Gnome de Plume

Throughout our lives we make choices. Some choices are easy ones, such as do I choose a healthy salad with dressing on the side or a sandw...

No, not Halloween. It's done for the year. I'm talking about the bones of a story. My good friend and writer, Meg Reid, and I we...

I'll start by mentioning that I wasn't born with a pen in hand, writing as soon as I took a breath of air. So many authors claim to ...

Earlier this month my hubby and I were at monster-sized garden center about 25 minutes from my house, out in the middle of the boondocks, wh...

I woke up in at about 3:18 AM with two thoughts: George Clooney was just a regular kind of guy--remember, this was part of the dream, and th...

Writing is a very solitary business. We are alone with the voices in our head making up impossible situations to try to connect with a rea...

Yesterday I met my friend Margaret and we went on a long walk followed by a quick trip to Starbucks before we had to go our separate ways. W...

As I finish judging a packet of contest entries, I thought about the differences between being a contest judge and being in a critique group...

I'm plotting my next four stories. I have no choice because each story overlaps and interweaves within the other stories. I might have...

My poor kiddo --  all the public schools are closed due to the bitter cold and slick streets, but she goes to a private school and thus, mus...

So a few days ago on Facebook, I mentioned one writing tip is to NOT do what I did to get to this point in my writing career. Writing, lik...

Wow! Who would have thought that I would write 1,000 blogs? I sure as heck didn't. When I started this blog, I had named it "Fa...

I'm titling this blog Parenting 101 because I'm sure every parent out there has had a similar experience with their own brood. Whi...

After almost a year of not writing anything other than blogs and a couple of picture books, I think I'm ready to start writing middle gr...

Though I write about a bunch of different things on this blog, I still think of myself as a writer, not just a spewer of random information...

The other day I was chatting with my lawyer friend/swim mom, Margaret. I don't know how the topic came up, but she talking about the pub...

This last week I read three books in about as many days. I haven't read that much in a long, long time and it felt so good to immerse my...

Ever since I started writing children's books and joined SCBWI in 2008, I've been hearing/reading the editors and agents lament that...

While I was walking yesterday, I started thinking-- yes, I know this process usually gets me into trouble --about Piper. Piper is a faerie...

There is a reason for the term, stranger than fiction . As a writer, you can't come up with these sorts of characters and get away wit...