Writing for the Love

Another October, another FWA Conference over! This is the fifth year in a row I've attended and I always walk away...well, exhausted was the first word that came to mind. But also filled with new ideas, inspired by all the amazing people I've met or reconnected with, and better informed about this business called writing. A few highlights: The food. Always absolutely fabulous. Ben Hale led a couple of phenomenal sessions, one about world-building and one about making a two-year plan. Both helpful for me in terms of Livinity , my epic fantasy novel. Bobbie Christmas spoke about the second draft and beyond. She's a well-respected Book Doctor with wonderful editing tips. That session was quite timely for me and extremely helpful. A session called Understanding Disabilities and Mental Disorders For Character Creation was very interesting and helpful for me in my editing process for Little Angel Helper , a novella with a mentally disabled character with mental di...

I'm happy to announce that my short story, "The Wheels Must Turn," made it into this year's FWA Collection #4- My Wheels . Praise the Lord! This is the third year in a row that I've gotten a story into the colletion and I'm still excited about it. Publication doesn't really get old. The sci-fi story is about a young narrator coming to grips with the death of her father. On to other topics that have been on my mind. For some reason, I can't seem to write about my writing more than once a month. I'm not sure if it matters or not. I write on my running blog, The Anti-Running Runner , more. I write on my fiction novels and short stories WAY more. Which is probably the reason why. I listen to podcasts a lot (another reason why?), and I was introduced to The Roundtable Podcast from the guys over at The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine . If you are a writer, published or not, I highly recommend adding Roundtable to your iTunes subscriptions (it...

October 21-23, Orlando Marriott I’ve decided to talk about the Florida Writers Association Conference in a series of blogs rather than overload a single post with 2,000 words, or whatever it will end up being. As a writer who wants to be a published novelist someday, I’ve learned so much from the conference, and I would recommend it to anyone who is serious about their writing. This is my fourth year in a row attending, and the quality continues to impress me, along with the variety of session topics and “wow!” value of speakers, such as NY Times Bestselling author Shelley Shepard Gray . In a joint session with her agent, Mary Sue Seymour , Shelley talked about her writing journey and how the hard work never ends for authors. Even an author with several published books still faces rejection. There was a period for Shelley where three years passed while her agent attempted to place a Christian historical romance novel, and Shelley began doubting herself, even struggl...