The New Years’ Dance

Welcome to 2024!!! Life is like a dance, we take a few steps forward and a few back, and sometime run in circles.

NaNoWriMo and Me

As November draws to a close, so does the quest to win NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Congrats to all who participate.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Hello 2022. So happy to see you. January 1 is always a day of great expectations for a new year. A page turned where we can put the past behind us and look forward to a full 365 days in which to make a mark. The mark I’m shooting for this year is joy and success. I’ve never been big … Read More

Does Nessie Have An Irish Cousin?

Just in case you think that Scotland, with the Loch Ness, has a lock on aquatic monster sightings, it simply isn’t so. Ireland boasts its share of sightings as well. One of the earliest sightings, dubbed the mystery of County Clare, occurred in 1850 where the beast was described as “sunning itself near the Clare coast off Kilkee.” Does a … Read More

Don’t Mess with the Ness

A friend of mine, Elizabeth Isaacs, greets each New Year with a word of intention rather than making resolutions. I’m not, and never have been, a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. Because I don’t believe that I will suddenly make all these changes in my life just because we pull one calendar off the wall and put another one … Read More

Holiday Joy

I rejoice in the holiday season, not only because I love all the lights and decorations, but because with all the negativity in the world, I’m happy to celebrate anything. It seems like these days every time you turn around, there is another act of hatred being perpetrated somewhere, so for me it is especially significant to celebrate the time … Read More

The Journal of Angela Ashby: The Angel of Death

I couldn’t resist going with a something spooky for Halloween. The Angel of Death, Azrael, Abaddon, the Angel of Dark and Light, the Destroying Angel — there are many names for the winged and cloaked form representing death. If you see the hands or face of this figure, it is usually depicted as a skeleton, so bones and no flesh. … Read More

The Lernean Hydra

One question authors are frequently asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” Truthfully, story ideas usually come to us in a variety of ways, whether it be from a news item, an article we read, the blinding lightning bolt where the idea simply occurs, dreams, life … anything really. No matter how I get the original idea, I usually … Read More

Beyond Normal Revisited

Four years ago today, while going through chemotherapy for Leukemia and Lymphoma, I was having a pretty rough day, so I blogged about it on my cancer site. The post was titled, Life Beyond Normal, because at that point, my normal had been stripped away, turned completely upside down, shaken, and forever changed. I had to learn what my limits … Read More

Belief

As I am working on the first book in my Homeless Myths series, The Star Warriors and the Secret of the Red Key, the topic of belief systems is present all the time. With Myths in the series name, those things are running through my head. Why do we believe the things we do. What do these kids believe? How … Read More

Did the Search for Nessie Help Save Sergio?

On the face of it, Cryptozoologists* and wildlife conservation scientists** don’t have much in common. Cryptozoology is widely considered a pseudoscience because its enthusiasts don’t follow conventional scientific methods while searching for monsters and mythological creatures, like Nessie and Bigfoot, which are also known as cryptids. Most conservation scientists don’t want to be associated with monsters and monster-hunting, but are … Read More

What Makes a Book Middle Grade?

Recently, I was discussing the arc for the Middle Grade (MG) series I am currently researching with an author friend who asked, “Are you sure this isn’t YA (Young Adult)?” My response was an immediate and unequivocal, “Yes.” The question was valid as what we had been discussing could potentially be morphing into the YA realm. But I am firm … Read More