Think back to the last time you sat down to write and the words simply wouldn’t come. Maybe it was your mood, or the surrounding circumstances: poor lighting, dreadful coffee shop tunes, or a pet/child/partner demanding attention. Perhaps a prompt left you uninspired, or a looming deadline paralyzed your imagination. Whatever the cause, as writers,…
As a relatively new member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers (coming up on 5 years), I’ve enjoyed learning about the organization’s history from the newsletter and interviews with founding members. 40 years is nothing to sniff at, especially in this age of shortening attention spans and shifting loyalties. But if we want RMFW to survive…
For the past few years, my family and I have celebrated Independent Bookstore Day (coming up on April 29th) with a bookstore crawl. Each year, we try to incorporate a new (to us) bookshop amongst our favorites. Sadly, this year we’ll miss out on visiting a former favorite, BookBar, as it closed this past January….
Earlier this month, I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference in Seattle. The sheer volume and diversity of program offerings at AWP can be overwhelming and after my newbie experience last year, trying to attend back-to-back panels from 9-5 three days in a row, I opted for a more targeted approach…
Valentine’s Day is over, you say. And anyway Rachel, don’t you write horror? I’m not talking about romantic love, the romance genre or even incorporating romantic elements in any genre. Rather, I mean that the impetus for writing anything comes from a desire to express and inspire love. Wait, what? How do stories about hauntings,…