This month was all about workshops—workshops I attended and workshops I presented. My first stop was the Orange County Library to learn about world building from Arielle Haughee. Her approach to world building starts with creating maps, ranging from the broad to the more specific aspects of the world. I tend to make maps late […]
Summer is convention season, which means that just a couple weeks after the OCLS Book Festival, I was driving over to Maitland for a weekend at OASIS, the Orlando Area Science Fiction Society’s annual convention. They were celebrating OASIS 30, but this was my first time in attendance. It’s kind of amazing what can be growing […]
In the middle of the month, I took a one-day vacation to the OCLS Book Festival. I’m calling this a vacation because even though I absolutely wrote that day, and even though I was taking notes in the pursuit of my writing career, the event, schedule, and whole day was a wonderful pause on my […]
Ever wonder what it takes to be an every day writer? It’s this: planning, determination, and prioritizing writing. My friends and I decided it was high time we visit the Magic Kingdom for an epic 12-hour theme park day. I write every day and while I want to prioritize having fun with my friends and […]
In mid-March my friend ran a mini-workshop on branding for myself and two other author friends. In addition to getting away for the weekend and spending entirely too much time browsing through the rooms and rooms of used books at Chamblin Bookmine, we discussed who we each are as authors, helped refine brand statements, and […]
This month was the highly anticipated release of the Netflix adaptation of The Umbrella Academy. This weird little comic by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá has been living in my heart since 2007, and I was terrified and excited to see it come to the small screen. Netflix has done all right by the Marvel […]
While I was addressing comments on my steampunk novel, Lara Eckener was kind enough to share Victorian drop candy with me! Drop candy is made by rolling heated sugar between brass molds. As it is pressed between the molds, the sugar cools and hardens. To release the candy pieces, the rolled film is dropped, breaking […]
I started December by finishing off a final revision of my Clockman novel. (Yes, another final revision.) This pass included addressing some concerns I had about Chapter 12 and then reviewing the entire manuscript for filler words and adverbs to make sure the sentences were as tight as they could be. I used some of […]
While I hit the majority of my 2018 goals, I’m not entirely satisfied with my progress this year, which is why I’m making some major changes to my writing life for next year. But that topic is next year, and this post is about 2018 and all my success and less-than-success that has come and […]
It’s time for a confession: the way I’ve been going about this blog has been challenging and exhausting and it makes me want to quit. Whew. Way to finally get that off my chest! I’ve been feeling this way for a long time, but repressing that feeling by thinking about what I thought I should […]