It's happened again. One of my stories has insisted on growing beyond itself or to say it more accurately, it's insisting on growing beyond my original expectation for it. I know this may sound odd to you, especially if you've never attempted to write a story, so let me try to explain, but hold onto your seat as I go a bit woo-woo on you. As an author, I believe I am a channel to a [...]
I'm fascinated by A.I. (and since I'm a former veterinarian, let me clarify, I mean the artificial intelligence variety, not the artificial insemination kind.) First, it was MidJourney and now it's QuickWrite. I bit the bullet earlier this week and purchased a lifetime subscription (with a 30-day guarantee to try it out.) Thanks, Skye MacKinnon for posting about it. My first experiment - create a character description. I entered: Nathan Whitehall Oil Rig Boss (Nathan is a [...]
I recently shared this on my Facebook page: "As I've shared before as an author, sometimes the research proves to be one of the most difficult and even emotionally disturbing parts of the job. This is true even when I'm researching a middle-grade book as I'm doing as I work on Rainforest Shaman, book 5 of the Zak Bates Eco-adventure series. Take for example this report on the massive destruction taking place in the Ecuadorian rainforests [...]
Although I’ve heard about the grace of God most of my life, starting with my childhood upbringing in Southern Baptist churches, it was only a few years ago that I began to understand the concept and then to experience living a grace-filled life. I started by looking up the word in the dictionary, where I discovered that grace means: “the unmerited divine assistance for humans for their regeneration and sanctification.” Of course, I next had to [...]
My daughter's eleventh birthday was right around the corner and I needed to come up with a present. Being someone who grew up loving to read and having instilled the same habit in Amber, I decided to give her a book. Really a no-brainer, right? I even knew that she enjoyed books by Judy Blume so I picked up one at the local bookstore. It was a winner! Amber loved it so much that she then [...]
Shortly after discovering that my “clan of cats” that will appear in my upcoming novel, Junkyard Dogs, reside in the abandoned Renwick Smallpox Hospital on Kennedy Island, I shared this research with my wife, Ann, who’s always ready to share her own ideas, many of which appear in my stories as well. As I finished sharing my research with her, she added, “And the cats that now live on Kennedy Island migrated from the Island of [...]
This past year, two life-changing events came together in one of those perfect storm scenarios that unfortunately don’t seem to happen enough in my life as a writer. Both would be what most people would consider ‘bad things.' Certainly, the COVID-19 pandemic ranks right up there with bad things in my life, though fortunately so far I’ve not lost any friends or family members to it. The second ‘bad thing’ was a growing level of frustration [...]
Did you miss part one of this article? Then go here. Let’s fast forward a few years from that summer in 1960 when my next-door-neighbor librarian, Mrs. Crabtree bought me a stack of books that would transform me into a joyful lifelong reader. But before we teleport ourselves forward in time, let me explain what I mean by the term, joyful lifelong reader. In this country and throughout much of the world, it’s inevitable that most [...]
There are moments in our lives that at the time appear inconsequential, just something that happened in the course of our daily life. It may be years or even decades later before we realize how pivotal those moments were in retrospect. For example, my father passed away from a massive heart attack while fishing just two weeks before my seventh birthday. Now, don't worry, I knew at the time that was a major deal, a pivotal [...]
Yep, this is part 3 of the 100+ Blog Game. So to start, I acknowledge I've been terrible at blogging. I don't mean the content so much as the regularity, and the 100+ Blog Game has not changed that. This is why I'm writing Part 3. 100+ Blog Posts Game (Part 1) was written on Feb. 11, 2019. 100+ Blog Posts Game (Part 2)100+ BLOG POSTS GAME (PART 2) – A Breakthrough in Progress was written [...]
