Why I Don’t Read Reviews*

Mpepper/ April 21, 2021/ Think Pieces

*Of my books, anyway Once, while at a writing conference, I heard author Charlene Harris say: “Never read your reviews. That is a poisonous pit.” And I agree. Over time I’ve learned that, if I read a good review of one of my books, I’m happy for a little while. But if I read a bad one, it stays with

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Okay, but…

Mpepper/ April 15, 2021/ Uncategorized

This is about to be random, but I feel like I need to write about it somewhere, and since this is my blog, here it is. I’m re-reading The Once and Future King by T. H. White. I first read it when I was 13 or 14 years old because I loved, loved, loved all things Arthurian (and Robin Hood—The

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Television: Merlin (Seasons 1 & 2)

Mpepper/ April 10, 2021/ Reviews

Very late to this party, but my daughter requested to watch this series. She’d seen an episode of it at a friend’s house once, had immediately pinpointed Merlin and Arthur as a couple, and had been curious ever since. So we started watching it as part of our regular girl time. For those unfamiliar: Merlin is a BBC television series

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Current Projects

Mpepper/ March 12, 2021/ Writing

Recently, I finished a fan fiction piece I’d been working on. I enjoyed writing it, but it was something of a relief to be done because I have so many other things going on. Still, I chose to focus on and finish that particular project first because 1. it was close to finished anyway, so it was the fastest way

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Not a Failure

Mpepper/ March 8, 2021/ Think Pieces

I recently decided to move ahead with self-publishing The Ghosts of Marshley Park. And almost immediately was met by two differing responses online: people cheering me on and people who wished me well in a way that absolutely suggested the passive-aggressive tone of, “You weren’t good enough for ‘real’ publishing, eh?” To be fair, tone is super difficult to discern

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Timeline/Perspective

Mpepper/ February 22, 2021/ Flashbacks, Think Pieces, Writing Advice

Years ago, when I was feeling bad about my lack of success as a writer, I made a timeline of my writing history to remind myself of how far I’d come. I don’t know where that timeline is now, or even what software I used to make it, but I do still find looking back at my journey gives me

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Writing is Bad for My Mental Health

Mpepper/ February 19, 2021/ Think Pieces

I realized something the other day. Honestly, it’s a wonder it has taken me this long to come to this conclusion, but the nature of our society is to encourage us to chase things… even when doing so isn’t healthy. I’ve been writing for a long time. I mean, pick a benchmark: I started writing my first stories when I

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Television: Bridgerton 1-4

Mpepper/ February 16, 2021/ Reviews

So I’m halfway through this series or season or whatever (I feel like the usual ways to describe television no longer have meaning) when I realize this is the book—that is, the first book in this series—I was “warned” about from various sources. Okay, that was really convoluted, so let me try again. I didn’t realize “Bridgerton” was the name

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I’m Not Right for This World

Mpepper/ February 1, 2021/ Think Pieces

Here is what I’m discovering—or maybe it’s what keeps getting thrust into my face from all sides. I don’t and can’t function within the typical constructs of, er… Well, the business world, anyway. The best job I ever had was atypical. I worked in a little family-owned shop, and the place really was like a big family. Like something out

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Writers as Competition?

Mpepper/ January 29, 2021/ Think Pieces, Writing Advice

I came late to Twitter’s “Harsh Writing Advice” trend, but apparently someone posted that other writers are your competition, and then got slammed, and then deleted the tweet, but of course (because Internet) it’s still around in various formats. People piled on this guy for posting this, and… given that he didn’t really explain his logic (if there was any),

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