Nine Years of Blogging

Posted on August 27, 2022 ·

 

When I first started blogging in 2013, I remember feeling far behind. It was as if everyone had a blog already, and I watched in those early years as they celebrated their five or six or seven year anniversaries, thinking, I wish I’d started earlier.

Time passed quickly, and now here I am, celebrating my ninth year as a blogger. I’m not a very prolific one but I’ve managed to stay consistent, and I enjoy reflecting on my journey as a writer and all the moments of motherhood threaded through these posts. 

In honor of the occasion, I wanted to share with you my top four blog posts in terms of readership, my four personal favorites, and a bonus to make it nine. 

My Four Most Read Blog Posts

Image from Flickr by Leo Reynolds

Book Sales and Royalty Statements

Little wonder this would be the post that interested most readers! Money talks, and many of you were curious how much I was making back in 2014 after my debut novel, The Fourth Wall, was published. Spoiler alert: not much! But I had fun putting this post together, and perhaps it was illuminating. 

Are Blog Tours Worth It?

This is my second most read post, and I hope it brought some authors around to the idea of blog tours, because they are absolutely worth it! In fact, my tour for The House on Linden Way, hosted by the same company who hosted The Fourth Wall, begins next month. Stay tuned, and enjoy this post on the benefits of blog tours. 

One Author’s Experience With Kindle Vella

For a blog post that’s only a year old, this one has really generated some interest, making it my third most popular post ever. Not bad! Authors are understandably curious about Amazon’s new serialized fiction platform, and sharing my early experience with the self-publishing site has continued to intrigue other writers. 

Oh, What a Night

My fourth most read post since this site launched in August 2013 is the celebration of my book launch at Changing Hands Bookstore in the summer of 2014. It’s still fun for me to look back on too! Family, friends, cupcakes, a beautiful book display, a dream come true. Oh, what a night indeed.

My Four Favorite Blog Posts (and One Extra)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The Story Behind You

It should come as no surprise that my favorite blog posts inevitably center around moments with my children. This one features a very special Mother’s Day gift and an eloquent truth all writers should remember.

New Beginnings

One of my sweetest memories was when my son’s second grade teacher invited me to talk to her class about being an author. I recounted the memorable experience in this post from 2015.

On First Publications

My daughter’s own success as a creative writer inspired me to write on the relevance of first publications. I was and am so proud of Abigail’s perseverance and bravery, commemorated in this post from 2018.

How to Fall in Love With Writing All Over Again

It is always my hope that others will find inspiration in my blog posts. How-to posts are some of the most difficult for me to write but also the most fulfilling. Here I share tips for learning how to recapture the love and joy of writing. 

And just to make it nine, and because there’s nothing like your first, here is the post that launched my blog nearly a decade ago. After all this time, it still feels as special as it did back then. 

Surprise!
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Available Now! Read The House on Linden Way

Posted on July 22, 2022 ·

Today I am thrilled to announce the release of my novel The House on Linden Way! I’ve been talking about this book for so long I almost can’t believe it’s finally time to share it with you. 

Unless you’re brand new to this blog, you already know the history—Linden Way started five years ago as a short story, grew into a much longer one, but was never quite long enough for traditional publishing. I tried stretching it to reach the industry standard length for adult fiction (60k words minimum), but it always felt wrong, like I was trying to force the story to be something it was not. 

I pushed it to 50k words and started querying anyway, and I actually had a pretty good response. Of the 58 agents I sent it to, five requested the full manuscript, and three of them kept Linden Way under consideration for over a year. Several others sent personalized rejections with encouraging notes. Yet this all happened over the span of two and half years, and at some point I had to re-evaluate my goals for this particular project. 

Did I want to keep pursuing a publishing path that had so few options for novellas? Because after all that time, I still knew one thing for sure—I did not want to turn Linden Way into something that it wasn’t. 

I also started re-evaluating my overall goals as a writer. What were my reasons for seeking a traditional book deal in the first place? Did I care about advances, bookstore placement, and status? I realized I did not, that mostly I just wanted to write the best story I could, put it out in the world, and move on to the next one. 

