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 […]

Writing rules tend to make newbies break out in hives. New writers, as I once did, believe that the word ‘rules’ automatically implies creativity is somehow stymied and worry the art will not flow. Today, hopefully, I’ll show you not only why writing rules are so important, but why the rules are not necessarily about […]

Neurodivergent is a buzz word that’s taken off in the past decade. The term applies to a broad spectrum of people who are, for whatever reason, not normal. Those who ‘suffer’ from ADD, ADHD, OCD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, etc. are all on the list. For those who don’t know or haven’t guessed, I’m on the autistic […]

Mastery is a concept that many believe is subjective, especially when it comes to writing (novels in particular). There’s an insidious belief that what constitutes good or bad is a matter of popular opinion. Quality isn’t something we can measure. This belief—that mastery is a matter of taste—has been around as long as the publishing […]

Original Image courtesy of David HT Flikr Creative Commons… Fast drafting is a technique that I have used successfully on quite a few books. What is fast drafting? Fast drafting is when we sit down and write a book within a given amount of time. It can be as short as two weeks, but I […]

Boutique businesses are on the rise in the digital age. What does ’boutique’ mean? Essentially, small is now big. Instead of people relying solely on a handful of major brands, the marketplace has shifted from the macro to the micro. Yes, plenty of people still pick up a Brad Thor in the airport. Just like […]

‘Gaslighting’ is a term I’ve used for YEARS. Oddly, however, until recently, almost nobody knew what the heck I was talking about. I would have to explain about the movie from the 1940s, based off a 1938 play Gas Light. Anyway, it would just turn into a rambling conversation almost as awkward as when I […]

Over 40 countries have a day to celebrate ‘mother’ and ‘mother figures’ with some variation of Mother’s Day. While millions of people will send flowers and gifts and take their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. out for a fancy day, other folks might struggle…a lot. People can feel a wide variety of emotions when it comes […]