“Hey fellow authors!” I scrolled down to read the message. “How many books will you write and publish this year?” The replies popped up. My jaw dropped. “Six to write and seven more to publish.” “Write twelve and publish fifteen including three box sets.” Whoa. I ask myself “How do you do that?” My editor […]
Category: Twitter
Tweets from Heartland
Who’s My Muse
An author friend fessed up to crafting stories around real life people or personalities that inspire her and asked who inspires me. I hesitated to answer. I write fiction. The characters in my books are an amalgamation of my life experiences and imagination. An interview in a magazine spawned the character of Chef […]
Hello Again
I’M (ALMOST) BACK! After a 2,100 mile move from my Iowa hometown to Atlantic Canada last summer, I’ve settled into the Nova Scotia home and haven where the worlds my characters live, love, and cope with conflict are created. WHAT’S NEXT? A major rewrite and a new novel Both are in the new-to-me challenging genre […]
4 Tales From Heartland + Love Unlikely
IT’S HERE! By popular request from my book loving readers – The paperback version of Tales from Heartland – 4 short stories (NEW – Adele’s New Life in Love added to the original 3 short stories in the Kindle version) and the saucy, sexy novella of Rachel and Drew’s whirlwind romance Love Unlikely! While I’ve […]
Spotting Ideas
Where do you get your ideas? Whether at a workshop I lead, an author panel I’m on, or meeting readers one-on-one at a book signing, I almost always get asked that question. Here’s my short answer: Look around and listen. Ideas are there. What’s the story behind the shirt worn by the guy in […]
Resolve Depends on You
It’s mid-January and the resolve behind those New Year’s resolutions has dissolved, replaced by reasonable excuses. Most of these dismissive rationalizations involve time, or rather the perceived lack of it. I tried, we tell ourselves and others. I want to lose weight. But I just can’t seem to find the time to exercise. I’m unhappy […]
Fashion Treads
The fashion-defying old boots I wore for warmth self-destructed on my 62nd birthday. Flakes of crumbling faux leather I left behind lately whenever I zipped my feet into the comfort of weatherproof Totes with fleece lining left clues on my kitchen floor that I ignored. Much like the skin sags of age under my eyes […]
No Fat Here
“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” -Stephen King, in Writer’s Digest Sorry, Stephen. I love your […]
How to Hook Readers
Crime novelist extraordinaire Mickey Spillane said it best. The first page sells the book. The last page sells the next book. Finesse the six elements of fiction – character, plot, setting, point of view, theme and style – and you’ll hook readers into turning those pages through lunch hours, during commutes and into the wee […]
Mystery “UnMatchables” Surprise
The cozy mystery I’d just finished reading reminded me of characters in “Moonlighting,” a TV series in the 1980s about an out-of-work model who brings in a partner to a detective agency she owns. My newbie private investigators, unlucky-in-love and mutually-vowed ‘friends-only’ Eddie Emerson and Kelly Gillespie, would set up shop in a north Chicago […]