Not many writers can write full time…one has to eat after all. As a result many of us find ourselves juggling a number of hats and very often the writing is the first activity to get put on the back burner when life gets busy. With a deadline cracking its whip at my back, I have been forced to stick…
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The Right Name
After one of my books is approved for publication I become almost maniacal checking Amazon to see when they make it available for sale. Nothing was different with my latest YA novel, Barberry Hill. I searched for the title and, what you see above is what I got: ‘Showing results for Burberry Hill.’ Wait what? No!
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My Travel Bug
View of one section of Ho Chi Minh City If you know me, you know I love to travel. I tell people I will never be rich because every time I have two pennies to spare I am on a plane. My most recent trip was to Vietnam with a stop in Dubai on the way back. Vietnam was the…
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Murder Anyone?
This may sound cynical but I believe that most of us are capable of murder. The question is how far would the average Joe–not a psychopath or otherwise mentally ill person–have to be pushed in order to actually go through with murdering someone?
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Fiction-the Original “Alternate Facts”
Happy New Year and best wishes for 2017. We have been off to an interesting start and without introducing any partisan politics at all I feel obliged to ask a question. In a world where we have incessant access to news (real and ‘alternate’), do authors still have a job? Why should we as a society read fiction?
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Google–my new best friend
I’m old enough to remember when you had to go find an actual book, preferably the Encyclopedia Britannica, if you wanted to research a topic, but I would be lying if I said that I’m nostalgic of that particular part of my past.
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Once Upon a Time
“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern… This line, the first in Charlotte’s Webb is one of the most famous children’s book first lines. We immediately are interested in what is coming next, we connect with Fern’s concern, and get a sense of the urgency of Wilbur’s plight. You can probably assign varying intonations to it. Fern might be…
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Snag a Magazine Article
My August 2016 Novelspaces Post on building your author platform with magazine articles.
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Reveal, Advance, or Get Out of My Story
I recently wrote a short story and decided to submit it to a publication. I hired our own novelspaces co-ordinator, Liane, who did a brilliant line edit on it and I was about to submit it when I re-read the submission requirements. Maximum word count: 3,500 words. Yikes! My story was pushing 5,000 words. I had to drop a third…
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Be the Enabler
Newton’s laws of motion are the sort of laws that must have seemed like common sense once he came up them. The first one states that “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.” So if you are moving you stay moving unless something…