When Inspiration Strikes

Ideas are a very important part of a creative person’s life, be they a writer, designer, or someone just looking to redecorate their office. All three of those labels apply to me, but I only have trouble generating ideas for the first one.

People often ask “where do you get your ideas?” A common writerly response is something snarky, along the lines of “from the idea book” or “I have a monthly subscription to Ideas-R-Us”, when actually writers get idea from everyone and everything. The entire world is fair game.

The Importance of Beta Readers

For those of you who are NOT writers, a beta reader is someone who reads a draft of your manuscript to tell you where you’ve screwed up and how to make it better. Some even tell you where they laughed out loud, gasped, or wanted to punch a character (thanks Nadine!).

Dictionary.com defines the slang version of beta as:

Help Me Name Book 3

Happy almost new year! I hope everyone had a nice holiday and is ready to close out 2013 with a bang. The first draft of Fracture is currently with a couple beta readers and while I wait to hear back from them, I’m brainstorming the yet-to-be-titled Book 3 in the series. I know the overall …

Every New Beginning is Some Other Beginning’s End

I finished the first draft of Fracture! I missed my self-imposed deadline by a week, but considering how long it took me to get back in my writing groove, I’m okay with that. The first draft ended up being 8000 words longer than I expected, so there’s the extra week! In all I’m happy with …

In the Home Stretch!

As most of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and while I’m not competing officially, I’ve quietly sucked the enthusiasm and ambition from my fellow writers to push through to the end of my wip, Fracture. That’s right — I’m THIS CLOSE to finishing the sequel to Flicker! NaNo competitors are supposed …

Walk the Plank, Matey!

I’ve been pirated. On Friday my friend June informed me that Flicker had been illegally posted to mobilism.org, “the single largest user-powered database of apps, games, movies and books for mobile device users of all platforms!” She received a Google alert that several of HER books were on the site, and because she’s so smart …

Giveaway at PeopleReads!

Starting today, you can enter to win one of two signed copies of Flicker, or three ebook versions, at PeopleReads.com! The contest runs through Saturday so if you still haven’t bought a copy, now’s your chance to get it. (I realize ALL of my regular readers have read it —— RIGHT?! —— but you can …

The Great Pumpkin Analogy

This post originally aired in October 2011. I thought it was worth resharing. While perusing the pumpkin “patch” (shelves) at my grocery store last weekend, this one struck me as the roundest, cleanest, most pumpkiny pumpkin of the bunch. In fact, I was so pleased with nature’s work that I considered leaving it alone and …

It’s Not a Toomah

One of the benefits of working for a large-ish company is we have lots of perks that I never had when working at ad agencies.  A couple weeks ago the Spectrum Health Betty Ford Breast Cancer Bus paid us a visit so I bit the bullet and scheduled my first mammogram. Wheee! Can you feel …

FLICKER Available at the Dollar Store!

Not really, but while I’m plugging away at the sequel to FLICKER (I’m 1/6th of the way done! Woohoo!) I thought I’d celebrate by offering FLICKER for 99¢! I wanted to do it for free but you have to join Kindle Select, which means I can’t sell it anyplace other than Amazon. I’m all about …