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The making of Dunham

And so begins a post (or series of them) (you know how wishy-washy I am) on Dunham, the privateer-heroine and pirate-hero Revolutionary War swashbuckler, which, for those of you not following the serial, will be available for sale July 4, 2013. To kick it off, here’s the final cover for …

Journal entry: February 3, 2007

I used to be a writer.  I wrote lots of stuff.  It never got published and I gave up.  I just…stopped…one day.  Sometimes I read what I wrote and I get a charge from it, and I catch myself wondering how the author would have finished it if she had …

How to destroy a brand in one easy (lazy) step

So most of us DIYers out here are trying to brand ourselves. We spend our time on Twitter and Facebook and message boards and whatnot trying to build an audience and a fanbase. Then the midlist authors come along and digitize their backlists, and everybody’s happy because they already have …

Writing: Ur Doin it Rong

I saw this in an author post somewhere on the ’net: Thinking isn’t writing. Outlining isn’t writing. Research isn’t writing. Rewriting isn’t writing. Putting pen to paper is writing. Really. That’s odd, because I’ve been writing in my head for years, starting circa fifth grade when I couldn’t understand the …

People watching

Yesterday I had surgery for the first time ever (not counting wisdom teeth). It was elective and went well, so everything’s fine. Anyway. I very rarely go out. I’m a serious hermit. When I do go out, I avoid people like the plague. I don’t care to be touched or …

Reviewing too close to home

I wrote on this topic two months ago. I still don’t know what to do, but I’m losing my patience because I discovered that writers of some of the stuff that’s really bad are giving writing advice. Oy. Stop it. You’re not qualified to give writing advice. Really*. In light …

“Clean” does not equal good.

I want to talk about LDS fiction, the kind Deseret Book and Covenant and Cedar Fort publish. This is not a rant. I’m not being sarcastic, nasty, snarky, hateful, bitter, or any other pejorative one might chalk up to my tone. Whatever one might read into it, what I’m feeling …

I am god

I have a lot of fun with my imaginary friends, thinking of them as if they’re real, telling my tax deductions about mommy’s imaginary friends and laughing about what they do with Dude, talking about them to other writers who like to talk about what their imaginary friends do, too. …

Free agency

Mormon publishing is a small world, but since I only hover on the outskirts of the community as a fiction writer who is Mormon and not as a writer of Mormon fiction (albeit I have Mormon characters), I don’t have much invested in the state of the Mormon art. Currently …

Theme of the week

Dude DVRs all the series dramas (and a few sitcoms) he can pack into the box, and he watches them in chronological order (natch). About two years ago, we started noticing something very odd: Across all the dramas, across all the networks, there would be a theme of the week. …

New Year’s resolutions

1. Make a concerted effort to contact the authors of books I enjoy and tell them that, and why. I only know how wonderful it makes me feel when someone took the time to email me and tell me that they enjoyed one or both of my books and why.  …

Doc McGhee, literary agent

Hang with me for a series of seemingly unrelated factoids.  Y’all know who Doc McGhee is, right? He was Mötley Crüe‘s manager way back in the day and pretty much made them rich and famous. (Oh, shut up. You know I’m a Mötley Crüe fangrrrrl. But Mick Mars does look …

And another thing…

…if you didn’t have a touch (or more) of madness, of moodiness and emotional lability, of doubt and depression and fear, of uncontrollable rage and joy, things you should probably go see a therapist about… You wouldn’t be an artist. You wouldn’t be driven to write or create or paint …