Blog

Earning the Proposal

Earning the Proposal Romance writers have it easy in one specific way. The proposal is allowed to land. It can be the spine of the book. Everyone bought the book for it. The whole genre is a delivery mechanism for the moment one person asks another person a question and gets the …

When the Bullets Are Real

Here’s a problem every writer in deep first person eventually runs into. Your narrator gets ambushed. Or jumped. Or shot at. Suddenly the camera is locked inside a person who can’t pull back, can’t pan, can’t see around the corner — and who, if we’re being honest, can barely see …

Why We All Like Story — What Fiction Does That Nothing Else Can

I was seventeen and it was past midnight and I had school in the morning and the book I was reading — Ender’s Game, borrowed from a friend who’d said “just read it” with the intensity of someone trying to share something they couldn’t explain — had done something to me I didn’t h…

When Time Breaks

The problem had a very specific shape, and I found it by running the math. Partway through Book 2 of the Technomancer series, I’d established that one day in the realm of Elysia corresponds to roughly π days on Earth — 3.14 to one. I chose π deliberately: it’s irrational, it neve…

The Dirty Secret of First Person

Welcome to “An Author’s Voice” where I’ll discuss the craft behind writing and illustrate the points with my own work or discuss other well known examples. Episode Two : The Dirty Secret of First Person: Your Narrator Is Lying You know that feeling — three chapters into a novel, …

Both Ages at Once: Writing a Narrator Who Is Simultaneously 65 and 15

There are two ways to fail this particular craft problem, and they both destroy reader trust in different directions. Paul Taylor in Another Past is sixty-five years old — a physicist who died in a lab explosion and woke up fourteen years old in 1979. He has the full memory and e…

Writing update – March 2026

I’ve been busy writing, editing, and working on my marketing via social media lately. Here’s a brief update on what’s been happening in my world of writing. Technomancer Book 2 Beta reading has begun on Technomancer: The Awakened Mage. Advanced Reader Copies (ARC) should be sent …

Filter Words

I’ve been re-editing my work and realize my prevalence for filter language making my narrative stodgy. Here’s how I’ve been cleaning up my writing: WHAT ARE FILTER WORDS? Filter words are verbs or phrases that insert the narrator between the reader and the character’s direct expe…

Another Past : Available on Amazon

I’m happy to announce Another Past: Book One is available for purchase on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. It will be available for print orders (paperback and hardback) in the middle of the month as well. Meet Paul Taylor, a gifted teen with an extraordinary secret: he’s actu…

Oxford Comma vs. No Oxford Comma: What Writers Should Know

Which is the best for comma usage in fiction? To be, or not to be?  As I’ve been revising and editing Another Past: Book One, I’ve run into an inconsistency in my editing tools. In the review tools built into Ulysses, where my definitive content lives, Oxford commas are used. Thi…

Another Past: Book One

Meet Paul Taylor, a gifted teen with an extraordinary secret: he’s actually a brilliant physicist from the future, caught in a thrilling time-travel adventure! After being attacked and hurled back through time, Paul finds himself living his adolescent life once more. But this tim…