I taught myself to read when I was three years old because I wanted to write stories so badly. That’s how my About page begins. However, what I didn’t share is what I did BEFORE I could read. You see, I had the craving even then to tell stories. I wanted so badly to capture the words […]
Writing Journey
The Story Behind the Story: “The Evil That Was Done”
The Evil That Was Done is the third book in my award-winning Secrets of Redemption series (it also had the title “What Was Done,” more on that below). It has the distinction of being the first third book in my first series. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like writing a series, I […]
The Writing Journey: My New Office!
I have a dirty little secret to share. For years, my office was in my bedroom. While there are many things I love about my house, one thing I don’t love is that it’s only two bedrooms. Sure, they are HUGE bedrooms (our house has a very open floor plan with tons of windows and […]
The Writing Journey: What Will People Say?
If you’ve read some of my earlier Writing Journey’s, you know that my fiction writing was a bit of a dirty secret. Which meant I didn’t share the fact I wrote fiction, much less the books themselves, with a lot of people. One of the most interesting things that happened once I started publishing my […]
The Writing Journey: Adventures in Cooking
Every now and then it’s important to venture out of the writing cave and do some other creative pursuit. In this case, I thought I’d try cooking. So, before I go any further, let me explain that I’m not the cook in my household. My hubby is. Except for days he has to work late. […]
The Writing Journey: A Day In The Life
Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness. Wayne Dyer Writing a novel (at least for me) is never a straight line. There are lots of false starts, going backwards, […]
The Writing Journey: 7 Things I’m Celebrating from 2018
One of the rituals I do in December is to take some time to pause and reflect on the past year before putting a plan together for the new one. Why do I do that? Because as a society, we don’t celebrate our successes nearly enough. We’re all so very busy. We cross off one […]
The Story Behind The Story: “This Happened to Jessica”
Years and years ago, the idea behind It Began With a Lie flickered into life. The premise of a book, returning to a childhood home that may also be haunted, ended up, well, haunting me for decades. I shared the story around how I finally got myself to sit down and write It Began With […]
The Writing Journey: Sometimes You Have to Regroup (plus, an update on “This Happened to Jessica”)
In the book “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamont, there’s a funny scene about writers accepting criticism. I’m paraphrasing here, but she describes how she has friends who read drafts of her books and then call her to give her feedback. She talks about how great it is that they’ve taken the time to thoughtfully […]
The Story Behind the Story: “It Began With a Lie”
When I started It Began With a Lie, the timing was anything but convenient. It was March of 2015. If you’ve been following my Writing Journey series, you’ll notice that was roughly midpoint between when I sat in ICU alone with my mother, convinced it was her last day on earth, and when she actually […]