I’ve been tracking my word counts for 8 years now. I first started tracking how many words I wrote, edited or outlined in order to prove to myself how much work I actually finish in a day, week or month. At the time I struggled with the idea that I was wasting time by trying …
Since I write roughly 22 stories every year, I thought it might be fun to do a project for 2022. In 2022, the 22 shorts I write for my blog will be taken from prompts related to the 31 stories in 31 days project from January of 2022. Each will relate to the multiverse that …
I put my first book each year out in February. This year, I hoped to coordinate that release with Valentine’s day. (Sadly, it didn’t work out. I needed an extra week to polish the book properly.) But I had already come up with a cute idea for a Valentine’s themed stream to promote the new …
I decided to do something interesting (and a tiny bit dangerous). I opened an old draft of one of my novels and used Word’s comparison feature to examine how much it changed. For those that aren’t familiar with this particular feature, it essentially highlights in red every change made between the different versions of the …
Now here is the tale of how the world was made… In the beginning of days, the Gods lived alone. For only Chendryn, the god of earth, possessed the secrets of creation. His brothers and sisters, the gods and goddesses of fire, air and water, could create only by his grace. What they built, Chendryn …
I mentioned awhile back that I used to jot down little fragments of poetry, song lyrics or prose that popped into my head throughout the day. I have tons of emails, notebooks and computer files filled with passing fragments from my early writing days. Somewhere along the line, I stopped writing these little scribbles down. …
Last year I published 4 brand new books (across two different series). Which feels like a lot when you consider that in 2019 I published absolutely nothing new. For each of my new releases, I try to devote blog time to the project’s development. I like allowing readers to glimpse inside my brain at various …
I think we can all agree 2020 has been a long and bizarre year. When I penned my goals for 2020 I, like everyone else, had no idea that things were going to turn upside down in March. Unlike in previous years where I simply wrote down things I would like to be able to …
Way back in 2008, when I wrote Dreamers Do Lie for the first time, I did it wrong. It was the first time I made notes. The first time I planned ahead. The first time I knew how a story was going to end from the moment I started. I thought that would be enough …
One of the big things writers like to talk about in regards to novels is theme. Some writers suggest determining theme early in the writing process so you can make everything fit it. But this has never been my approach. I usually allow my stories to develop a theme while I’m working on them. Once …