Hello friends! Many of you know that it's awards nomination season in the SFF writing community and I'm so grateful for the chance to share two new stories with the world this year. Links to listen/read for free or purchase are included by clicking the story titles below. Common Speech A high-stakes drama of interspecies communication, family, grief, and overcoming, set inside a human colony located…
I’ve never been a “figure it out as I go” kind of person. I prefer to control and plan as much as possible. I want to know what I’m getting into. To know what the outline is. And if I don’t have some kind of a plan in place before the time arrives to jump into action, I will probably be panicked. Okay, I’ll definitely be…
It was a Saturday afternoon. My friend and I wanted to go on a girl-date somewhere nice. We went to an Italian cafe--a favorite of mine--ordered a bottle of wine and some snacks, and sat out in front of the cafe. This cafe is also a coffee shop and a restaurant. To say that I love this place is an understatement. The very first time I…
This last July, four of my dear writer friends and I took time away from work and family to gather in Seattle to write and live together for five days. When I was younger, this sort of thing was fairly easy for me to do (though I had less ability to earn and spend money than I do now), but now, in my present lifestage, time…
Friends, I'm pleased to introduce you to "Two-Tone," a fantasy short story that hails from my lumastration universe. It is the fourth story from this world and, interestingly, the very first one I wrote about lumastration. If you've read some of my other short stories in the world, you'll recognize the characters of Estil and Nerr and a brief mention of Hallis. I dreamed up the…
“Awkward” Definition a: lacking social grace and assurance b: causing embarrassment Most of us don’t like being awkward. Sometimes we’re just unaware of the awkwardness in a situation and sometimes we mistakenly perceive a situation to be more awkward than it really is. Actually, I’m not sure *any* of us like being awkward. We don’t like saying something that could make others embarrassed or upset, or at the…
I never used to think of myself as a gardener. There’s a patience and a faithfulness that it calls for. And I didn’t possess a lot of patience for most of my life. Until my firstborn came along and then…I just had to learn it. Gardening requires a good deal of foresight and hopefulness. You weed and prune and look forward to that gorgeous season where…
I can't state enough how much I love in-person conferences and the huge dose of energy infusions that I get from attending them. My most recent adventure was the Nebulas Conference in Anaheim, CA. Now that I'm easing into the process of volunteering for conference programming, it's a good feeling to get to take part in discussions that both help me and the other people on…
Some of you know that my family (my husband and my two kiddos and me + my brother and his wife + my sister and her husband + my parents = 10 of us!) traveled together to Costa Rica at the beginning of 2023. It was a beautiful adventure. We got to swim on gorgeous beaches, watch incredible jungle life (monkeys! iguanas! parrots!), hike, zipline, explore,…
I’ve wanted/dreamed/struggled for years to find a literary agent. I remember sitting in a quiet corner of the Northgate branch of the Seattle Public Library, hunched over a table with The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit (Elizabeth Lyon) lying open beside me as I tried to painstakingly write out a query letter. Every sentence was agony. It was like learning a new language in which I…