I remember the day my father took me and my sister to a shady area in the woods close to a creek. We were going fishing with the...

Want to feel empowered? Choose not to “like” a friend’s social media post. Oh, I know. That sounds like sour grapes. Someone didn’t get...

If you’re an author published by an independent publisher, you are responsible for most of your book’s promotion and marketing. With the...

I’ve changed my mind about people’s heartfelt desire to write the book within them. They’ll never do it. And I need to quit encouraging...

“And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen...

Are you inadvertently boring your readers because of your reliance on mainly two sentence styles? Those styles are the compound sentence...

In addition to writing my debut novel and several essays, I have always loved writing poetry. Perhaps my favorite poem from among those I...

Photo by Victoria Rodriguez from Pexels One of the most compelling articles I read last year was titled “on the inability to create...

Let’s face it: Martha Stewart makes perfect cupcakes. But that’s not the only thing she’s good at. Until it lost its news value, Martha...

In my last blog, I mentioned “too much” girls, ones who were too loud, too this, too that. And I saluted them for their passion, their...

When you’re a writer, the most wonderful feeling is getting your manuscript accepted by a publisher and seeing it take shape as a...

In the children’s story “The Runaway Flying Horse,” a carousel horse tires of the restrictive Merry-Go-Round, longing for the freedom...

What I love about Kaylin Haught’s poem above, “God says yes to me,” is the message of assurance it gives to girls who question...

—Ethereal drone music to make you believe you’re wandering around an exoplanet that, unlike the one you’re on, requires no dusting,...

Have you ever been ghosted? I don’t mean have you ever come face to face with a vanishing figure in an abandoned Victorian mansion after...

When I read about young people today beset by mental illness in these challenging times, I am so very concerned for them. Certainly,...

A tongue-in-cheek rationalization for my Modern Love rejections, leading me to believe I'm neither modern nor loved!...

I’m here to praise ex-boyfriends. To continue the ironic analogy to the title of James Agee’s book about Depression-era tenant farmers,...

“Paul McCartney is downstairs and will do a quick meet-and-greet with photos, if you hurry.” That’s what I heard one day when I worked...

Here's a remembrance from a time I spent a "big birthday" at a Beverly Hills spa, a day in which I was mostly broke and brokenhearted. I...

What defines your writing style? I rarely revert to Wikipedia for the best definitions, but I do like the simplicity of this: “Beyond the...

If you’ve ever sent out query letters to agents, you know the pain you feel when you get rejection letters back. It’s similar to the pain...

Persistence. Quite a word. The website etymonline.com tells us that the word originated in the 1540s from the French and Latin, meaning...

The wonderful editors at Gyroscope Review gave their published poets a chance to read three poems that had been published anywhere, not...

What happens if you don’t follow your dreams? Researchers from Cornell University and the New School for Social Research found that...

Months passed. I published a personal essay in The Los Angeles Times, as well as poems in various journals and was a runner-up in a...

In another year or so, I exhumed my book proposal and thought it good enough to send to another New York agent. It worked — again....

One day, long ago, I sat on the floor in my apartment in Tempe, Arizona, surrounded by notes, outlines, and a copy of a well-known novel...