Tag: storytelling

The Importance of Story

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The Importance of Story

In which I wax poetic about the Oscars, actually…

I realized the other day that the Academy Awards are tonight. I feel weird about watching them these days… there are so many good reasons not to. All that glitz, glamor, and privilege feels intensely wrong in the face of… well… (I gesture broadly at everything.) People are dying in genocides. People are dying from exploitation. People are dying from disease and poverty because their governments are run by greedy men. It feels trivial to care about which movie or which actor wins an award in the face of all of that, and when my own country is in the middle of a coup that not enough people are alarmed about. For all those reasons and more, I wasn’t going to watch.

But…

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Thoughts on Being an Author

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Thoughts on Being an Author

The first time I ever “met” an author, I was eleven years old, pajama-clad, sitting in the back of my mom’s blue station wagon while Romancing the Stone played on the giant screen in front of me. The author’s name was Joan Wilder. She was a romance author. And she looked like this:

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Why I’m Not Writing a Sequel to Ashes Swept

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After the release of Ashes Swept, I was surprised by how many readers said they were excited for the sequel and asked when it would be out. This caught me completely off-guard, because Ashes Swept was always meant to be a stand-alone novel. The book covers the important part of Synda May’s story, so I’d never even considered adding on beyond that.

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2016 Roundup: My Year in Stories

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2016 was a harrowing year, for me and most other people. Still, I can’t deny there were some good things in my year. I completed edit three of my WIP, and wrote novel number seven during NaNoWriMo. I visited Colorado twice–once for my niece’s graduation, and again for my parents’ 50th anniversary. It was fun visiting family and getting out to explore my home state. Plus, my parents came out to visit twice, which made for some fun adventuring right here at home. And, of course, adventure is essential to keeping a writer happy!

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Update; Thoughts on Ocean’s Eight

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It’s been a couple of months since my last update, mostly because I have little to report. I finished draft three in early July and decided to make some structural changes to the story. This means that draft four won’t be the polishing draft I’d hoped it would be, which in turn means I’ll have to bump my release back to fall or winter. HOWEVER, I am okay with that. I would rather delay my release than put out a story I’m not completely happy with. So, I’ll be updating the website soon to reflect my new launch plans.

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