Celebrating Ten Years as a Published Writer

Photo by Audrey Fretz on Unsplash

This month marks the ten-year anniversary of my first published piece, “Flight.” I will never, ever forget when Literary Mama accepted that story—I was over the moon. It was the writerly breakthrough I needed and kicked off a ten-year streak of publishing my fiction and essays in some truly wonderful magazines.

A decade is a long time, and although many of the magazines I’ve appeared in are still going strong (including Literary Mama!), several have folded. In the last year alone I’ve taken down seven links that led to defunct websites.

The good news is my stories belong to me, and there’s more than one way to make them available to you. One of my goals for 2022 was to add audio of me reading these orphaned pieces on my website. And then I thought, well, why not video too? So here they are!

I started with the four prose poems I lost when Mothers Always Write shut down a few months ago. Next, I hope to tackle the short stories that disappeared with YA Review Net, including the award-winning “The Lost Girls” and the Pushcart Prize nominated “We Never Get to Talk Anymore.”

If you’re looking for something new, the final video features an unpublished essay called “Enchanted.”

Thanks for reading/listening/watching!

Welcome, New Subscribers! I’m Glad You’re Here

Congratulations to the winners of Women on Writing’s Ultimate #StayHomeandRead Book Giveaway! I’ll be mailing out signed copies of The Fourth Wall this week.

Also, a huge and heartfelt welcome to my new subscribers. I’m so glad you’re here. I blog once or twice a month, usually about writerly things, although sometimes I post book reviews too.

If you’re interested in learning more about The Fourth Wall, I have a bunch of fun posts from my blog tour back when it was first published, including the meaning behind the title, why I’m glad it was a first novel, and the ways to become a lucid dreamer.

If you’re super bummed you didn’t win a copy, stick around and I’ll let you know when my publisher runs the next Amazon giveaway so you can grab a free Kindle version.

In addition to writing books, I also love to write short fiction and creative nonfiction. Here is my latest nonfiction piece, published last month in Mothers Always Write. In this piece, I tried to capture some of the courage, resiliency, and grace of my twelve-year-old son, who is on the brink of navigating the tumultuous years of adolescence.

Are you a writer too? A fellow book lover? Let me know in the comments, and once again, welcome. 🙂