My brother was battling cancer when his daughter, my niece, completed her master’s degree. He was determined to make the 2,000-mile trip to see her graduate. And also to meet the someone-special she’d been seeing; it had a forever kind of vibe about it. When my brother returned home, we talked for a few minutes […]
Here’s a portion of a so-called rejection letter I got in 2004 for the earliest version of my future best-seller Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew: “Your story idea does not meet our needs. We look for pitches that offer, at the very least 1) a compelling story that educators will find […]
If there’s one thing my writerly soul detests, it’s a buzzword. A fork in the thigh of originality and wordsmithery, every insufferable time. Remember “bundling,” one of early 21st century’s most annoying argots? Whole industries, from telecommunications to healthcare to pet grooming bundled bigger and spiffier packages in hopes of persuading, often forcing, us […]
The pink-chalk late winter sunrise peeked through the trees beyond my office window as I played out a chapter of my literary life’s version of “all good things come to an end.” Behind me stood a tower of storage containers. I’d begun packing up ten years of research that went into my novel The River […]
We all know George Santayana’s ominous warning, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We could call it a kind of unintentional recycling. Then there are of us who remember the past and are called to repeat it, with the greatest of intention and purpose. Across a twenty-year writing career, […]
Today’s publishing market is a media-content glutton. Whether authoring fiction or nonfiction, we find ourselves churning out articles, posts, presentations, interviews, newsletters, and memes. Credibility is everything. We want our words to ring true, relevant, and original. That’s how we grab a reader’s attention and make them want to read more, how we build […]
