Is Your Writing a Business, or a Dream?

by | Business

My son, a.k.a The Boy, does not always want to finish his meals. I don’t force him to clean his plate.   That said, there’s one rule:  no veggies, no dessert. If you’re not hungry enough to eat your veggies, you don’t get sweets. He will...

Branding, Promotion… and Grilled Cheese

by | Writing Life

Deep in deadline hell, peeps. For me, this usually means a scattered attention span, a lot of mumbling under my breath — and a hair trigger around things that seem trivial, almost stupid. So yesterday, I tripped on one of these triggers.  Thankfully, after a few...

Every Scene is a Story

by | Craft, Uncategorized

Without getting too terribly esoteric, I’ve been seeing a lot of holographic patterning in my Year of Cruise. To display both my geek and hippy-dippy tendencies, I mean “holographic” as in “whole in every part.”  If you cut a hologram in...

Star Wars: Plot Points In Action

by | Craft

I’ve recently put my first reference book up on Kindle, called Rock Your Plot: A Simple System for Plotting  Your Novel.  It details the process I use for pre-writing and plotting my novels.  It’s a simple, repeatable system for anyone writing any form of...

Story Structure vs. Reader Experience.

by | Craft

When I revise my work, or when I’m editing someone else’s work, there are two main elements I consider. The first is story structure:  what the story is. The second is reader experience.  This is how the story is told. Structure first. When I revise, the...