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Category: Life

Failing Forward?

Failing Forward?

I’ve spent the past year recovering from a hard burnout, something I discussed here along with my plans to recover from it. When I wrote that post, I hadn’t fully grasped the depth of that burnout or the causes. Gradually, though, I’ve come to realize that I’d been sliding into burnout for years, and not every factor of the burnout was within my control. Be that as it may, I’ve had to take a hard look at my life and…

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Different Is Still Normal

Different Is Still Normal

A couple of days ago, I had a long talk with a friend about the problems I’m having connecting with characters. The underlying assumption on her part during the entire discussion was that my thought processes, my preferred schedule, my preferred writing time, and even my preferred way of interacting with others is abnormal and must, therefore, be fixed. While I appreciate the concern on her part (and the friendly ear), I have a serious problem with the attitude that:…

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Spring Flowers

Spring Flowers

When we were kids, my mom used to drag us all over the mountains searching for wildflowers. My grandmother, MawMaw, often came with us, riding in the front seat with Mom while we kids packed ourselves into the back, our slender limbs overlapping. Mom came from a large family of flower lovers. The brothers tilled wide gardens for summer’s crops, and the sisters collected living jewels, decorating their yards with flowers bought, traded, and (occasionally) stolen. Thrift, for example, must…

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Violet Jam

Violet Jam

Every spring, violets bloom in a mass of purple and white in yards all across the South. Every time I see them, I think of two things: Easter (and I have no idea why) and my paternal grandmother’s violet jam. Nanny grew up during the Depression when folks took economizing to a whole new level. Everything had a purpose. Nothing was wasted. Nanny reduced, reused, and recycled long before the expression became popular among greenies. She was so thrifty, she…

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2022 Focus: Creativity

2022 Focus: Creativity

Normally, I would discuss the following year’s goals in my end of the year Book and Author News post. Undoubtedly I will when I work on it in a day or two. I wanted to separate out my focus for 2022, however, so that I can clarify the particular way I’m going to pursue those goals. Hopefully, this will also help other creatives struggling to produce. Productivity For the last few years, my annual keyword has been productivity. It’s a…

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A Better Place

A Better Place

Leave the world a better place than you found it. How do you do that? Not by complaining. Protesting and activism, arm-chair politicking, those do nothing; they change nothing. They’re futile and useless wastes of time. You’ll never make the world a better place by grumping about it. Not by running other people down, or placing blame or the burden of other people’s sins on them. How then can you effect change? By doing. By getting your hands dirty. By…

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Welcome to My Brain

Welcome to My Brain

Imagine a busy interstate. Say, I-85 running through Atlanta. Five lanes of traffic on either side of a concrete barrier. Every lane is full. Passenger vehicles sit nose to tail with semis, work vans, and limos. Spaghetti Junction soars overhead, an intertwined marvel of human engineering. It’s summer. The asphalt is scorching hot to the touch and radiates visible heat under the cars. Billboards line the highway, blaring a different movie on each screen. King Kong holds Fay Wray in…

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When Opportunity Knocks

When Opportunity Knocks

Until recently, I lived in a one-hundred-and-five-year-old house my dad inherited from his father’s youngest sister. The house was built by my great-grandfather, on land near where the family had resided for several generations. Dad talked about selling it off and on the entire time I lived there, and I knew he would try to sell it when President Biden started pushing to raise capital gains taxes. Still, when Dad told me he’d signed a contract with a real estate…

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Please Pay the Author

Please Pay the Author

I give away a lot of books every month. Each giveaway is motivated by a strong purpose. Some stories are reader magnets for my newsletters. The Death Mask of Adlivun Cavus (C.D. Watson) and Death Omen (Celia Roman), while also available for sale (here and here), were both written to entice readers to subscribe to my newsletters. Others are a way to hook readers into a series, especially series that are difficult to advertise, which most of my books are….

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Mother Mary

Mother Mary

I write a lot of characters that are mothers. Many of the women in the Daughters of the People Series are mothers, for example, and several of the short stories in Apocalypse Weird are narrated by mothers or include mothers who play important roles in their respective stories. Part of this is due to my own state of motherhood; I’ve been a happy mother of one for more than two decades now. It’s therefore natural for me to create characters…

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