Carrying on with my Sleigh Read from last week, I’ve invited a girlfriend in the sleigh with me – Jess Riley, one of my favorite women’s fiction authors. Do yourself a favor and put both of her books in your stocking- Driving Sideways and her new novel, All the Lonely People. It’s such a clever premise…
Category: Creativity
Next Big Thing: An RV and a Mystery/Thriller
When an author girlfriend asks me to do something, I try to do it. If it were in the real world, say asking if I had any wine or chocolate in my house because they were PMSing, of course I’d share. When it’s online and the girlfriend is Marilyn Brant, (A Summer in Europe), I…
Kicking off the Sleigh Read Tour
It’s an honor to be the first driver in the Sleigh Read tour. My sleigh is shiny red, so glossy you can see winding down the road a mile away, led by beautiful Clydesdale horses featured in my Sleigh Ride: A Winter Anthology story, “Snowflakes and Stones.” I’ve borrowed the hand-made purple scarf featured in…
Keep Calm and Write On or Drama Begets Drama?
Is it possible to be at your best creatively when your life is at its worst? So much has happened lately that disrupts life as we know it. Hurricane Sandy on the east coast, with many writer friends without power, which meant not only no wi-fi or computer to write on, but you could be…
NaNoWriMo CraZyYo…But This is How I Do It
Quick refresher: I’ve been published since 2006 with three publishers – the latter one I started myself after I got my rights back on my first novel, The Stork Reality. Second novel, Dating da Vinci, is still with my second publisher (though thankfully I retained movie rights because it would make an adorable movie –don’t…
The Dark Side of Being a Writer
I’m not sure one “chooses to be a writer.” It seems more often that writing chooses the writer. Would a child who later becomes a vet tell people, “I can’t help myself! I couldn’t stop fixing all the wounded animals.” They may have been fond of animals. But were they obsessed with it? Would the…
Something Wicked Short Stories and Video
At Halloween, we all get to play make-believe. Last year my tween daughter and her best friend were zombie pageant girls. My eldest son was a werewolf for two years in a row so he could hide and scare trick or treaters. In stories, we get to experience those things “for real.” And as a…
Is it time to crack yourself open?
If happiness is life’s greatest reward, then for the creative soul, it requires giving ourselves permission to fully create. Think about it: Often we live from our base self, ego speaking to other egos, superficial, small talk, and busy work. We’re hopefully acting civil, moving through our days with tasks both menial and major, but…
Should you respond to criticism online?
In the last two weeks, I’ve witnessed two New York Times bestselling authors caught up in online drama related to book reviews. As a writer myself who has my work out there for others to judge, I feel their pain. Even though we’re supposed to have a “thick skin,” no one wants to see our…
How badly do you want it?
Yesterday my editor and I were discussing projects, and she brought up a great point about writers – getting their writing done on time largely depends on how badly they want it. How important is writing to them? To get their story or book out by a certain time? Largely this holds true for our…
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