Well, not complete complete, as it still needs editing, but the first draft is officially DONE! I started The Summoning 3 months ago during the zombie apocalypse. At the time, I was struggling with a different novel, the first of a new series, and it wasn’t coming together. But then, I hurt my eye and […]
Writing Journey
The Writer’s Journey: Your Guide to Writing During a Global Pandemic
Shakespeare allegedly wrote King Lear while under quarantine. (And he didn’t even have a typewriter back then, much less a computer. He had to write everything by hand!) So, you should have no trouble getting that book done, right? (You know–the one you’ve been talking about forever.) You’re stuck at home anyway, so why not […]
The Writing Journey: The Legend of Happy-Faced Spiders
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 […]
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 […]