The English language is resplendent with homophones—words which are spelled differently but pronounced alike. By some estimates, there are more than four hundred such conundrums. Examples are the words ail and ale, bate and bait, cheap and cheep, and so on. My favorite pair is cereal and serial. A misuse of this duo gives a…
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….
I’ll add a humming bird feeder.
Feeling like you’re in a creative rut when it comes to brainstorming new ideas for your next novel or short story? Have you been staring at a blank screen for fifteen minutes, struggling to come up with a fresh and unique story concept? It may be time to think outside the box, to shake up…
April is National Poetry Month, so in honor of that, I’m going to share one way that dabbling in poetry can help your fiction. Specifically, have you ever considered using poetry as a way to find distinct voices for your characters? Years ago, I attended a short workshop by Lance Larsen, poet laureate for Utah…