Happy July, Dreamers! In this week’s life update: I just got back two weeks ago from the amazing blessing of a vacation with two of my best friends in the magical land of Florida. This vacation was everything I hoped for and more. Not only was it a relaxing blessing to spend time with my girls and not think about the rigors of life, it also brought me a lot of clarity on things. For a few days, I acted like a kid. Then for a few days more, I let the kid me and the adult me me

Have you ever walked into a room and thought “…I can’t write here?” I’m a mover. I always like to visit people and places. I also love taking my laptop or tablet along and tippity-typing away in cute little coffee shops, friends’ houses, etc. But this willingness to try new writing locales has busted as much as it’s banked. There are some places I just can’t write. Maybe the atmosphere is too dark. Maybe there’s not enough natural light. Maybe the place just give me the heebi

Show of hands if you feel this: one of the hardest things to balance in life is the relationship between writing and eating. A lot of times I get super involved in writing to the point where I forget to nourish myself. Hours and hours pass and when I finally drag myself away from the laptop, I’m super starved and desperate for protein. Because of that, I’m more liable to grab something quick and easy rather than take time to make a healthy meal. And this can be to the detrime

O thou typo, small and crafty Surviving every single drafty How you make it through each round – a mystery What we share – a violent history – Ode to a Resilient Error I just finished the last round of edits on The Chaos Circus before it goes to publication in a little over a month. Despite round after round of self-edits and three outsider-editorial rounds, a few typos still managed to survive to the that last round, like pro-wrestling underdogs none of us could pin down bef

One of the big advantages of editing a bunch of my stories back to back is the ability to see what my recurring elements are – personal favorite scenarios that show up again and again in my stories. I talk about this subject a LOT with my writing group, and there’s usually a few tag-your-friends posts about it circulating on Twitter at any given time. It seems like we all have SOMETHING (or many things) that shows up across most or all of our stories. They just somehow always

I decided to do something a little different for the blog this month: I’ll be posting on Thursdays instead of Sundays and including weekly roundups of how NaNoWriMo is progressing! You’re all welcome to join in and post a comment letting everyone know how it’s going or whether you need encouragement, etc! So let’s dive in! WEEK 1 ROUNDUP Switched projects on Day 2 (you’d be surprised how often this happens to me :P) Went full NaNo Rebel with editing instead of drafting. Editi

Heads up, readers! MARCH 2019 WILL SEE THE PUBLICATION OF MY DEBUT NOVEL, THE CHAOS CIRCUS! I have been so excited to share this news for a long time. 😍 For those who follow me on social media, you probably saw me posting a lot about The Chaos Circus (TCC) over the summer. It follows the adventure of Tessa LaRoche, a junior reporter who crosses paths with an accused murderer and finds herself spirited off to a magical mirrored land. There she faces a series of tests to recla

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a cut-and-dry rulebook that writers could follow in order to produce the perfect product? As a perfectionist, that would be a dream come true for me! But the longer I write and the more writers I meet and talk to, the more I’ve become aware that even the guidelines we think are guaranteed to make our craft better, easier to accomplish and more accessible to readers often come with a catch or two. This week, I want to look at four of the mos

For many writers, drafting is the easier part. Revising can seem daunting to the extreme. Once you’ve got the words on the page, how do you actually go about editing them to achieve the vision you had in your head when you started out? This post is here to help the uncertain reviser to set themselves up for success. Read on for 5 tips and tricks on how to revise your completed draft! 1. Do A Soft Run My personal practice is to wait a day or so, then do a soft run on revising.

I guess writing a blog post about it makes it official – after months of consideration, lots of prayer, and deep discussions with my incredible writing group and family, I’ve decided to pursue self-publishing over going the traditional route. This has been both the hardest and most liberating decision of my writing career. Occasionally I’ve encountered the attitude in the writing community that self-publishing is a quitter’s way out; it’s reserved for those who are “not good

Before y’all blow up my comments with “BUT YOU DON’T KNOW MY DRAFT,” hear me out. I’ve been very nervously creeping toward editing My Nemesis, the hardest story I ever wrote, appropriately titled The Beast in the Cage. It. Kicked. My. BUTT when I was drafting it. It was the first time I’d ever written a multibook series all in rapid succession, it was the holidays, it was Book 4 – I was burned out, tired, DONE. I wanted to write something else. I tried everything to cure this

Switching things up a bit as I prepare to head out of town for a weekend with family and friends: for this blog, I want to talk to you guys about something that’s been a godsend and a gamechanger for me as a writer. I think because writing is often such an internalized and solitary pursuit, we tend to think we need to get through it by sheer perseverance and willpower. But the truth is, sometimes we need a boost, something to look forward to that makes our craft FUN again! I

It’s a common struggle among most writers I’ve talked to that we all feel like we start to repeat our characters across projects. Not a blatant ripoff of one’s past cast, per se, but little consistencies that can lead a writer to feel they’re not diversifying their character bank enough. There are lots of ways to minimize this repetition – one of my favorites is to read, read, read, so that I get a broader scope of the human condition from which to pull inspiration. But today

For the longest time, I had no idea there was a difference between a critique partner (CP) and beta reader (BR) in the writing field. I figured it was all the same: someone who reads your story and gives feedback. But it turns out these two groups have a different way of approaching the story and giving feedback – and both are critical to the process of polishing your manuscript. This week I want to look at those differences and why both kinds of readers are important. First

Deviating slightly from my usual fare, I’m going to out myself as a huge movie fan by using the medium of visual storytelling to make the point of this blog: why emotional beats are important. (Note: I know some might not agree with the content of this post. That’s okay! Just my personal opinion on action movies and emotional beats. As a disclaimer, I still love action movies. ;D) In my younger writing years, especially my early teens, I felt that my only duty was to tell the

I’ve been doing a lot more delving into romantic subplots in writing lately. It used to terrify me because I was afraid of “getting it wrong” or leaving readers with a bad impression of the couple. While I’ve found myself settling into my stride when it comes to these subplots, my research into writing better romance has also led me to discover a few tropes that are considered tired or problematic across all genres. Click through to read about five of the romantic tropes that

With my first foray into the querying process starting back in April of this year, I tried to go in with an open mind – whatever happened, I was determined to learn a lot! Querying is a stressful time that comes with its share of highs and lows, and always with nail-biting uncertainty. It also doesn’t necessarily begin when you start querying. It can begin a lot sooner, if you’re willing to come to the starting line prepared. Here are five tips I’ve gathered in the few short

So I know I’m outing myself as late to the party, but I was actually not familiar with the difference between a query letter and a one-page synopsis until I started querying. OOPS. My naivety set me back a bit, as there are some agents who require the synopsis as well as a query letter. The prospect was absolutely daunting, so I tabled it for now with Starchaser and decided to practice writing a synopsis on my next project. Guidance aligned better than I could have hoped as a

Y’all, I am so excited to bring you this week’s special Blog Post! Not only did I find a new book series to love while on my drafting break – The Skazka Chronicles by Indie Author Valia Lind – but Miss Lind was amazing enough to agree to an interview while in the chaos of Launch Week for the second book in the series! Author of The Titanium Series and Falling by Design, among others, Valia Lind is a former St. Petersburg native with a natural talent for writing gripping confl

Happy Father’s Day! Last month, I did a post on the importance of fictional mothers, including some questions for writers to ponder about their characters’ own maternal backstory. This month, I want to take a similar approach with the paternal. While father figures in fiction sometimes tend to survive longer than mothers – a fact for which certain mainstream entertainment has been called out, and rightly so – it’s equally common for fathers to be reduced to plot points, too.