Once I knew what I wanted and felt certain Linden Way did not have a place in traditional publishing, I pulled the manuscript from consideration, stripped it back down to its original 46k-word length (man, that felt good), and took the leap into self-publishing. As of today you can purchase it in ebook or print or read it on Kindle Unlimited. 

To help celebrate the release, I’ve teamed up with the fabulous Women on Writing, who hosted my blog tour for The Fourth Wall in 2014. The tour for my new otherworldly ghost story launches in September—just in time for spooky season. I am so excited! I’ll be offering tips on how to get unstuck when writing a novel, talking more about my process writing The House on Linden Way, sharing my experiences with both traditional and indie publishing, and much more! 

And speaking of Women on Writing, I’m over there today with a little writing advice about how to keep things simple so you don’t get lost in the details. 

Enjoy, and as always, thanks for your support!

The House on Linden Way is available in print and ebook here. 

You can add it to Goodreads here. 

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Linden Way Cover Reveal

Posted on June 10, 2022 ·

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Summer has a way of blurring days until time loses all meaning. In June especially I am happy to let the days slip by unaccounted for and unmarked on the calendar. That’s why, when I sat down this morning to blog and noted the date on the post, I did a double take. And then I broke into a smile.

June 10 was the day, eight years ago, when The Fourth Wall was officially published. Since then I’ve had the honor of appearing in other books as an essayist and short story-teller, and those books have kept my debut company on my bookshelf, but until now The Fourth Wall has been the lone novel.

That changes next month with the release of The House on Linden Way. It’s been a very different journey: Linden Way is self-published while The Fourth Wall was published traditionally, although since the latter was released through a small press I guess you could say I’ve been indie all along.

In a future post I’ll go into the differences, but for now I want to tell you what’s the same: the tremendous sense of accomplishment in seeing your creative vision through. Kudos to all of you out there doing this very thing.

Here’s the cover for Linden Way, designed by Kitten at Deranged Doctor Design. When I post again in July, it will be with a link to order. That is, if I don’t get lost in the hazy days of June.

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New Story in Fractured Lit and Other Writerly News

Posted on April 30, 2022 ·

Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay

Summer Break is weeks away, and although I’m going to miss my students, I can’t wait to have more time for writer-me. Until then I am in full teacher mode, but I wanted to pop in and share a few writerly links from March and April in case you missed them!

In March, one of my dream publications, Fractured Lit, published a little vignette called “Windows.” This piece was originally published in Hunger Mountain (print only) in 2017. I was so happy it found a new home online.

In April, a newish magazine called Five Minute Lit accepted a micro I’d written last summer. The piece will appear in August, but you should check out the site now! Everything they publish is exactly one hundred words.

In May, my short story “Gravity” will appear in an anthology celebrating twenty years of Mothers Who Write, a fabulous workshop I’ve participated in several times. The launch takes place at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix on Saturday, May 7, from 11-1.

Finally, this story reviewer on Instagram took me by surprise last month by tagging me in a review of “Windows.” It made me smile on a day when I really needed it and reminded me why it’s important to share the work we love.

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Celebrating Ten Years as a Published Writer

Posted on March 19, 2022 ·

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!

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The Story of My Heart

Posted on February 14, 2022 ·

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Every author has that one novel–the one cherished above all others, the one that makes her think, If I never write anything else, that’s okay, because I wrote this. I’ve written eight books, and while each is special in its own way, the fourth one is the book of my heart.

The House on Linden Way began as a short story in the summer of 2017. I was waiting for a car repair and began sketching out an idea for a haunted house story. The house would be the main character’s childhood home, which she was revisiting for the first time in many years. When her young daughter vanishes inside, the mother tries searching for her but keeps getting trapped in memories. I soon realized I had a book on my hands, and when it was finished nearly two years later I wrote the following query:

While passing through her hometown a decade after she left, Amber Blake impulsively revisits her old house on Linden Way. She only means to stay a moment, to show her three-year-old daughter Bee the place where she grew up. But when the kindly new owners invite them inside, Amber cannot resist.

Soon Bee is missing, the owners have disappeared, and Amber finds herself in a houseful of ghosts. Time takes on new meaning as she loses herself in living memories and a past that does not wish to be forgotten.

As Amber fights the powerful lure of a childhood she’d long left behind, her tenuous hold on the real world slips further from her grasp. Is it merely nostalgia she’s battling, or something far more menacing? Who haunts the house on Linden Way, and where are they hiding her child?

