I talk about book taglines, book blurbs, and marketing hooks for authors. I know marketing is about as exciting as watching paint dry for a lot of authors–either that or they feel like it’s going to bite them–but I...Read More