New HuffPo article: Quitting?

Wait, I could just quit? I have a new article up at the Huffington Post this afternoon. I didn’t know quitting was an option. I imagine that sounds a little like a derivation of one of those motivational-slash-inspirational mantras that someone with a title like “life coach” shouts at an unreasonable volume, or possibly the…

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Bad Advice for Writers returns with a NaNoWriMo edition

Advice for the new novelist A new column full of Bad Advice is up now at Huffington Post. Whenever you see a negative review that makes you say to yourself, “I should reach out to this person, perhaps in a borderline illegal fashion,” by all means do so. Find out where they live if you…

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Success Bias–new HuffPo article

Posting today I have a new blog post up at the Huffington Post.  This one is called Success Bias, and you can read it by clicking here. Also, if you are wondering if I have been recast as a young attractive black woman, I didn’t select the image to go with the article.  I tried to select…

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Vintage

Seven years I need you to understand that I didn’t think of my laptop as old.  I felt the same way about it as I do about myself, basically, which is that I’m not getting any older, my kids are just catching up. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels this way about themselves…

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Huffington Post article on dialogue

Why Your Dialogue is Terrible My latest article is up on Huffington Post, on how terrible your dialogue is: There are ways to deliver exposition in dialogue, and it’s even possible for one person to give what amounts to a prepared speech, but it needs to be treated exactly like that. It can’t just appear…

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New Huffington Post article, new SAPPHIRE BLUE review

My Advice I have a new article up at The Huffington Post this morning.  It’s called My Advice Is to Ignore My Advice. Here’s the secret: writing a novel is really hard. That’s why writers will fall over themselves to tell you how they did it, because frankly nobody else quite understands the degree of…

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My next novel

So as to not bury the lede First things first: my next novel is called Sapphire Blue and it will be coming out (tentatively) on February 27, 2014. In terms of genre, Sapphire Blue is definitely two things, and possibly three other things, and the two definite things it is are things you are probably not expecting…

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In defense of fan fiction

On fan fiction I don’t write fan fiction, or publish fiction that existed at another time as fan fiction.  I also don’t read fan fiction.  To the best of my knowledge nothing I have written has spawned any manner of fan fiction out there, but it’s entirely possible I’m wrong because (again) I don’t read…

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Terror is a blank page

Writing from scratch I don’t want to alarm anybody, but do you realize how long it’s been since I started a novel from scratch?  It’s been… hang on… (counting) SEVEN YEARS. (Holy shit.  It’s been seven years.  I was sort of kidding around when I started this post, but that’s forever!) I have done a lot…

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