When I began Linden Way, I didn’t know yet who or what was haunting the house. Like many of my stories, I’d imagined something sinister and evil and ended up with something more complex. What I did know was that I wanted to write a story about the trappings of nostalgia and the lifelong imprint of our childhood homes.

The book is personal because it includes so many things that are important to me, including the power of sibling bonds, the bittersweet memories of growing up, and the fierce strength of motherhood. It is unequivocally the book of my heart, and I’m thrilled to begin publishing it today on Kindle Vella. Read the first chapter here, and follow the story as new chapters will publish every Tuesday and Thursday from now until June. Enjoy!

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New Year, New Dreams

Posted on January 22, 2022 ·

Image by Mohamed Hassan on Pixabay

I have always been intrigued by the concept of giving something up for the new year. Writing it down on a slip of paper and then burning it. So often we focus on what we want to gain instead of the things we need to lose.

When I looked back on 2021 in an effort to list my tangible writing accomplishments, I found some good ones: editing my middle grade novel, drafting five short pieces over the summer, making progress on my fairy tale WIP, self-publishing a book and a short story on Kindle Vella, and traditionally publishing a piece of creative nonfiction which would go on to earn nominations for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays.

This all feels amazing, but perhaps the most important thing I achieved last year was deciding what I wanted as a novelist and choosing a path that fit that goal. Then I wrote down my old path and lit a match.

What I’m leaving behind in 2021 is the pursuit of traditional book publishing. Ever since Kindle Vella was announced last spring, I’ve felt such passion for the possibilities of publishing my own work. At first I’d planned on only releasing commercial fiction, but I’ve enjoyed the process so much I’ve now embraced it completely.

Last month I pulled The House on Linden Way from the final publishing house where it was under consideration and used earnings from my cozy mystery to commission a book cover; Linden Way will be released on Vella this spring and then in ebook and print in July. I am so excited to share this news! When I made the decision it felt as though a weight had lifted, like I had space to breathe life into new ideas about my writing and publishing goals.

I used to dream about seeing my books on bookshelves and holding author events and making a living as a novelist. These dreams feel dated now. I love being a teacher and not having to rely on income from writing; I’ve participated in author events and mostly felt stressed out and uncomfortable; and while it was thrilling to see The Fourth Wall on shelves, the truth is that the shelf-life of a book is very short unless you sell a gazillion copies, and that leads me to the number one reason why traditional publishing is probably not a good fit for me: everything revolves around sales, which is to say that everything revolves around money, and the pressure is immense—the pressure to perform, the pressure to earn out your advance, the pressure to sell, sell, sell. And that’s not what I want.

What I want from my books is the personal value that comes from writing them and putting them out into the world. I want to focus on the joy of being a creator, because that’s such an amazing thing. The fulfillment for me is imagining a story, bringing it to life, crafting the best version that I possibly can, and then letting it go. The rest is icing.

This is my year of rediscovering the total creative freedom that comes from detaching your work from external validation or numbers. It feels like a new beginning. I have so many ideas for stories and I can’t wait to write them and try new things and maybe fail but learn and grow and get better and just keep going. I want to stay passionate. I want to have fun. I want to create and let that be enough. These are the things that dreams are made of.

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Happy Halloween!

Posted on October 31, 2021 ·

Image by Mayur Gadge from Pixabay

It’s so hard to let go of October; I always wish it would stay a little longer. Halloween night has yet to arrive and already my month has been full of treats.

I indulged in plenty of great horror movies, including a re-watch of the compulsively re-watchable Fear Street trilogy; I switched from summer dresses and sandals to cardigans and boots; and once, on an early morning walk, I spotted a coyote disappearing down a dark quiet street. The half-eaten breakfast he’d left behind on a nearby lawn was as disturbing as anything I’d seen on screen.

Another sort of scary but fun experience was posting a short story to Kindle Vella.

“The Secret Keeper” was first drafted in 2015 as part of my collection What Was Never There. I never published the collection but succeeded in placing several of the pieces in online magazines. “The Secret Keeper” was obviously not one of those; it’s nearly 8,000 words long and that far exceeds most magazines’ word count.

