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6 Things That Have My Attention This Week

What has my attention this week? (Note: All Amazon links are affiliate links.) Book: Scotland by Magnus Magnusson It was by total coincidence that my two books titled Scotland — this one and Fitzroy’s MacLean‘s, which I talked about in a previous post –– were alphabetically filed, according to author last name, right next to each other on the […]

Make War, Not Love: Be Creative

I’m prejudiced, of course, but here’s what I think: one of the most honest, authentic, powerful, difficult things any human being can do is be creative. This is true whether you’re writing books, painting pictures, choreographing dance moves, or baking pastries. It’s true of nail art, it’s true of interior decorating, and it’s true of carpentry. […]

6 Things I’m Reading, Watching, Eating This Week

What has my attention this week? (Note: All Amazon links are affiliate links.) Book: Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham I began this behemoth with some trepidation. Seven hundred-plus pages of a book with such a dreary title sounds a little like self-torture. But it’s on my list of classics, so with a deep breath, I […]

5 Things You Don’t Know About My Novels

The story that ends up in a reader’s hands is very rarely the same story an author started out with. In fact, sometimes it downright amazes me to compare my published novels with the original ideas that spawned them, never mind all the little tweaks that got trimmed away during the ruthless editing process. Today, […]

6 Things That Have My Attention This Week

What has my attention this week? (Note: All Amazon links are affiliate links.) Book: Scotland by Fitzroy MacLean I honestly think I got more out of this slim volume than I have any of the countless other sources I’ve read about Scotland. Their history really clicked for me within the larger context of Great Britain and […]

An Exclusive Interview With Storming Heroine Jael

  Since you all enjoyed the “interview” I did with Hitch, the protagonist of my dieselpunk/historical mashup Storming, I thought I share another one from Storming‘s “extras” (which you can access, in toto, via the link in the back of the book). Be warned, there are a few spoilers in this one! So if you haven’t read the […]

6 Things I’m Reading, Watching, Eating This Week

What has my attention this week? (Note: All Amazon links are affiliate links.) Book: A Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss I’ve had this one on my list forever and now that I’m doing a bit of a “sequel blitz,” I only just realized my library has it. This shockingly tiny “in-between-quel” to Rothfuss’s […]

You Have My Permission to Be Awesome

You’re awesome. No, seriously! This is a compliment that gets passed around with some frequency these days. It’s usually meant in a specifically conditional sense (e.g., “you’re an awesome cook”) or slightly tongue-in-cheek (“awesome,” after all, literally means “impressive to a frightening degree”). When someone says that to us, we take it as a compliment, but […]

7 Things That Have My Attention This Week

What has my attention this week?   (Note: All Amazon links are affiliate links.) Book: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis I’m about halfway through this (biiiiiiiig) book, and the jury’s still out. On the one hand, I appreciate the biting satire Lewis is employing to critique small-town status quo. On the other, the would-be reformer protagonist, […]

How to Survive Without Internet for 48 Hours

Remember the dial-up days? To access the Internet, you’d stretch a phone cord from your computer modem to your phone jack, then listen to that egregious screech-and-gurgle for several minutes before the connection finally cleared. Then you’d sit there looking at your old Yahoo! Classic inbox, waiting a full minute for every new email to […]