To celebrate my 2,000th follower on Twitter, I decided to do something fun. Two weeks ago, I sent out a tweet to all my followers and asked them to send me a random word, which I would in turn weave into a short story. Over a period of 48 hours, I received a total of 47 submitted words.
One of… read entire post
Category Archives: Writing
I Just Published “The Human Library” on Amazon Kindle
In January of 2018 I began work on my senior project — a novel that ultimately became known as The Human Library. This wasn’t the first novel I worked on during grad school, but by the time it was finished and I had defended it before a panel of professors (all of whom are also published authors), it was the… read entire post
Winning Two Jackpots
In the fall of 2017 I began work on my grad project, a novel titled The Human Library. On April 19, I delivered copies to the three members of my graduate committee. Two weeks later on May 4, I returned to the University of Oklahoma to defend my work.
I spent those two weeks preparing. I wrote an outline of… read entire post
75,000 Words, 285 Pages, 1 Deadline
One of the main characters in my novel has a glaring flaw. A couple of scenes still feel clunky. I may or may not have a plot hole.
If it weren’t for deadlines, I might have gone on editing my novel forever. There’s always something that can be improved. Rough parts can be made better. Good parts can be made… read entire post
A Break from Spring Break
Susan, her mom, and the kids are in Ireland this week for spring break, and I’m in Oklahoma.
As I mentioned last week, I am wrapping up my novel for my final school project. If everything goes according to schedule, I’ll be turning my novel in during the second week of April, and defending it two weeks later (after the… read entire post
A Novel Milestone is Met
Late Saturday night, about an hour after midnight, I added two words to the end of the novel I’ve been working on since last October: THE END.
My book (working title: “The Human Library”) is by no means finished. In fact, it’s funny how those lines in the sand we set for ourselves constantly move. For the past several months… read entire post
The Purple Star
This semester, along with two other classes, I began work on my senior project — a fiction novel. Each week, I write a new chapter for my novel and present it to the head of my committee. During our weekly sessions, my professor reads the chapter and provides me with immediate feedback.
Project is the intersection where form meets art.… read entire post
The Magic of Writing
The first stage magic show I remember seeing was at Oklahoma’s Frontier City. Although almost every part of the theme park has a western motif, the magic show is just a magic show. I saw the magic show multiple times over the years, each year with a new magician, and the theater was always packed. Kids loved the show because… read entire post
Saturated
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks diving into several of the “how to write” books, podcasts, and tutorials I’ve picked up and/or bookmarked over the past year. I read Scene and Structure by Jack Bickham, and Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, and referenced Deborah Chester’s The Fantasy Fiction Formula for a novel I’m working on. I finished… read entire post
The Fantasy Fiction Formula (Book and Podcast)
When I tell my friends that my writing professor (Deborah Chester) wrote the book on writing genre fiction, I’m being quite literal. Okay, so maybe she didn’t write the book on writing genre fiction, but she wrote a book on the subject, and a darned good one too. It’s called The Fantasy Fiction Formula, and it’s exactly what it sounds… read entire post