How do you know a story is done? Or if not a “story,” a piece of writing—your flash fiction, your novella, your book. How do you know when it’s a ready, submission-worthy, finished piece? Reading the classics in high school, and even in college, I had this underlying assumption that every poem, every novel, was…
My Sister’s Heart Transplant
TL;DR: My sister got a heart transplant. Please be an organ donor. Click this link: https://www.donatelife.net/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━√v^√v^√ ❤️️ In December of 2018, my sister’s heart failed. No warning. She was 21 years old. It was a rare genetic hiccup. Doctors saved her life that December…but at a cost. Her body became, in a sense, battery…
Dec. 2019’s #PitMad
I did #PitMad! My first rodeo. On December 5th, I Twitter-binged for ~12 hours. Aaaand when logged off at 8 p.m., my eyeballs about rolled out of my skull. Took an hour for depth perception to return… What’s PitMad? It’s a Twitter event! Writers “pitch” their finished books to agents, who follow the #PitMad hashtag….
Five 50-Word Stories
This year, Every Writer’s 50-word horror story contest exploded. Over 4,000 entries. From the website, it looks like the wild popularity brought some drama too: The comments were all still up, last I checked. Eh, coupling a $500 prize with no limit on the number of submissions was… ambitious. But hey, the winners are posted:…
The Fragility of Glass
This October, here’s my entry for the Official Kidlit Fall Writing Frenzy! This competition is hosted by the talented Kaitlyn Leann Sanchez. Her blog, Math is Everywhere, follows her own writing journey and offers plenty of opportunities to connect with fellow authors. The competition asked writers to select one image (see mine below) to inspire…