Today is a personal first; I’m a guest blogger on one of my favorite sites, Writing Forward. In keeping with National Poetry Month, the topic for today is what fiction writers can learn from poetry. Check it out here

Maybe it’s just Monday morning talking, but I feel like delving into dark territory. Did you ever daydream about where you’ll be and what you’ll do when it all falls apart? Call it what you will; global economic collapse, Armageddon, the big one, they’re all faces of the same nameless beast that lives in our […]

How’s that title for blatant hyperbole? It raises a question worth discussing, however; exactly what role does description play in fiction? This morning, I read a post on Writer Unboxed that discusses descriptive passages and their use in genre fiction. As I read, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Before I […]

There’s a scene in my current novel that’s bedeviled me from the start. Twice now, I’ve started to write it, and twice it’s gone nowhere. It’s not a complicated scene; there are two characters (three if you count the dog - my stories always seem to have a dog) meeting in a run-down office. The […]

Where did you come up with that idea? If you write fiction, you’ll hear that question repeatedly over the span of your career. It was even posed to me once by a literary agent, someone you’d think would be too jaded to ask, after I pitched him the concept for The Big Spin. The temptation […]