It’s perfect for Vella though! A clear favorite among those who’ve beta read What Was Never There, “The Secret Keeper” is about a boy named Owen and the secrets he keeps beneath an enchanted willow tree. I split the story into three parts, all of which are now available to read. I hope you enjoy this magical tale of childhood wonder, summer nights, and October promises.

Happy Halloween!

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My Big Mistake with Kindle Vella and Why I’m Starting Over

Posted on September 30, 2021 ·

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

You may have heard me shouting from the rooftops about my Kindle Vella story when Amazon’s new serialized story platform launched in July. The YA cozy mystery I’d penned back in 2019 and secretly uploaded to Vella in April was chosen as one of a dozen featured stories on the new site, and naturally I was thrilled. I posted twice about it in a flurry of celebration. And then I went quiet.

Why? Because ten days after Vella launched, one of my dream agents, who I’d queried back in the spring, emailed. She was intrigued! She wanted to see more! Could I send a partial? My heart sank. Instantly I regretted publishing the book. There was no way she’d consider Murder by Milkshake now that it was publicly available on Vella.

But what if I unpublished it? It hadn’t even been two weeks. I would just be honest with her and explain the situation and hope for the best. I sent the partial and notified Vella that I wanted the story taken down.

Are you sure? they asked. That decision would be permanent; it could not be undone. I would lose my likes, my reviews, my subscribers. I said I was sure, and Vella processed my request. Two weeks later, the agent sent a rejection.

At first I was undeterred. I’d only submitted Murder by Milkshake to a dozen agents and that had resulted in two requests for partials and four personalized rejections—pretty good numbers. I told myself I’d just keep submitting and pursuing a traditional book deal.

But my heart wasn’t in it.

It’s not that I’ve given up on the idea of traditional publishing, it’s just that Kindle Vella is something fun and fresh and new. And I think differently about self-publishing than I used to; I love the idea of it. I forget where I read this, but someone mentioned how ego is not what drives writers to self publish, ego is what prevents them from doing it. And that makes sense to me. I remember how afraid I was to start blogging back in 2013 and how, once I got over myself, I started to really enjoy it. Because it’s just a blog. And a book is just a book.

Murder by Milkshake is pure genre fiction, the kind of book that can do well as an indie. In the seven weeks it was on Kindle Vella it earned more money than my traditionally published book earned in seven years. People were reading it and showing support, and I made a mistake in throwing all of that away simply because an agent came calling.

When she rejected the manuscript, it was just that—another rejection. But unpublishing the book came with a real sense of loss. I’d been a part of something daring and new and I’d taken a risk; giving that up felt terrible. But I’m glad it happened, because it helped me realize the self-publishing path I’d chosen for this particular book was the correct one.

I know because I republished Murder by Milkshake last week on Kindle Vella. And my heart is definitely in it.

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When Stories Disappear

Posted on August 22, 2021 ·

Image by piper60 from Pixabay

In June of 2019 I wrote a post paying tribute to literary magazines and lamenting the many we’d lost that year. YA Review Network (YARN), an online publication dedicated to young adult literature, was one of them.

A few months ago YARN announced that their website would be shutting down at the end of the year. They encouraged readers to save their favorite stories before that happened.

I was fortunate enough to have three pieces published in YARN. The first, “We Never Get to Talk Anymore,” was nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize; the second, “The Lost Girls,” won runner up in their 2017 Halloween Fiction Contest; and the third, “From Autumn to June,” was published in the summer of 2018.

Knowing these stories would soon vanish, I thought I’d talk a little about them in this month’s blog post and link to them for my newer readers. Unfortunately, when I checked the links, I discovered YARN’s website was already gone.

The end of the year came a little too soon.

The internet is fleeting, we know that, but it still hurts to see your work disappear. This was a first for me; other magazines I’ve published in that have since ceased production still maintain their websites, although I realize this is probably costly.

Luckily, I’d taken time last year to print out all of my online fiction and creative nonfiction, just in case. I didn’t do a great job of it; I don’t even think I changed my printer settings from draft to high quality.

But at least I have paper copies of my YARN stories stamped with dates and images from the website that first gave them a home. And I’m grateful to the editors for giving them that home, even if it was only a temporary one.

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