Cartomancy and Character

I’m not much of a believer in the occult, but I do love Tarot, not in any small part because the 78 cards in a Tarot deck can be so beautiful. There’s something undeniably fascinating in the symbols and images, and it’s easy to get caught up the magic. My first reading was done by a…

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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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My Worst Cover Ever

I will say very quickly, before any of my readers totally freak out, this is not a new cover for one of my books. Not even a recent cover. But my last post led to a discussion on book covers and author input, so I thought I’d use this truly scary example as a jumping…

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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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On the Road Again

Just a quick post tonight, since I’m traveling. We’re staying at a B and B in a cute little town in New Jersey. This is a trip for pleasure as opposed to work, although I did bring my manuscript with me and am working on revisions during the down time– plus I’ll be breakfasting with…

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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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The Great Blog Experiment

My webmaster has changed my blog to a WordPress blog, so I have a bit of a learning curve going on here! Let’s see how it works out. For those of you who comment frequently, let me know if you run into any snags. I hope not. Change is always a challenge, but I hope…

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