Category: Life
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Hurricane Katrina 18 years later
I was a Junior at the University of Alabama when Hurricane Katrina took out my hometown and left my parents’ home under some 8 feet of water. I didn’t get the evacuation experience–I had been in my dorm room out of state for a good two weeks before the storm came. My first trip back…
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Life’s about to get more busy
As of last Wednesday, with our first training as members of “team,” life is about to get more busy. I’m working once again on Alpha team my Catholic parish–it’s an adult education course of sorts, where I run a small group discussion of questions and themes designed around a series of videos. I’ve done it…
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On roads, in life and fiction
I’m preparing to go out of town as I write this, and will be out of time when it goes live (my posts are generally pre-written and scheduled for release), so travel is on my mind. Travel is such an important trope in life and in fiction. I’ve heard it said that the two greatest…
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The two series that made me want to be an author
The two series that definitely made me want to be an author “when I grow up” were Nancy Drew and The Babysitters Club. I remember, the first stories I wrote were in third or fourth grade. I penned a short series of “mysteries” based on Nancy Drew where one of the kids in my class…
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Thankful Thursday: Thankful for reviews
Today, I am grateful for the people who have taken the time to leave a review of any my books on Amazon or Goodreads–whether the first editions of my trilogy or the newly released second edition of my trilogy’s first installment. Unless you ARE an author, you can have no idea how much an honest…
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What reading nonfiction can teach a novelist
I read quite a bit of nonfiction, mostly theology, spiritual autobiographies, and Catholic/Christian apologetics. Obviously, if you want to write fiction, you need to read quite a bit of fiction. But more than that, you simply need to read. Reading a breadth of things can really help you grow as a creative writer. Here are…
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The Pearl of Great Price: God, not “God and . . .”
I love today’s Gospel passage: the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price. It’s a wonderful reminder that, as I recently read in “Weeds Among the Wheat” by Thomas Green SJ, we are called to seek and to live for God alone, not to hold onto “God and . . .” Even if the “and”…
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Why Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairytale
Seeing I’m a fantasy writer, it’s not surprising that I love fairy tales. Those beautiful, deep, haunting stories are classics that have survived for centuries for a reason. They speak to the human condition, to what it means to be human. They reveal deep, universal truths, and so have a universal appeal. Well, ever since…
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Creative writing as self-care
While book two of my trilogy is off with beta readers, I’m going through book three again, and then I need to do some serious work revising the prequel. I took a week’s break from all of that while I was running my free promo from June 10-June 14, and I didn’t realize the toll…
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When your writing career (or anything worthwhile) feels out of reach, shoot for consistency
We all go through periods of perspiration without measurable results. We all go through moments when an uphill climb feels never ending. This can take various forms in the life of an author. For instance: My best advice in this instance is twofold: Success very rarely happens overnight, and Henry Ford once defined luck as…
Creative Writing with the Crimson League 