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 […]
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Mar, 2016 Make War, Not Love: Be Creative
March 29, 2016 by 39 Comments
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. […]
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Mar, 2016 6 Things I’m Reading, Watching, Eating This Week
March 24, 2016 by 20 Comments
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 […]
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Mar, 2016 5 Things You Don’t Know About My Novels
March 22, 2016 by 24 Comments
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, […]
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Mar, 2016 6 Things That Have My Attention This Week
March 17, 2016 by 31 Comments
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 […]
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Mar, 2016 An Exclusive Interview With Storming Heroine Jael
March 15, 2016 by 8 Comments
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 […]
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Mar, 2016 6 Things I’m Reading, Watching, Eating This Week
March 10, 2016 by 25 Comments
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 […]
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Mar, 2016 You Have My Permission to Be Awesome
March 8, 2016 by 43 Comments
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 […]
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Mar, 2016 7 Things That Have My Attention This Week
March 3, 2016 by 28 Comments
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, […]
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Mar, 2016 How to Survive Without Internet for 48 Hours
March 1, 2016 by 22 Comments
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 […]
