Newsletter subscribers got a sneak peek at this last week, and now, as promised, I am proud to present the description for The Trials of Renegade X:  Can a half villain ever be a full hero? Damien Locke didn’t choose for his supervillain mom to disown him—just because he sort of defied her and ruined […]

Am almost done with WIP.  Disclaimer, it is not Trials, which I know is what everyone is waiting for right now.  (Understandable!)  But it’s still a book that’s very important to me.  It’s much darker than my other work–sort of a dark fantasy YA version of Dexter–and I am, like, 8 scenes away from being done […]

So, I don’t think I ever mentioned why I chose to self-publish Harper Madigan: Junior High Private Eye.  For those of you who don’t know, it’s a noir detective story.  It’s also MG, so self-publishing it isn’t the most obvious path to get it into the hands of readers.  A lot of people have misconceptions about […]

Mark your calendars for September, 2013!  That’s right, The Trials of Renegade X will be released next September!  This might seem like a long way off, especially when you guys have been so patient–a lot of you have been waiting for this since 2010.  But September is when everything can be done by–both on my […]

I wrote this in an email to an author friend, on the subject of writing as a career, as opposed to other, more lucrative and “parent-and-society-approved” professions.  I’m posting it here in the hopes that it resonates with other writers as well: Frankly, I think writing fiction is the most important, most noblest career anyone […]

Once upon a time, in 2004, in a faraway land called Bellingham, WA, where the sky, the earth, and the sea are all the same shade of gray, I got it into my head that I wanted a portable writing device.  I had a desktop at the time and I wanted to be able to […]

So, I can admit that the beginning of the year was a lot busier than I expected (A LOT busier).  I pubbed my middle grade noir mystery, Harper Madigan: Junior High Private Eye.  I expanded from doing commissions on DeviantArt to an actual Etsy business.  I was taking grad school classes.  I spent my spring […]

Taking a break from work and school related deadlines to answer another publishing question!  Mel asks: If I sent my manuscript to an agent about a year ago (who requested a full) , but since then have significantly revised it, would you suggest resubmitting it? Definitely!  Just make sure to be up front about it […]

If you’re submitting your novels to agents or editors, or even thinking about submitting, you’ve probably had to deal with query letters. And, if you’re anything like I was when I was sending out query letters, the thought of having to write one probably makes you want to tear your hair out and curl up […]

I said I had another post on writing coming up, and here it is! So, last time, Julia asked: Do you think you could do a post on sentence-by-sentence spice-adding, in terms of dialogue and such? The problem I often have with writing is that my plot either moves too quickly and I can’t think […]