Learning from Bad Books

I’m experiencing some readers’ remorse this morning. Which is kinda like buyer’s remorse, only there is zero chance for return. Leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, doesn’t it?Last night I stayed up way later than I intended to in order...

The conflict within characters

I had a wonderful vacation, but I’m so glad to be back home.Taken with my cell phone and doesn’t quite capture all her cuteness.We started our vacation with my cousin’s wedding, where our daughter was the flower girl. McKenna was a ridiculously good...

Editing As You Go

I have repeatedly said on this blog that I write fast, horrible first drafts and then spend lots of time editing. (I’m doing my first round of edits on my current manuscript, so at the moment I’m questioning the intelligence in my system, but that’s...

Writing Clean When Your Setting is Dirty

Erica Vetsch is back today – yay! One of the things I was intrigued by in A Bride’s Portrait of Dodge City, Kansas was that it was set in such a wild town, and it felt like it was, yet the book was still clean. I wanted Erica to weigh in on that. Even...

Erica Vetsch on Writing Historicals

Since many of you have expressed an interest in having guests talk about “genre specific” issues, I’ve begun querying various authors and asking them to share their expertise with us.I’ve mentioned on here before that Erica Vetsch was my first...