A friend recently confessed that she was bored by a book she had read for a book club. Having just slogged through the same book myself, I agreed completely. As I writer, I knew exactly why the book didn’t work for me. But the woman I was chatting with couldn’t articulate why she hated the…
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….
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…
At last, Spring is here. Now I’ll have time to work on my own stuff. My first order of business is to complete some of my spec fiction stories, many of which have languished unfinished for years. After scrolling through my short stories folder, I decided it was high time I finish a story about…