Today is wet, rainy and cold. A week ago, everyone was wearing short sleeves. There’s a saying about Texas weather — if you don’t like it, wait a minute and it will change. The same should be true of weather in fiction. It’s easy to overlook weather and default to sunny and temperate weather throughout, […]
Hi everyone! This is a bit late. I usually do a post the evening before a book launches, where I wax philosophical about what I learned from writing the book, and where this whole crazy writing journey has taken me. My book came out a week and a half ago. Due to a number of […]
I’ve been re-watching an old 80’s sitcom that recently popped up on one of the streaming services I subscribe to. One thing I never noticed while watching it when I was a kid was the unusual use of the passage of time. This probably wasn’t so jarring watching episodes sporadically, but watching them back to […]
I’m always on the lookout for a new fun toy for Sean and Addi, the pair of tuxedo kittens we adopted. (Yes, they do both look like smaller versions of Ruffles, the cat that occasionally shows up in my Bean to Bar Mysteries.) Example items are from Amazon, and these are affiliate links. Crochet […]
My Bean to Bar Mysteries are set on Galveston Island. How could I celebrate that setting without having a list of everything I like to bring for a perfect beach day. (Of course, there’s so much to do at the beach, there’s no way I could cover everyone’s perfect day. Just mine.) Example items are […]
I know this is something I’ve talked about before, but I just want to re-emphasize the need to be kind to yourself when it comes to judging first drafts — especially if it is one of your first projects. It’s easy to discourage yourself, right at the time when you should be proud of finishing […]
This section of my novel writing class at UTA is covering techniques for writing different kinds of scenes. Often, when I teach this class, students will insist that their book doesn’t need one of the scene types — typically either action or relationship building scenes. I think new writers tend to shy away from whatever scene […]
A scene is a unit of conflict experienced by the characters. It can cover a whole chapter, or several scenes can be strung together to make a chapter. It can sometimes be difficult to figure out where scenes and chapters in your fiction should start and stop. It can help to structure them around scenes and […]
Jake collects playing cards. We always buy a deck when we travel. Sometimes that’s easier said than done – especially when most of a trip is planned out with other folks, or if we’re on a cruise stop for just an afternoon. He’s also collected interesting playing cards at thrift shops and game stores. Sometimes […]
What is it about chocolate that captures the popular imagination? From Charlie’s Golden Ticket to happiness having him running a Technicolor chocolate factory, to young John Midas, who suddenly finds that everything his lips touch turn to chocolate, children’s books portray chocolate as an object of greed and obsession, as a relief from poverty, at […]
