Today is my fifty-third birthday. When I was younger, someone who was my current age was old. They dressed in slacks and cardigans, walked a lot slower, and ate things like green beans and beef stroganoff. Now that I’m fifty-three, it doesn’t seem so old anymore. Part of this is the Boomers’ fault – they … Read more
Every author reading this knows what this column will be about, just from reading the title. Well, at least every self-published author. You have done everything right. You have a website, a blog, a facebook profile (and page/group!). You’re on Twitter, the ‘gram, Slack, Zoom, Discord, and a hundred other apps you probably forgot you … Read more
“What’s your damage, Heather?” We all carry damage around with us in some way, shape or form, like an unwanted hitchhiker. Damage from things that were done to us as children. Damage from things we did to others. Damage from the world and society at large. I carry the damage of homophobia. Of being called … Read more
Constantin Stanislavski came uo with a theory of acting that I’m loosely going to describe as “become the character” – a method of connecting with the personality of the person you’re playing, and learning how to think and feel like they did. It’s also known as Method Acting, and taken to its extreme, it can … Read more
Writing the future is hard. We’re embedded in the present. We have all this amazing tech now, but most of it will be gone in fifty years, evolved into something new. Who could have predicted some of these things fifty years ago? Sci-fi writers, that’s who. It’s what we do, but it’s a lot harder … Read more
Last week, I talked about some writing successes during an otherwise bleak 2020. Today I’m turning my gaze ahead and pulling out my crystal ball (and my planner). Here are some things I am hoping for and preparing for in 2021. In January (1/10), I am rereleasing Between the Lines, my River City Chronicles prequel. … Read more
Sometimes we just get stuck. Writers gotta write, but life has a habit of getting in the way. Maybe a particular project has you stumped. Or maybe it’s a general sense of malaise or a bad review, or a book that didn’t sell like you hoped it would. As I write this, we’re at the … Read more
Growing up, I was an insatiable reader. Starting with the Lord of the Rings in third grade, I moved through the canons of Asimov, Clarke, Silverberg, McCaffrey, Heinlein and many more by the time I hit junior high. It wasn’t until I was in eighth grade and realized I had crushes on other boys in … Read more
Last January, I announced that I had a plan. Going all in on my agent search. Writing every morning from 5:30 to 7:00, to maximize my writer productivity. And putting together another novel. So here we are, almost at the end of 2020, and I figured it was time to look back and reassess. In … Read more
interregnum /ˌin(t)ərˈreɡnəm/ noun1) a period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes.2) an interval or pause between two periods of office or other things. The world is holding its breath. As I sit here writing this, I find myself living through a number of nested interregnums. We’re still in the throes … Read more