Memories

One of the things I have always enjoyed about reading romance is the happily-ever-after. I’m perfectly fine with terrible pain and trauma happening to all of the characters so long as they kiss and hold hands at the end. And as a romance writer I often enjoy figuring out how I’m going to get these…

Yesterday, someone kept telling me I was “superhuman” because I’ve dealt with challenges. I’m a mother who loves her daughter and made some sacrifices. That doesn’t make me superhuman. That make me a parent. In the past, I’ve been called “inhuman” because I had to make brutal, agonizing decisions about my daughter. That doesn’t make…

When I started writing The Wanderer, I wanted to share my love for Old English literature and language but I’ve also been a writer and editor long enough to know that a strict adherence to the truth makes for poor storytelling. Fiction that is too self-conscious is metafiction, a story about story, or a story…

I’m spending the summer in Spain, which is the upside of being a freelancer, although I also have to work while I’m here, which is the downside of not being independently wealthy. I was on a bus to Seville when I had an idea for a new fantasy novel, which I probably didn’t need, given…

One of the things I like about traveling is that I always end up with a bunch of story ideas while I’m doing it. I need the butt-in-chair time of staying home to actually do anything with these story ideas but I almost never have them if all I do is stay at home. Which…

When I was a child, I had an insatiable appetite for fairy tales. Rumpelstiltskin, Jack and the Beanstalk, the Elves and the Shoemaker, Three Billy Goats Gruff. I mean, their fantastical aspects aside, fairy tales are a lot like life: an unprepared person enters a chaotic, upside-down world, and tries to survive. Resourcefulness is necessary,…