A writer's journey...

When you tap into the creative side and the words pour out of you, it's euphoric —it's what I term "falling into the rabbit hole"—and it's even more magical than  Alice in Wonderland .   It's a kind of rush you can't get enough of and it seems it's something you can never truly prepare yourself for—or can you? Maybe you've been struggling with a manuscript or it's just finding the time to write. Maybe you're not sure about what comes next and you procrastinate to the point you haven't written in days. Part of you might feel like crawling under a rock and proclaiming your work in progress stalled to the point that you hide behind "writer's block."  I'm here to tell you there's no such thing as "writer's block," per se, it's another procrastination excuse invented by writers. Of course, there are times that things come up in our writing that leave us wondering what the next step should be...

As a teenager, I wanted to write a full-length novel. I was so serious about it that I even wrote Harlequin for their submission guidelines. To this day, I still remember hunkering down in the basement reading them over.  Little did I realize at the time, it wouldn't be until over 13 years later that I would finish writing my first novel. Forwarding to the future a few more years, I am now a published author of 12 titles with more written at various stages of editing.  But, there were a few things that were ingrained in me, a couple of which I saw clearly — I would have a book signing at a Chapters store and have my books on the shelf there. There wasn't a question of whether it would happen, but when.  I'm excited to say that these visualizations have manifested in the last 7 months! I was even interviewed on a local TV show! Looking back, I know that these realities were set in motion by the visualizations of a teenage girl —a girl who had no ide...

Have you ever read a book and noticed that a certain character acted differently than you would have expected? Did it throw you out of the story? While most of us follow a somewhat predictable path in regards to our habits and response to repetitive situations, life events have the power to alter our reaction. When it comes to fictional characters, I always defer to real life. Have you, or anyone you know well reacted differently to a situation than you would have thought? I am certain you can think of many instances. Personally, two weeks ago, I took off last minute to see my sister who lives four and half hours away by car. I took the train adding about two hours to the journey with layovers, et cetera. But this isn’t something my husband or she ever saw coming. I’m usually a bit of a planner. I don’t typically travel alone. These are just two aspects of my personality that don’t “allow” for me to just drop everything and go. So, must characters in our books be any...