Chocolate and the Endangered Species

I have been a chocolate lover my entire life. Unfortunately, I was tortured as a child because I was not allowed to have chocolate because I was allergic to it. Turns out I never was allergic to chocolate itself, but chocolate when paired with other things. Good thing I’m a purist and love plain chocolate the best. 🙂 By the … Read More

And So It Begins … Again

When I saw the oncologist last week we didn’t have the results from the CT Scan. I saw my regular physician this week and he had the results. And I’ll be candid … they aren’t good. The scan revealed what I already knew — that the nodule on my neck was not the only lymphoma mass that would be found. … Read More

Hackers Not Welcome Here

A few weeks ago my main website got hacked in a big way. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, my site was busy spamming the internet because it had been connected into a network of sites all directing links to various other sites, ultimately trying to either infect the poor soul on the royal goose chase with some sort of virus, or … Read More

Renewal of a Quest

My quest for health is paved with good intentions — and erratic execution. Last year this time, I was recovering from one knee surgery and getting ready for a second, but health wise, I was doing better and better. Then I lost a bit of steam as we slid into fall and have taken a few stabs at getting back … Read More

Change in Values

It has been awhile since I updated this blog … and for good reason — there hasn’t been anything to say. Two years ago, April 10th, I had my last chemo treatment. File that under “WOW, Time flies!!” Today, I had my quarterly blood-letting to check to see how things are going. In some respects, those two years have passed … Read More

Do You Believe?

A couple nights ago, I took a rare moment and watched a movie. Not something I have an opportunity to do very often because I’m juggling so many different things, but it had been a rough week and I needed to decompress a bit. I chose Little Boy, which is set in World War II times, and is primarily about … Read More

Warning Deadline Approaches

Along with juggling quite a few things I can’t talk about, I have been working diligently on my latest WIP, a dark upper YA novel, Speak No Evil. I am excited about how this book is shaping up and how close I am to the finish line with it. Then I happened to have a conversation with my literary manager … Read More

Omniscient Point of View

Last week I talked about head hopping and why we shouldn’t and I mentioned the omniscient POV (Point of View) as not being a part of the discussion. Head hopping means jumping from character to character and changing viewpoint. Omniscient is an unseen/unknown narrator who knows what everyone is thinking or feeling. I had the following question asked of me, … Read More

Why Not Head Hop?

In addition to working on getting my current WIP, Speak No Evil polished up and ready for submission, I have been working with several authors and guiding them through the same process, and reviewing other manuscripts and providing assessments. While assessing the manuscripts, I’m looking at voicing, structure, flow, the strength of the work, including active vs. passive writing. One … Read More

Make the Future and What IF?

Writers tend to deal in the realm of “what if” … What if a baby wizard was orphaned and survived being killed by the darkest wizard of them all? What if that baby had to grow up and ultimately kill the dark wizard in order to save the wizarding world from destruction? A couple what ifs like that and an … Read More

The Journey: Writing and Weight Loss

In my day job, I do work that involves logic and things following a path. 1+2 always = 3 and never 5. So there is a part of me that wants other aspects of my life to follow the same logical path. And they never do. I have two primary focuses at the moment: Getting healthy and finishing my current … Read More

YWS: How Authors Get Story Ideas

One of the questions that most fiction authors are asked at one point or another is “how did you get the idea for the story?” Sometimes this is a hard question to answer. The easy answer is: LIFE Actually, there are several ways in which an author can come up with an idea for a book. Through reading or hearing … Read More