When You Majorly Alter Your Work in Progress After Writing 50,000 Words: The Hard Truth About Writing A Novel

December 21, 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

* Today, my dear readers, I am going to give it to you straight. Straight up, as Paula Abdul once sang. And believe me, what I’m about to share with you is going to cause me to do quite a bit of work. Lots and lots of work. But in the end, I am hoping […]

My Newest Writing Project

September 7, 2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

* People always ask me what I’m working on next, so I thought I’d get this out of the way. It’s a common question I field often. It may disappoint some folks, but it’s not the sequel to Inn Significant, though I still play with that manuscript a little. Instead, there’s a short story in […]

An Updated Trailer for Beneath the Mimosa Tree

March 27, 2018.Reading time 2 minutes.

As I’ve worked hard over the last month to unify the look of the covers of my previously published novels, I decided to tackle another form of unification, and that’s creating trailers that are a little better than the old ones I produced years ago and have a similar feel. With a little more insight […]

Writing About Places in Fiction – Maryland’s Eastern Shore in Inn Significant

February 21, 2017.Reading time 7 minutes.

As a writer, it’s important to research the places you may feature in your writing. I spent a ton of time walking around Annapolis, Maryland, for my first novel, Beneath the Mimosa Tree, and I did the same with the novel I launched yesterday, Inn Significant. It’s part of the fun, really. As my students […]

Friday Fiction: Writing the Prologue & Baseball Girl

April 15, 2016.Reading time 11 minutes.

There is much debate in the fictional writing world as to whether or not your story should begin with a prologue. The last three books I have read–all mainstream fictional novels–have started with a prologue. I found the prologue of Me Before You particularly effective. The discussion of the prologue is a relatively simple one: […]