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
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
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
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
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),
This question has come up a lot just recently, so I decided to write a post about it: “How do you name your characters?” I prefer to have my characters introduce themselves. Sometimes they do that right away, meaning I know their name first thing. Sometimes, though, they’re a bit shy about it, and we play a game of Rumpelstiltskin.
A couple years ago, a literary agent was very interested in one of my manuscripts. I, naturally, was excited about this. But then, quite suddenly it seemed, she grew a bit cold in our correspondences. Eventually, I was given a form rejection. I have a private Twitter list where I keep all the agents I’ve been querying. I add and
I don’t know how to begin to explain the whole sex-and-gender thing. To do so means to discuss things about myself that I don’t feel I owe anyone, and it sets me up for backlash from just about all sides: my family, the community, a world that’s ready to both label me and tell me I’m “doing it wrong.” Here
I first started reading Victoria Holt books as a pre-teen. I wasn’t allowed to read anything with explicit sex, so I read a lot of historical romances of the chaste type. Regency romances were a favorite, as were gothic novels by the likes of du Maurier and Holt. Even if sex was present, it was off the page, and I
Umm… okay. So that was fun. I guess? Only the first two episodes of WandaVision are out, and it’s clear that there is more going on than at first meets the eye. Which is a good thing, since I think—fun as this is—it would tire out kind of quickly. For those not in the know, WandaVision is Disney+’s latest Marvel