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Serial: Down the River – Chapter Fifty-Eight

Down the River Header

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets! Today, Ben becomes a hero, and something surprising happens… < Read Chapter 57 | Read Chapter 59 > Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter with notifications of new chapters. Chapter Fifty-EightAn Uninvited Dinner Guest “Mother, I want you to meet Lorelei.” Ben stood … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: The Monster at the End of This Book

The Monster at the End of This Book

Note: I got up this morning, having just finished writing the first draft of Down the River, and thought abut writing a column about The Monster at the End of This Book. Then a little part of my brain tickled me and said “didn’t you do this before?” Turns out I had, and this says exactly what I wanted to say. So I am resharing this column from 2021, with a slight update for my latest novel completion. Enjoy! When I was a kid, I had a few favorite picture books. At the top of the list was The Wump … Read more

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Author Spotlight: Rachel A. Rosen

Rachel A. Rosen

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work. Today: Rachel A. Rosen is an activist, graphic designer, and for her sins, a high school teacher. In a previous life, she published two long running anarchist ‘zines and designed the uniform for the Christie Pits Hardball League. She is the author of Cascade, this novel’s predecessor, and, with Zilla Novikov, the co-author of The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So You Don’t Die. More of her writing can be found in Beyond Human: Tales … Read more

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Serial: Down the River – Chapter Fifty-Seven

Down the River Header

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets! Today, Sam meets with his foster son and bumps up against some uncomfortable truths about his feelings… < Read Chapter 56 | Read Chapter 58 > Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter with notifications of new chapters. Chapter Fifty-SevenDo You Know What You … Read more

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Point of View: Finding the Theme

book magic - deposit photos - theme

Every story begins with something. Sometimes it’s an especially vivid image of a character that you want to write. Sometimes it’s a shiny plot object, the big idea that you want your whole story to revolve around. And sometimes it’s a theme. No matter where you start, the theme is an important part of your story. You are asking readers to buy into your view of the world, and that viewpoint should be about something. The tricky part is figuring out what that something is. For me, the theme is usually not apparent to me until I get partway or … Read more

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Serial: Down the River – Chapter Fifty-Six

Down the River Header

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets! Today, Ainsley comes clean to her parents about leaving school to go work with Jun Seo Jang… < Read Chapter 55 | Read Chapter 57 > Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter with notifications of new chapters. Chapter Fifty-SixAn Unexpected Gift Ainsley stood … Read more

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Point of View: Here We Go Again

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My husband Mark is an angel. I came into 2025 at a low point. I’d been searching for a job for fourteen months, and although I’d had a number of great interviews, the answer was a “no” every single time. Things worsened over the next few months, and two jobs I thought I had a great shot at faded away without even an interview. And then a few potentially really good things happened. I can’t share two of them yet – don’t want to scare them away. But suddenly my writer path has grown brighter after ten years in the … Read more

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Author Spotlight: A.D. Ellis

A.D. Ellis logo

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work. Today: Escape into addictive, sexy, emotional M/M romance. A.D. Ellis is an Indiana girl, born and raised. She spends much of her time in central Indiana as an instructional coach/teacher in the inner city of Indianapolis, being a mom to two amazing teens, and wondering how she and her husband of over two decades haven’t driven each other insane yet. A lot of her time is also devoted to phone call avoidance and … Read more

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Serial: Down the River – Chapter Fifty-Five

Down the River Header

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets! Today, Diego has his own encounter with Brad… and a couple other ghosts from his past… < Read Chapter 54 | Read Chapter 56 > Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter with notifications of new chapters. Chapter Fifty-FiveLet Him Go Diego woke up, … Read more

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Review: Flashes in Time – Mikko Rauhala

Flashes in Time - Mikko Rauhala

Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi Get It On Amazon | Publisher | B&N | Kobo About The Book Flashes in Time explores these questions and more in sixteen imaginative short stories set atop a fourfold table of science fiction and fantasy, contemporary and far off. A diverse cast of characters explores the limits of what it means to be human, and what our choices make of us. From darkness to light and lingering in between, the scenarios and thought experiments take the reader on a journey with surprising yet inevitable twists. The Review I first met Mikko Rauhala at Nebula Con – this was during the pandemic, and … Read more