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Summer 2025 Writing Update and Sixth Novel First Chapter Teaser
The first draft of novel number six is… Guess what? About a week ago, I finished the first draft of my sixth novel, tentatively titled Four Hearts. It’s been a long process since I took some time off for personal reasons during the summer of 2024. The draft is with my four amazing beta readers as I type this. What now? I’m taking a well-deserved break from novel writing and editing (personally). I write and edit every weekday for my day job. I need the break to get away from my story so I can edit it with fresher eyes. I’ll take notes from my betas and begin the editing…
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How much truth is in my fiction?
Writing what I knew as a teenager I loved reading when I was a kid, and I began writing as a teenager. The results of my early efforts were 7 handwritten “finished” novels, several poems (many of which are terrible), numerous essays, one random index card with a great idea, a notebook of not-so-great ideas, and a handful of false starts for a story that will never work. My finished stories were fabrications with a bit of what I wanted mixed in. For example, I gave all my main female characters a love interest because I wanted a boyfriend so badly as a teen. Along with the fiction was a…
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My So-Called Life: What the show meant to me then and now
Television habits before 1994 I grew up watching TV and movies rented on VHS tapes. As an avid reader, escaping into another world wasn’t uncommon for me, but there was just something about watching it on screen that evoked all my senses. When I was a little kid, I watched mostly cartoons: The Smurfs, Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, The Care Bears, and of course, The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show. Later, I watched family-friendly shows with my mom, like The Wonder Years, Dr. Quinn, Home Improvement, and the TGIF line-up that included shows like Full House, Family Matters, Boy Meets World, and Step by Step. And I can’t forget the…
