June 8, 2024
Nine years ago I picked up two tiny, summer-bearing, full-sun berry plants for an 11-foot-long garden box that I’d situated along the sunny side of my garage. Today that box overflows with canes —
May 6, 2024
Timelines establish the sequence or schedule for your story. Everything on them should be necessary to the world or your characters and must be done in a precise order so that what you create makes sense in story form.
March 13, 2024
Totality lasted less than 3 minutes — such a tiny fraction of time compared to the years I’d spent waiting, hoping, planning, and preparing. It overwhelmed the mind yet further rooted a desire for more at the same time.
February 18, 2024
Story setting is more than just the physical stuff. It’s the mood and culture, period and genre, and many other things all wrapped into one. But it’s worth parsing out to find the sticky spots in your work that need more detail.
February 15, 2024
The Black Swans of Harlem is as steeped in history as the dance of ballet itself, yet time and culture have kept much of its story buried.
November 18, 2023
Your characters are worldbuilding tools, but they are also much more. Use them correctly, interact with them as if they were real, and you’ll see them come to life. They’ll become the guides to your storyline and world.
October 26, 2023
Your map represents the world your characters live in. It might be as small as a doll’s house or as large as a multi-galaxy supercluster, and that’s fine…provided you can keep it all straight.
October 5, 2023
Maps don’t have to be hard. They certainly don’t have to be impossible. They just need a little creativity of a different sort.
July 27, 2023
I’ve had and loved cats of many colors and patterns, but my heart will always be most captive to the black ones: To their elegance, to their uniqueness within the seeming uniformity, and to the memories they evoke of those now gone. In history and in the now, black cats reign supreme.
July 16, 2023
The story is only a part of the story. It only thrives if the world built under it can stand in the face of your readers’ scrutiny.
February 9, 2023
Every title begins with the phrase ‘The Cat Who’. The reason is simple: A cat is the crime-solver. His devoted human is merely the tool he uses to impart justice, and the actions described in the title are a clue...
December 11, 2022
Gingerbreading is crafting and creating, laughing and lauding. And when the holidays are over, it takes on one last, long-awaited meaning: smashing those beautiful little houses and feasting for a month (or more!) on all the melt-in-your-mouth pieces!