I love journals. I request them for birthdays and other gift-giving opportunities where I can actually tell people what they can buy for me. They're going to buy me something, so it may as well be what I want, right? Journals are beautiful inside and out, and I must have them. Plus, I have never found a reason to re-gift a journal. Ever. Because that would be wrong. But here's the problem. You knew there would be one, right? Yes, there's a problem. It's the girdle of perfecti

If there's one thing I relish about writing, it's making my characters suffer. Happy people with no challenges don't inspire page turning. Movies operate on the same premise. For instance, Far from the Madding Crowd, based on Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel of the same name, gives viewers the enduring question from beginning to end: What bad thing could happen next? And after that, what new horror could happen? The story is fraught with suffering and disappointments and love unrequ

I am woman. Yeah, yeah. I am also writer. The writer aptitude kicked in only a short five years after birth. Whether by nature or nurture through my father's colorful storytelling, writing is part of my DNA. And now that I've been a writer for many decades, here are my top 11 reasons for loving it. I get to make up stories about quirky people in bizarre situations and conversations that make me laugh. And, like Elizabeth Bennett, "I dearly love to laugh." I get to say things

I went on an authors retreat this weekend. Three of my buddies and I gathered in a cozy space in downtown Austin where we wrote, did 20-minute sprints, and brainstormed about our respective stories. One of the best outcomes for me was choosing a punishment for my dark fantasy characters whose actions had resulted in the deaths of others. I knew the punishment would have to be delivered in a dramatic way (read: public and gruesome) that would inflict maximum physical and emoti

I'm over at Stiletto Gang this week with a post called "An Hour in the Life of a Writer," a humorous look at how I've spent many a writing hour doing everything except writing. In fact, by the progress I sometimes make, or lack of it, you'd think I was an amateur. My creative wheels can spin relentlessly, powered by real desire to tell a story, yet I can stay stuck deep in the Sands of Dearth. It's easier to go do the laundry or play with the cat or nuke my coffee for the ten

The Self-Publishing Review recently reviewed Take My Husband, Please, and the reader really loved it. You can see it here, but following is the quickie summary: "A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy. Will and Sophie are wonderfully flawed characters who find themselves in one absurd situation after another that'll have you in stitches. In addition, the quirky supporting cast really brings this novel to life, and the author was able to throw in several hilarious and suspenseful tw

If you could teach your ex a lesson, would you? Admit it. You would, right? I have contemplated such things in the past, even if I never followed through (that anyone has lived to tell). And when I got this big idea, I thought, if I can't do it in real life, I can sure as hell write about it. Helpful tip: This is why you never piss off a writer because they will kill you or make you suffer in their next book. See how that works? So the idea for this book came when I was havin