Pre-Order The Ghosts of Marshley Park!

Mpepper/ September 9, 2021/ Announcements

Coming October 19! If you want to get the book on the day it comes out, pre-order now from your favorite indie bookstore! (Ebook available exclusively through Amazon Kindle—including via Unlimited!)

Is It YA?

Mpepper/ September 7, 2021/ Writing, Writing Advice

I get a lot of questions about age categories for books. It seems the lines have become somewhat blurred as more and more adults pick up young adult, and even middle grade, novels. So many writers think that, based on their characters’ ages, their book must be x, y, or z. But character age is not the only—or even the

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Movies: Let Them All Talk

Mpepper/ September 4, 2021/ Reviews

It’s easy to tell from the get-go that this movie has no script. As a writer, I don’t think that’s a good thing. As a viewer… I think it could have been interesting? But it wasn’t. This movie stars Meryl Streep as Alice, a writer due to turn in her latest manuscript any day now. She’s also supposed to receive

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Thoughts on Loki (and Loki)

Mpepper/ July 31, 2021/ Reviews, Think Pieces

Once upon a time, there was a little “boy.” He had been adopted by a powerful family, the family of a king, in fact. This boy was meant to be a prince. But his greatest bond was with his adopted mother. He delighted in time spent with her, and in “feminine” things. (His mother was a great warrior in her

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Books: Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow #3) by Rainbow Rowell

Mpepper/ July 19, 2021/ Reviews

I wrote a short review on Goodreads immediately after finishing this book. Then, a few hours later, I filmed a video review that rambles a bit. So here I’m going to attempt to organize my thoughts a little more coherently. For context, let me begin by saying I adore Carry On and like Wayward Son. Though the second book was,

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FanFic Ask Game

Mpepper/ June 19, 2021/ Writing

I found this online and thought it would be fun to answer some fan fiction questions. I’ve chosen A Game of Hearts, which is kind of cheating since it’s actually a collection of seven stories, but I also think it’s my best-known and most ambitious fic. It’s the one people are most likely to ask about, I think? Anyway, buckle

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Falcon and Winter Soldier Improv

Mpepper/ June 13, 2021/ Writing

We did a family improv night and one of the prompts was: Sam, Bucky and Zemo waiting in line for a roller coaster. The kids are still getting the hang of improv, so they weren’t able to take the scene very far. I, on the other hand, may have gone beyond… I ended up sending my daughter a series of

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New Release!

Mpepper/ May 28, 2021/ Announcements

Available for pre-order now, out on June 1! This ebook contains three previously uncollected short stories and five heretofore unpublished plays. The stories “Aptera” and “Origami of the Heart” are available elsewhere online, but “The Zodiac Clock” has been out of print for a while now and is reintroduced in this compilation. (Fans of Peter Stoller should like that one.)

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A Blockbuster Memory

Mpepper/ May 22, 2021/ Reviews

Tonight we watched The Last Blockbuster. It was… cute. Nostalgic. It didn’t remind me of my childhood because we always rented movies from the grocery store; our Kroger had its own rental counter, and that was way easier than going to some other location. So I didn’t do Blockbuster until I was away at uni. And even then, I didn’t

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Books: We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra

Mpepper/ May 19, 2021/ Reviews

I didn’t like it, then I did, then I didn’t again. The set-up: high school sophomore Jonathan Hopkirk (“Jo,” age 15 at the start of the book but 16 by the end of it) and repeat senior Adam “Kurl” Kurlansky (18) are assigned by their English Lit teacher to write letters to one another. Jo idolizes Walt Whitman, dresses in

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