‘Tis the season… no, not that season. The other one. The spooky one. The one with witches and pumpkins and yellow-eyed cats and headless horsemen. And ghosts. Oh, we all love a good ghost story, don’t we? Those stories that send little tingles running along the back of our neck? Or that have us glancing…
This weekend, at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference in the Denver area, I’ll be sharing all my hard-won wisdom (?!) about how to interview anyone about anything to enrich your fiction. Many people may think of interviewing as something that writers only do for nonfiction, like articles, history books, or podcasts. Or you may…
Let’s talk about the weather. I know, I know. The weather is what you talk about when you can’t think of anything else to discuss. Person A: “Hot enough for you?” Person B: “Yeah. That was some storm last night, wasn’t it?” Person C: “Did you notice how that heat wave that moved in this…
Summertime is filled with celebrations of freedom. From Juneteenth and Pride Month in June, to the 4th of July and Bastille Day in July, to that glorious sense of freedom children feel on the last day of school in May or June (and which we all still feel inklings of, no matter how old we…
In the early years of my writing career, a magazine editor gently chastised me for using weak verbs in the article I’d submitted. “Use lively verbs,” he told me. Lively verbs? What the heck did that mean? I searched through my article again. Sure enough, most of the verbs I’d used were passive and emotionless….