The magazine for Dramatists Guild members—which is called The Dramatist Quarterly—asks questions of a member in each issue. Since it’s unlikely I’ll ever be asked for the magazine, I’ve decided to answer the questions here. What was an early, memorable theatrical experience? In the 90s, my mom worked at Sears, which had a Ticketmaster outlet, which meant she could get
This is a perennial question in the writing community: is getting a Master’s worth the time and expense? So I’m going to talk about my experience and point of view. Your mileage, as ever, may vary. I got my undergrad degree in Radio-Television-Film (RTF is what we called it) Communication from the University of Texas at Austin. My focus was
I’m writing again, hopping from project to project, but I think this is finally the one I’m going to focus on. It’s set in AElit (see the tab above for context) and the working title is The Lost God. Below are excerpts I posted on Bluesky for various prompts. They’re not in any particular order in terms of the chronology
Four years ago today, I received the email that broke me. I know the agent did not intend to ruin my life, but the stress fractures had already formed after years of writing and querying and getting close but never quite landing where I wanted to be. The email read: You have written a solid manuscript that was a delight
You’re on a road trip. You don’t know the exact destination, but you trust you’ll know it when you see it. In the meantime, you do have some thoughts about the kind of place you’d like to end up. Maybe you want to be near water. Or you want a hot, dry climate. Maybe you’re set on someplace urban. Alternatively,
Sure, there’s another week left in 2024, but I can’t imagine what could happen to change my feelings about the year in general. It was a bad one for me. I barely wrote and didn’t publish anything. I was asked to run for the local school board then backstabbed by the people who encouraged me to get involved in the
Yet another Twitter (or X, if you prefer) post asking about paying for a manuscript edit before querying and whether it (a) makes the story better and/or (b) increases your chances of landing an agent. Way back when (and I remember those days because I’m old), you could send a manuscript off to an agent and, if they saw potential
Because this subject has blown up recently, and I have feelings about it. I’ve never read a book with a playlist printed in it. I doubt I read the kinds of books and/or authors that would feel compelled to include a playlist. So… yeah. There’s something somewhat juvenile about that, something that (to me) screams “newbie author.” High school mix
The house we moved into after our first child was born was haunted. We didn’t know it when we bought it, but it became clear not long after. It was a split-level ranch, which on its own probably should have alerted us. When you walked through the front door, one flight of steps to the right went up and another
I have been informed by my teens that proper punctuation in texts is seen as passive-aggressive. Sadly, I simply cannot stop myself from typing full words and using punctuation (unless I’m trying to be funny). So, while I acknowledge my feels on these may be old-fashioned, and understand that the point of any communication is to get one’s meaning across,