A very good friend from my years in northern California is the poet Lauren Scott. (lscotthoughts.com). We are both writers, but while she writes pieces with minimal words, I write full-length novels. Not much overlap, right? Wrong. The truth is, long-form writers and poets have quite a bit in common: We both love words. I mean love them. I know that even though she may write a first draft intuitively, Lauren considers every single word that goes into every single poem she writes. ... VIEW POST
The Many Challenges of Writing The Lair
My latest contemporary romantic suspense novel, The Lair, now available for pre-order, stands on its own, which means you don’t have to have read my other books to immerse yourself in the story. However, the main characters and part of the plot are connected to the other volumes in my far-reaching “Sinner’s Grove” series. Writing a multi-faceted, even genre-crossing story whose books are independent yet interwoven, poses a whole host of challenges, but for The Lair, that was only the ... VIEW POST
The Art of Love, like Ripples in a Pond…I hope!
My debut romance novel, The Art of Love is free today and tomorrow (May 20 and 21) on Kindle. A number of people have asked me the million-dollar question, “How can you make money if you’re giving your book away for free?” The answer sounds crazy, but if you use the pond analogy, it makes sense. I started out by giving my friends copies of the books to read. I told them, “Don’t worry – if you like it, tell me; if you don’t, don’t worry about it.” Well, they told me. They let me know they ... VIEW POST
For Chrissakes Don’t Say That!
One of the tricky aspects of writing about a certain historical period is the use of language in dialogue. You want your characters to sound natural to the modern ear, but not out of place within the context of the era they’re living in. The word choices you make are important, because the wrong ones can really jar the reader. In my new historical romance, The Art of Love, for example, most of the action takes place between 1896 and 1903. Men who lived in that era might have used the expression ... VIEW POST
