“Spiral” has more meanings than one for sixteen-year-old Madz Monroe, who quits skating only to be faced with a medical apocalypse. Scared of sharing her diagnosis, she hides herself and her illness from others, including her parents’ landscaper, her crush. The experience opens her eyes to a world of suffering while helping her discover the…
AI
Ugh. Have to talk about it. I first tried AI after I’d written that last of my series. I NEVER used it to generate any aspect of my stories. Sad I have to declare that, but as usual, people who don’t abuse things sometimes suffer the consequences of those who do. Meaning, now any use…
Busy Editing and More
It’s been too long since I’ve posted an article here! I’ve been quite busy. I wrote Books One and Two in my Allegiance Series for roughly a year (2024-5), and ever since have been editing them. Now, I’m editing Book Three to fit the series, as it was actually the first book I wrote in…
Revisiting a Setting Inspiration: How a Simple Walk Turned into a Fruitful Experience
Revisiting a place that inspired a setting in your novel can be quite beneficial, as I learned the other day. I often walk in a large park that inspired the setting of my Allegiance series. North of Boston, this state-run recreational area boasts two lakes, a large forest, many unpaved paths, and two paved paths…
Songs in Fiction
Songs can play a role in storytelling. However, there are several things to consider when including a song in your fiction–especially if you’re creating an original song for the work. In this article, I delve into a variety of such considerations: *The article does NOT recommend a specific way to format songs in fiction. Why?…
How to Avoid Adverb Overload in Dialogue Tags
It’s an annoying condition that years of studying fiction writing taught me not to do: overusing adverbs in dialogue tags, speaker attributions whose purpose is to identify a speaker. I diagnosed dialogue-tag adverbitis (my name for it) in a book series I recently read. I enjoyed the story but was distracted by the amount of…
Spinning Reality: How to keep realistic fiction fictitious
(In this article, I use The Beauty of a Spiral, my contemporary YA novel, as an example.) During a time when my daughters and I figure-skated, I watched a movie with a figure-skating theme and was annoyed by a scene depicting a skater taking a test. It was nothing like any skating test my daughters…
Review: Vellum
Without my Vellum software, I wouldn’t have published The Beauty of a Spiral yet. Vellum is costly at 249.99 (199.99 if you want just the ebook software). Making up for that, it’s a one-and-done purchase. I don’t pay a monthly fee for it, and it formats print and ebook files efficiently, producing an end product…
Review: Grammarly Editor
I’d gone through several rounds of editing my manuscript. Finally, I was ready for a proofread. I’d planned on hiring a professional but decided to try “Grammarly Editor” first. How I did it I set up an account on Grammarly, a free process. The site is easy to navigate. Once I had an account, I…
Verb Moods
As with other grammar issues, verb mood can trip up a writer and stunt the writing process. Avoid confusion, frustration, and errors by getting ahead of the game. Verb moods indicate the way a verb conveys an action or state of being: imperative indicative subjunctive Imperative Recall that this mood signals a command, request, or…