Last month, my wife and I closed on our new home in the village of Cedaredge on the wild Western Slope of Colorado. It’s a beautiful place with mature landscaping and spectacular views. Deer pass by, birds fill the trees, and the tumbling waters of Surface Creek flow just down the slope from our backyard….
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Letter to New Writers
I’ve been teaching a class at the local Community College about writing fiction for publication. Not a “how to write” class, but rather geared to providing knowledge to decrease writing and editing time to finish a book. Things like editing tools, terminology, what POV and “show, don’t tell” mean—nothing earthshaking, but more condensed so it…
Self-Care When Writing the Hard Stuff
A few nights ago, my husband and I watched the Frida Kahlo biopic. We both noted a commonality between her story of chronic pain and the lives of many other artists across disciplines: great work as a product of great suffering. I’m not interested in perpetuating the stereotype of the tortured artist and the way…
Protecting Your Website
In my previous two posts I talked about securing your data by backing up your personal computer(s) and your website so that you can recover quickly in case of a technical disaster. But aside from hardware failures, what can happen to your website? About 40% of the Internet runs on WordPress. This makes it an…
Eight Tips for Getting Your Short Fiction Published
Eighteen months ago, when I became Managing Editor for the literary journal The Write City Magazine, I got 1-2 submissions daily in my in-box. This year that number has doubled. Perhaps it’s due to the pandemic and writers having more time. Perhaps more people are trying their hand at fiction and starting with short stories….