Supposedly, every fiction writer has a theme.  Have you ever noticed a pattern with your favorite authors?  The heroines in their stories are always bumbling or a bit quirky.  The heroes are always dark and forbidding but have a well-hidden soft spot that is key to the story.  Or maybe in each book there’s some [...]

My father used to tell me “It’s not what you know it’s who you know.”  He was a wise man able to offer a pithy remark for just about any circumstance and his words of wisdom stuck with me because they are true. On the morning of my thirty-second wedding anniversary (apropos of nothing except [...]

Lots of authors write without plotting first, which is what I do.  I’ve survived so far, but it’s a lot of work, especially if you decide to start writing in a genre you’ve never written in before and you have no idea what you’re doing.  Such was the case when I began writing The Forbidden [...]

Independently publishing one’s own books is an interesting journey.  The conventional wisdom is you shouldn’t proceed without professional cover art if you want your book to sell.  I was referred to cover artist Katerina Vamvasaki by another author. After informing her I’d never done this before, I initially e-mailed her the following: There a couple [...]