I like to write quiet stories, focused on characters. Going in-depth into their perspectives. Exploring who they are at the core. What doesn’t come as naturally to me is a page-turning, edge-of-your-seat, keep-the-reader-up-all-night plot. The question is: does a book have to be compelling? In short: yes. As someone who
Read MoreWhy is it taking so long for your book to be published? It’s a question I hear quite a lot. While I appreciate the eagerness of friends and family who want to see, hold, and read The Last Carolina Girl for themselves, it takes time to traditionally publish a book. And I knew
Read MoreWhen I was young, I was obsessed with the notion of seeing through other people’s eyes. Literally. I wondered how others saw the world. Did they see colors in the same way I did? What if blue to them looked different than it did to me? I wanted to find
Read MoreIs time really on our side? I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, even in my fiction writing. In my current work in progress, the main character is a teenage girl who finds herself pregnant. While hiding her secret, one of her closest friends introduces her to a song by
Read MoreThrough high school and college, I spent a collective seven years studying French. Though I never became fluent, I appreciated how learning a new language helped me see my native language differently. For the first time, I understood what a preposition was. Sure, I had always passed my English grammar
Read MoreMy dad loved taking the scenic route. We could never call it a “short cut” because his deviations always took longer than the conventional ones. You see, as a lumberjack who worked all over the state of Indiana, he knew the backroads and cut throughs. Sometimes he diverted off the
Read MoreA major marketing trend at the moment is for brands to engage in storytelling. Having helped tell company’s stories over my 20 years as a professional marketing writer, let me just say to any company who is thinking of rewriting their tagline, website and promotional materials to better tell their
Read MoreSome of the worst writing advice I ever heard came from an author I admired. While leading a writing workshop, a woman asked him, “What advice can you give to someone who wants to write books?” His answer went something like: Find a cabin in the woods and get away
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