I am spectacularly bad at this.
First off, I think too literally. Like, my story has a feisty young woman, so we should see her on the cover! Or the novel is set in a dusty, rural area seventy years ago, so maybe a sepia tone might help […]
Epiphany. Simply putting up a novel on Kindle—one that I slaved over—will not cut it. It will not magically get attention or sell.
It’s time to get serious.
By this, I mean really and truly investing. This means doing more research than I thought necessary to launch a book […]
While plotting out my YA supernatural mystery Box in The Cuts, I immediately ran into a challenge. How to tell the backstory of the creepy old mansion at the center of the novel. And then I remembered the convention Bram Stoker used in Dracula. A combination of short diary […]
A long time ago, I had a blog about dealing with narcissistic parents. I had no idea so many people experienced the same thing I did.
My self-absorbed mother became increasingly controlling when I entered my teen years. A psychiatrist diagnosed my father with full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. Both parents suffered […]
My mother and her family lived in Chavez Ravine. It’s the place where Dodger Stadium now sits, just north of downtown Los Angeles.
Before the bulldozers arrived, it was a tight-knit community of mostly working class Mexican American families. The Castaneda’s lived in the Palo Verde neighborhood on Bishops Road in […]
