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I've always loved snowstorms. There's something wonderful about hunkering down next to a crackling fire with the ones you love. The world goes quiet, winnowing out things we think are important but aren't. Baking pans slide into the oven, cups of cocoa are delivered to the man with the shovel and frozen cheeks, and if you're lucky enough to score a power outage, you'll spend evenings playing board games by candlelight. Historically, I'm the person who jumps into action during

Tomorrow, I'll send a single, carefully crafted query letter to a literary agent. If that agent is even slightly interested in what I have to offer, he'll follow the URL in my signature to this site, expecting to find a well-curated collection of writing snippets that showcase my style and voice. He'll look for evidence of engagement with readers, professionalism, voice, consistency. What he'll find instead is something far less polished and profoundly human: unflattering ph

Can you believe it's been twelve years since my first contract? A lot's changed since then. People have shorter attention spans, AI is replacing human authors, and readership is down overall. Yet in the midst of this, idiots like me keep writing. Why? I DON'T KNOW . I think some of us just can't NOT write, if that makes sense. This need to create stories, to dream up worlds we can control and people we can push around like bullies--it's some kind of weird sickness. I'm fairl

My current work-in-progress, a post-apocalyptic novel of 90k words, was practically writing itself when my husband began the final leg of his earthly journey in January. Four months later, he stepped onto a golden road, and I was left to travel the broken one alone. My blog posts demonstrate the difficulty of that transition. No lie: I cried every day for over two months. Eventually, I cried every other day. Now, 5 1/2 months later, I cry every week or two. The reasons why ar