Writing is hard work, especially when you must squeeze it in alongside the daily commitments of employment, relationships, domestic engineering, childrearing and pet wrangling. Sometimes the only way to get anything done is to abandon these commitments altogether! If...
Timeless is a celebration of Mackinac Island and its cottage architecture. The book includes historical context and gorgeous exterior and interior design photography -- perfect for fine coffee tables everywhere! That said, I must also tell you that this post is much...
In my previous post featuring the work of Eva Ibbotson, I enthused about a Swedish word found in one of her novels: smultronställe is a noun meaning that special place treasured or yet to be discovered. It could be an idyllic opening in the forest, a quiet beach, a...
Recently I read When the War is Over, by Barbara Fox. This memoir of the author's mother, Gwenda Brady Gofton, focuses on her childhood years as a WWII evacuee in Cumbria. After a couple of false starts in other evacuation areas, Gwenda and her older brother Doug...
One of the few positive things about this terrible pandemic is that it's forced us all to spend more time with ourselves. In our own heads. Dreaming, reading, planning, growing. I'll confess that I love being alone. I inherited this trait from my mother, and many of...
My last blog post (written THREE MONTHS ago, yikes) was about Emily Dickinson, and today--once again--it is Miss Emily who inspires me. A NEW BOOK: From the publisher: An engaging, intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson, one of America’s greatest and most-mythologized...
Even if you're healthy and safe at home, you may be losing your mind right about now. I've put together a list of things (in no particular order) that might brighten your mood during this surreal quarantine from the rest of humanity. -- First of all, complete your...
This past week I visited Dallas for the Highland Park Literary Festival. The festival volunteers always put on a great event, and the highlight for me was spending time with the HPHS students who signed up for my presentation, "How to Build a Horror Hero" (a companion...
I'm always looking for ways to silence the critic in my head--that meanie who loves to tell me "Girl, you SUCK." (Does it talk to you, too?) I also love experimenting with different approaches to the writing process. The books in my featured image--The Artist's Way...
I have long wrestled with journal lust. I even wrote a blog post about it in 2014. Last year I decided to get serious about this problem and committed to buying fewer journals and writing more in the ones I have. In fact, I set the goal of journaling every single day....
This past fall I decided to update the look of my website. As always I wanted something Gothic and a bit creepy, but I also yearned for warmth and color. Again and again I came back to this image: It struck me as both bleak and beautiful. Moreover it reminded me of...
The 2018 Spring conference for SCBWI Oklahoma, "Striking at the Reader's Heart," will be held on April 6-7 at the OKC Embassy Suites on S. Meridian. If you write/illustrate for children and young adults, I highly recommend you check it out. You’ll certainly gain...
Welcome to my new Wordpress blog! My Blogger blog is now an archive, but you will find all my old posts dating back to 2010 here as well as there. As a reader, I find Wordpress blog posts so much easier to read and comment upon -- I hope you enjoy this new interface....
I am so excited to be a part of the Paper Hearts blog tour! And it's not only because Beth Revis is a friend and a wonderful human. She's also a NYT best selling author and a font of information about the business of publishing. A few months ago I read Beth's first...
Recently I participated in my first Twitter chat! One of the questions I barely had time to answer properly was "Any tips for setting in a historical novel?" (Thanks, Abigail!)Well, I love to talk about setting, because all my stories start with place. As soon as I...
