I thought I’d do a post on mystery writing, since I haven’t for a while. If you’re a mystery writer, be sure to add your own random thoughts on mystery writing below. If [...]

When I was a kid, I loved the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. Do you remember those books? Basically, each book would tell a riveting story—you’re in a time machine, you’re back in [...]

This is a little bit of a departure from what I usually blog about, but I think it’s a subject that’s important to most writers. I was out late Tuesday night (past my [...]

Yesterday it was time for me to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my driver’s license (fun-fun!) For anyone not living in the States, just imagine your most-un-favorite bland, government-related [...]

Are we getting wired differently because of modern distractions? I’m not sure, but I know that it’s hard for me to sit still for very long. I just get very restless. There are [...]

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter in the last week. I’m delighted that now we have an efficient method of locating resources on writing topics when you need them—via the [...]

I always enjoy hearing from my readers. In fact, my readers’ comments can really influence my writing. I’ve heard from a couple of readers since Pretty is as Pretty Dies was released in [...]

I think I’ve mentioned before that my writing is a fairly solo process up until my deadline. I really do look at my books as collaborative efforts between me, my agent, and the [...]

My daughter missed a week of school last week because she had a mysterious fever virus that wouldn’t go away. Most unfortunately, her 4th grade class learned how to simplify, compare, and order [...]

Today I’m over at “A Good Blog is Hard to Find,” blogging on some ways to keep motivated when you’d rather be looking out the window. Hope you’ll join me (and that you’re [...]

Last weekend I was heading to Anderson, SC, to visit my parents and have a radio interview with a local radio personality there. He’d told me just to contact him whenever I planned [...]

Recently, I spoke to an acquaintance of mine. She asked about my upcoming books, and I told her about the upcoming releases in June and November. “I’m both pleased for you and jealous [...]

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter in the last week. I’m delighted that now we have an efficient method of locating resources on writing topics when you need them—via the [...]

I was out running errands yesterday and was a little farther afield than usual. Our cats have a special cat food that we can only get at this one particular store (I know…it’s [...]

Last year, I heard from my agent that there was an editor interested in working with me on a mystery they wanted written. I was to come up with the characters and plot. [...]

I have a hard time making decisions. Not big decisions—those are pretty easy for me to make.  But smaller decisions, like what restaurant to choose for supper.  I used to have a hard [...]

Problem scenes. I usually have several areas that just don’t work in an unfinished manuscript. If I’m writing my first draft, I’ll just totally skip past the problem and continue to the next [...]

My son’s Language Arts class is required to do a literary analysis at the end of each quarter on whatever novel they’ve read for fun. I got an email yesterday from one mom [...]

Hi everybody! Hope you’ll pop over to my friend Kaye Barley’s blog, Meanderings and Muses today for my guest post there on “Things I’ve Learned About My Writing Process.” This covers a little [...]

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter for the past week. I’m delighted that now we have an efficient method of locating resources on writing topics when you need them—via the [...]

I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned before what a terrible memory I have. It’s bad.  It’s always been bad, and it’s certainly not improving as I get older, either. The bad thing is [...]

I talked last Saturday a little about setting reasonable goals to encourage ourselves to stay motivated. I think it’s also important to find intrinsic rewards from writing.  I was away most of the [...]

HarperCollins announced that it would only allow 26 borrows of its ebooks at libraries. This, naturally, ignited something of a firestorm. The point of libraries, of course, is to lend books to readers [...]

March is the 14th anniversary of Small Press Month. The organizers of the Small Press Month events state: Held annually in March, Small Press Month raises awareness about the need for broader venues [...]

If you missed yesterday’s post, I’m running a short series on useful tools for writers. The nice thing about writing is that it can be a nearly free activity. But there are tools [...]

I came across this article a few days ago on the WordCount blog on tech tools for writers, and it got me thinking about the tools that I use every day. The nice [...]

Here are writing links that I’ve posted to Twitter for the past week. I’m delighted that now we have an efficient method of locating resources on writing topics when you need them—via the [...]

I would like to be a gardener. Time seems to get in the way of my being one, though. Maintaining the lawn and bushes seems to be all I have time for…and usually [...]

One of my hobbies is working jigsaw puzzles. One of my husband’s hobbies is finding a puzzle to make my life difficult. He has given me puzzles with no edges, puzzles with little [...]

I was picking up a carpool of high school and middle school boys for Scouts on Monday evening. It was absolutely pouring cats and dogs, lightning was illuminating the darkness every couple of [...]