From Mount Vernon Estates to The Smithsonian: How the Setting of Buried

“No estate in United America is more pleasantly situated than this.” – George Washington, 1790 Ever wonder where an author gets an idea for a story? The idea for Buried Deception came in 2005 when my family took a three week homeschool tour up the East coast. Mount Vernon was one of our stops. I [...]

Marketing: 10, 100, and 1000 Dollar Work

So you’ve got a book coming out and the marketing director at your publisher calls you up, very excited about your book. You’re excited too, until she tells you all the things she wants you to do to promote your book. Put up a web site. Create a blog. Make a Facebook fan page and [...]

Using Your Bachelor of Arts Degree to Launch Online Writing Careers

When you earned your bachelor of arts degree, you may not have been quite sure of what you were going to do with it. The intent of the degree is that it will allow students to explore a range of subjects, some of which may be familiar, and others that may be entirely unknown. In [...]

The Pomodoro Technique®: Productivity for Writers, One Tomato at a Time

Like most writers, I’m constantly busy. If you’re serious about writing, there’s a never-ending to-do list: blog, read, review, draft, edit, absorb, learn, redraft. But there are times when ‘busy’ turns into ‘overwhelming.’ When I’m trying to complete a big freelance project and write a first draft at the same time, for example. The level [...]

Author Mari McCarthy on No Time to Write

No time to write? Put it in your journal! A writer is for life. That’s why many who love writing find themselves now and then unable to devote time to it. There may be portions of your life when it’s no more possible to give serious attention to writing than it is to walk on [...]

Getting Past the Excuses

A while ago, Gina encouraged us to stop making excuses, put aside the distractions, and just write. Sound advice. I’d like to expand on her topic, and offer a suggestion on one way folks might make this a reality. As Gina said, writing is HARD. If you’re writing a novel, it might seem next to [...]

A Sound Among the Trees Book Giveaway!

I love the way Susan Meissner weaves history with present day in an engaging tale relevant to both time periods! If you would like to win this book, tell me what is your favorite time period OR who you’d most like to BE in history! Contest open to US residents only! It is time for [...]

Where Do You Autograph a Book?

I love autographed books from the author and keep them on my shelves for years. In yesterday’s mail, I received a new book. The author and I corresponded about it through email and I asked her to autograph it. I was surprised at where she signed my book—on the inside of the front cover. In [...]

Don’t Let Anyone Steal the Music of Your Soul!

Last weekend I saw the musical Memphis, and I was blown away. The music, the dancing, the story… By the end I was in tears. Sure, the storyline took me on an emotional journey of two star-crossed lovers in Memphis, a segregated, racist city, in the 1950s, a time when blacks and whites didn’t mix. It [...]

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks

Like many aspiring novelists, I tend to collect “how to write” books. I think I have about a dozen on my bookshelf and have read another twenty from the library. All have been useful, inspiring, and informative in their own right, but only a chosen few have made it to my “must have” status. Story [...]

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