I love music!  It is a huge part of my writing process.  I know there are some people that need silence to write, or listen to instrumental music because lyrics distract them, but I need a certain level of distraction to be able to write.  I'm going to be featuring some of my favorite writing playlist authors and bands here on my blog.   I have been doing a lot of editing recently on Awake: A Sleeping Beauty Story and the first...

I wrote this back in May on my personal blog.  I thought it would be fun to revisit now that I'm getting closer to releasing my retelling of Sleeping Beauty.   Honestly, girls like me who like Disney princesses tend to get a lot of flak, especially if they happen to be English majors. Most feminist professors are not really fans. Even among the average, every-day "Mom of Girls" there tends to spring up anti-Disney Princess...

The insanity known as National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) is just around the corner! I will be working on my Austenesque novel Attempting Elizabeth as I also try to move and prepare for the holidays. My daughter, Maddie, loves fast rides. She puts her hands up on roller coasters. She's three. Actually, she's been doing this since she was two. Gadget's Go-Go-Coaster in Toontown at Disneyland? Front row. Hands up. Yes siree, Bob....

I love my new site.  It's so pretty and shiny and yellow.  In my world yellow = happiness.  I think it is such a friendly, soothing, cozy color.  So many of the best things are yellow.  Sunshine.  Lemons.  Butter (mmm, everything is better with butter).  Pineapple.  Daffodils.  I adore it! The hard part about starting a new site is that you pretty much leave all your followers back on the old one (it's still there, I'm using it more...

People seem to fall into two camps:  Those who love Taylor Swift and those who hate her.  There doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground where she is concerned.   I'm not really looking to get into a debate on the relative merits of her voice or her songwriting.  I enjoy her music and I have her on my writing play list for two reasons. . . 1) it helps me get into the YA mindset, and 2) so many of her songs are about fairy tales,...