Embracing Change

The original title for this blog post was “I Give Up,” but when I mentioned that to my significant other, John, he nixed it. He said I’m a positive person who has overcome adversity and embraces change, totally shaming me into taking a different slant on my topic. Until then, I was sounding like quite…

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Greetings from Topsail Island

When I decided to set Before the Storm and Secrets She Left Behind on Topsail Island, I never dreamed how important this place would become to me. From my very first research trip,  though, I knew I’d discovered something special. It reminded me of my childhood at the Jersey Shore and of my early adulthood…

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Sneak Peek at the Cover of The Lies We Told

          The cover for The Lies We Told, which I just completed and which will be published June 2010. I love it, but the hair color of the sisters doesn’t match the story exactly. How much would that bother you as readers? If I view the image as more representational than literal,…

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Crazy About Writing

Years ago, my then-husband and I were driving through the countryside in a pouring rain. I was working on my second novel back then, and was utterly entranced with the process. As we drove through the downpour, I noticed a group of cows huddled together under a tree, and my heart broke for them. “I feel…

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Oh Happy Day!

                                    I didn’t think it was ever going to happen! After several months of “everything that can go wrong going wrong” (with the exception of a hurricane, but the season’s not over yet), I now own a vacation…

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Hook, Line and Linker

During my twenty-eight years of writing, I’ve heard plenty of advice from other authors. One tidbit stands out: tighten the relationship between characters. I know exactly where (in Albert Zuckerman’s Writing the Blockbuster Novel) and when (1995, as I wrote Reflection) I read this suggestion. It’s stayed with me all these years and I draw…

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How a Jersey Girl Became a Southern Writer

I was recently invited to write a guest post for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance blog, and I wrote about my transition from Jersey Girl to Southern Writer. You can read the post here , and I offer it with apologies to everyone in New Jersey, especially my family, my friends and my agent. You…

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Revising on the Porch

A few readers have asked me what’s happening with my work-in-progress, The Lies We Told, due to be published next June, so I’m here with an update. I’ve shared with you the synopsis process, the outline process, the writing process, the revising process and the torturous rush-to-deadline process. That was followed by two weeks of…

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To Write or Not to Write? Controversial Topics in Fiction

I belong to Novelists, Inc, and we’ve been having an interesting discussion on our email loop recently.  A member asked about the pros and cons of addressing controversial topics in our fiction. As you can imagine, the comments of the authors have varied just as much as their opinions on the topics themselves. I am…

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