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As if I didn’t have enough to do with my time, I accepted an invitation to join a book club with some other local women I know. I’m actually pretty happy about it, but at the same time, uh… That’s one less evening a month I’ll have to devote to writing. But it’ll be goodContinue reading “And Now I’ve Gone and Joined a Book Club…”

Alternately titled: Yes, It Is Possible To Like a Person Without Loving What They Write. The last couple of months, I have enjoyed watching and following the YouTube Channel of traditionally published YA author, Alexa Donne. I like her, I like her videos, she has some fantastic advice to share with aspiring writers interested inContinue reading “Book Review: Brightly Burning, by Alexa Donne”

Last week, my family watched Spiderman together– the one starring Tobey Maguire. It’s one I’ve seen a few times before, but this was my first time watching it while being educated about story structure. I have to say, I was impressed. What is it about this movie that makes it such an excellent example ofContinue reading “Spiderman: The Perfect Plot?”

Three months ago, I completed the first draft to my novel titled The Queen’s Son. I sent it out to a couple of beta readers and then set it aside for a while. I had intended to begin rewriting in July, but then I worked on a different project instead (totally worth it). The processContinue reading “Rewrites Are Hard”

In my online writing group, we do monthly writing exercises. Last month, the assignment was to create two characters, then we swapped characters and were to write two scenes– a fight scene and a romance scene– using the same characters. I am sharing my scenes below, which turned into a whole short story. It’s notContinue reading “Writing Exercise: a fight scene and a romance”

I’ve read a few of Gary Paulsen’s books a long time ago and enjoyed them, so I picked this one up from a pile of free books (I get a lot of my books this way). The back-cover blurb says: When the body of a young girl is found in the stables, Al Murphy, sheriffContinue reading “Book Review: Murphy, by Gary Paulsen”

“You probably won’t even remember having this conversation,” says Dr. Miller, after explaining to me the procedure and IV medications she will be using to sedate me for my bronchoscopy procedure. Challenge accepted. I turn and glance at my husband, who has accompanied me more for his own peace of mind than mine– I’m notContinue reading “The Doc Called Me A “Horse””

This evening, my 8yo and I began a collaboration. He came up with most of the story and characters with some light input from me (and I got to come up with the Mom character), while I wrote his ideas onto post-it notes and arranged them on my Outline templates I just made a fewContinue reading “A Mother-Son Collaboration”

Welcome to Part Two of my analysis of the characters in Neil Gaiman’s novel, Stardust. In Part One, I introduced the four chief characters of the first two chapters. For Part Two, I will be hopping through the book more, as I take a closer look at three brothers: The sons of the Lord ofContinue reading “Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, Character Analysis, Part Two”

I read the novel, Stardust, recently, and thought it would be a good novel to practice analyzing and critiquing characters. This will be a long one, so I am breaking it up into multiple posts. I will be going through the text from the beginning and offering an in-depth look at the chief characters theContinue reading “Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, a Character Analysis, Part One”