This is just a story in which I try to make sense of, or come to terms with, yet another disappointment. Late last year into early this year, I was querying agents with THE GHOSTS OF MARSHLEY PARK. I got such great feedback, and yet… ultimately, no one took it. Most of the feedback boiled down to: This is great,
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
I had an epiphany yesterday. About myself and my work and what it means for my future in general. The bottom line is: I do things for me. And that… works against me in the wider world. Allow me to explain. I enjoy writing. I enjoy making YouTube videos. I enjoy reading tarot and astrology charts. These are things I’m
I recently was made aware of a publishing conversation that occurred on Twitter last month. (I know, I’m so out of the loop.) It was about ableism in publishing and there not being space for neurodivergent (ND) authors. I don’t know if that’s true; I’ve never really thought about it until now, when it was brought to my attention. I
*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
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
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
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),