Pippa claims she is “helping” with laundry *head desk* At least in the U.S., this is a week where we celebrate all we are thankful for (or at least it is supposed to be). In our modern world, I believe it is easy to take WAY too much for granted. Hey, I’m completely guilty of […]

Image from the movie “Office Space” Sales can be scary, so today I’m going to give you three ways to instantly improve your writing and also sell more books. I’m blessed to have a broad base of experience/expertise which includes corporate consulting and branding. I also spent years in sales and can honestly say, Coffee really is for […]

Image via “Blade Runner” Horror, back in the day, represented some of the greatest works of literature. In my POV, it still does. Sadly, however, horror ran into a branding problem in the 70s and 80s and many began conflating slasher-hack-up-busty-coeds with horror. Sure, slasher flicks are horror but not all horror are slasher flicks. […]

Motivation is at the core of everything human related. It’s the reason for the common axiom in law enforcement: Before you look at outlaws, look at in-laws. We humans LIKE to believe we are super complicated when, by and large, we are anything but. Articulating character motivation can help us when it comes to better […]

Guilt is a tricky bugger, even in real life. What is guilt? Why does it have so much power? How can we use guilt in story and why would we? Before we unpack this sticky subject let’s begin, at least, with a definition. Obviously, the story will dictate which definition we use. We might even […]

To prologue or not to prologue? That is the question. Does our story actually need one, or are we cool to just dive in? Great question. Prologues can be tricky. The problem with the prologue is it has kind of gotten a bad rap over the years with agents and editors. They generally hate them. […]

For most of my life, being ‘right’ was my single greatest priority. Years ago, I believed I knew everything. Okay, that’s a lie. More like a couple weeks ago I believed I knew everything. More lies. Dang it! Truth is, this morning I knew everything then got some caffeine and realized I was completely full […]

Seriously. Nothing is THAT funny… Optimism is essential for a healthy life, healthy vision in particular…sort of like Vitamin A. In fact, for the purposes of today’s post, optimism IS Vitamin A for AWESOME. Yet, especially since the pandemic made landfall we ALL know things have been far from awesome. A lot has downright sucked. […]

World-building is essential for every story, but obviously genre will have a major influence on how much our story requires. Setting, though not technically world-building, can also add an entirely new level of dimension to our stories. World-building is setting, but taken to a whole new level. This might be a personal pet peeve of […]

Today’s watercolor. Formula, formula, formula. Today, we’re going to continue on from last week’s post, Writing Rules: How & Why We Play ‘Follow the Reader’ and keep parsing Commenter Sonja’s excellent question. For those who have slept since then… I get the feeling as a new author that we’re being encouraged to adhere to certain […]