writing

  • Malignant

    (Short fiction originally published with the Kindle version of The Waning.) Cancer made me beautiful. During one of my numerous appointments following my diagnosis, my doctor informed me, along with a blur of medical terms and statistical percentages, that sugar grows tumors. Strangely, staring stage four death in the face, I was suddenly able to forsake…

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  • Becoming Emma

    As an author, you do have to crawl into the skin of your character. Often, I simply use myself as the boilerplate. However, when I crafted Emma for The Rest Will Come, I definitely took character study to the next level. Not only did I base this character on a person in my real life (and…

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  • Old Wounds

    I recently had an otherwise innocuous experience dig up some very old and relatively unrelated trauma. Considering the disconnect and the disproportionate emotional surge, I considered this a warning sign and an indication that I should probably finally go and address the issue. I have effectively avoided actually discussing it in 15 years of sporadic…

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  • Tennessee Mini Tour

    Last weekend, I took myself on a little miniature tour through Tennessee. As with all things in my life, it was a whirlwind. Initially, this entire trip was planned around attending the Behind the Mask Author Event. I had never previously done a mass book signing event, so when the organizer invited me, I figured, why…

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  • My 2017 in Review

    When it comes to the state of the world at large and current events, I am with the majority in being ready and excited to say goodbye (and fuck off) to 2017. What a rollercoaster mess of a year. However, if I refine my focus down to something a little more narcissistic, the assessment of…

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  • Common Themes

    Every writer has common themes around which their brains and hence stories fixate. If you read any author long enough, you will see the same turns of phrase, images, scenarios. You can even chronologically identify a work based on the author’s fixations at the time, like stratifications in an excavation. I am no exception. I…

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  • On The Rest Will Come

    Today, my third book was released by Limitless Publishing: The Rest Will Come This book was a journey in every sense of the word. Long ago, it was accepted by my previous publisher before that publisher returned all my works to me. I was fortunate to find a new home with Limitless very quickly; however, that…

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  • Detours and New Roads

    I have been trying to write this blog post for two months. At first, I avoided actually drafting the words because putting them out there, writing them out would make the whole situation more real, and I was not sure how I felt about it yet. A part of me knew to keep it in…

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  • As some of you may recall, I recently talked at a couple schools about writing. It started out innocently enough, just volunteering at my daughter’s school as part of their readathon and helping out a friend teaching Technical Writing for the first year. Then a teacher with whom I often share the zumba dance floor…

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  • Trick-or-Treat

    As the sun retreated from the sky and the last rays of light died in the air, Marla’s small body began to materialize on top of the cracked asphalt. Her hips appeared first, the round bulbs of her pelvis spiraling out of obscurity as spinal vertebrae sprouted to climb up to her shoulders and bare…

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