Unhappy holidays? Strategies for coping with grief

As an author who writes about grief, specifically a loss that occurs during the holidays, I'd be remiss if I didn't take a moment to talk about how to cope with the pain of loss...

Read More

Holiday cookies (and challenging gender roles)

To mark the release of her new YA contemporary novel CHASTE, Angela Felsted invited bloggers to share a favorite holiday cookie recipe. What does this have to do with her book?...

Read More

Twisted

What twisted thing did I do to earn money for college? What author helped me meet the love of my life? What's my odd writing quirk? Discover the answers to all these questions...

Read More

Three dozen day 12/12/12

I'm calling today "three dozen day," in honor of the date 12/12/12. It will be a long while until we have another symmetrical date like today's . We'll of course have 1/3/13...

Read More

New release!

I'm excited to announce the release of The Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal 2012 anthology! My fiction vignette, New Hues, was selected to appear in this wonderful volume,...

Read More

Getting real about faith and doubt

"Writing religion is risky. Beliefs and values are so core to our identities, our vision of the good life, and these beliefs often come into conflict. And yet teens need to see...

Read More

What every Whovian needs this season

The holiday season is upon us, and that means it's time to... crack out the paper, scissors, exacto knife and hole punch to craft some out-of-this-world SNOWFLAKES. To get...

Read More

"I've got a history..."

My great-grandpa trained horses for Ringling Bros. Yesterday, my nephew asked for help gathering enough family history to write a ten-page college paper. I quickly piped up...

Read More

Great tool for improving show/tell balance

Click to add me to Goodreads! Have you been told there's a little too much telling in your novel? Want to remedy it? Then this is the book for you! In Show and Tell in a...

Read More

The perfection myth

Maybe you're just coming off the high of "winning" NaNo and realize your first draft is, alas, full of flaws. Maybe you've drawn up a holiday gift-buying list and realize there's...

Read More

Too much characterization? Too little? Prioritize

Is there such a thing as too much characterization? By that, I mean, can you invest too much time into developing some characters to the point of derailing a project? I'd argue...

Read More

Characterization and the Gift of Face Blindness

by  C.M. Keller When Laurel first talked to me about doing a guest post, one of the things she mentioned as a topic was characterization. What interested her is how often...

Read More

Make your stories sing

Music has been a big piece of my life for as long as I can remember. My sibs and I all took piano lessons. There were school choirs, the radio, and as anyone raised in the Christian...

Read More

Supporting writers: six tips

I'm fortunate to have great support both inside and outside writer/author circles. But that outside support didn't come simply from wishing for it. I had learn how to be open...

Read More

My voyage to voice

During the spring of sixth grade, something very strange happened to me. Whenever I opened my mouth to speak, the sound that came out could be breathy and girlish, hoarse, or...

Read More

Ditching "platform," embracing venue

I've invested more time in social media in the past month than ever, and yet am coming to the realization I'm doing something wrong. I really couldn't put my finger on what was...

Read More

Encouraging, giving

When NaNo time comes around every year, I honestly get a bit blue. It seems like everyone and his brother can churn out thousands of words a day, and I just can't. I never could....

Read More

It's your day to master tricky possessives

I've been reading more Indie authors these days, now that I'm one myself. One error I keep seeing is confusion about its/it's, who's/whose, etc. It seemed that a quick primer...

Read More

Aspirations

Quick quiz: When I was a kid, which did I want to be when I grew up? A. An architect morguefile.com B. A teacher morguefile.com C. A magazine editor photo by Raphael...

Read More

Spooky

image from morguefile.com I feel like I'm having a very authentically spooky Halloween this year--in the dark, with lots of candles. Yeah, we got socked by Hurricane Sandy's...

Read More

Getting Real with Religion

by Leigh Talbert Moore Author, The Truth About Faking When I started writing The Truth About Faking, it wasn’t going to be as lighthearted as it turned out.  I planned...

Read More

Let setting emerge from character

I'm over at Melissa Sarno's blog today, talking about a topic dear to my heart--"Let Setting Emerge from Character." I not only explain how I developed and researched settings...

Read More

Back to basics: Plot for dummies

Yesterday was my very first school visit, in which I discussed editing and writing with my daughter's mixed 3rd-4th grade class (her private school has mostly mixed-grade classrooms...

Read More

Edgy and clean?

Today I'm over at Karen Akin's blog discussing a tough topic--writing across the secular/sacred genre divide in a post entitled "Edgy? Clean? Writing across genre divides." As...

Read More

Lookie here...

Fellow Rabble Writer Madeline Sharples invited me to take part in The Look Challenge for writers. The premise is simple: find a passage in your manuscript or book that contains...

Read More

Why dads matter

moreguefile.com Today I'm over at Tyrean Martinson's blog, discussing "Why dads matter." This is a helpful post for anyone who has read Never Gone and wondered why I put my...

Read More

Going global

Today I have the exciting privilege to be a featured guest at New Zealand blog YAlicious (going international makes me all kinds of excited!). Melissa and Brenda are...

Read More

Six ways to support writers

Today I'm over at Lynn Simpson's blog, Connecting Stories, talking about the importance of support, both as a theme in my novel, and in my own life as a creative person. I also...

Read More

Homo-what?

They lurk in your manuscript, undetected by spell check, ready to ruin your reputation. Worse, you might not know that these devils do not belong. What are these twisted,...

Read More

Humbled, exalted

Yesterday afternoon my daughter and I watched what I believed would be a cute tween film, The Greening of Whitney Brown. About ten minutes in, I felt bad for Brooke Shields and...

Read More

Self-editing: is it as bad as home perms?

morguefile.com A question I get a lot is whether I  skipped hiring an editor when publishing my novel, since I'm already a professional editor. Surely I just did it myself. My...

Read More