How a Writer Beats the Coronavirus Blues

As a creative, someone who is hyper-sensitive to emotional cues, I am bombarded with this so much that I am overwhelmed. Sitting down to write about it is at once therapeutic and also necessary. I’ve decided to do a few things to get me through it, and also to help me actually get back to writing.

The Elephant In the Room: My Next Novel and It’s Hopeful Impact

Wow.  It’s been a long time since I’ve posted to this blog. Honestly it’s been an insane two months. On December 5th, my 76 year old mother entered the hospital because of complications following a routine colonoscopy, and I only brought her home a week ago Thursday.  She developed a bleed that wouldn’t stop, so

What Novels Inspire Your Writing?

As stated many times on this blog, good writers must in turn be good readers.  I don’t mean you can read lots of words or big words (sorry Trump) but I simply mean that good writers seek out good writing to emulate when working toward that new idea for a fiction piece. Lately I’ve read

Think Carefully About Your New WIP

I am in the uphill struggle to finish the final book in the Five Rims series, and as the kids say, the struggle is real.  I have been bombarded with so many new ideas for novels that it has become that much more difficult to finish the current novel because I want to move on with

3 Reasons to Not Write a Series (AND 3 Reasons Why You Should)

I’m trying my darnedest to finish the third book in the Five Rims series, and writing this blog entry isn’t really helping me achieve that goal…or is it? I think that I will never attempt another series.  It’s not that my series isn’t exciting as it really is.  I love the idea of creating a massive

How to Set Up an Amazon Giveaway to Drive People to Your Amazon Author Page

I can’t take credit for finding out about this cheap little marketing gimmick.  That credit goes to my awesome podcast partner Richard Kutz.  We host a weekly podcast together called “Three Cylinder Stardrive”, a geek-out fun-fest where we break down current pop culture often from a writer’s perspective and also note a “Dollar Rental of

The Lost Soul and Characterization

I spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday hashing out the details of the latest Five Rims installment with my good friend and collaborator Jack Johnson.  If you don’t have a writing group from which you can bounce ideas around, you need to at least get a good friend who is also a writer or at least an

The New Podcast: 3 Cylinder Stardrive

I haven’t posted in a while. Like…a while. The fact is that life has been keeping me quite busy lately, and I haven’t had the time to do much other than be a full time teacher and a full time dad to four teenage kids.  I am still writing (off and on) and plan on

Sequel Breakthrough: Finding A Way Back In

I’ve taken a hiatus from working on the sequel to The Terminarch War to finish up the short story compilation.  I’m almost ready to publish that next week, and the progress on the third book in the Five Rims series is something that has been rather stagnant to say the least. I just can’t get back into

5 Tips for Creating Dialogue That Flows

I haven’t been on the blog for a while.  I received an e-mail from a reader who is having trouble with dialogue, and so I decided to crank out a little tip list for them. With NaNoWriMo coming soon, keeping these five tips in mind when writing dialogue should help any writer craft meaningful and