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Lately, I feel like I have fallen back into some bad routines. I want to sleep a lot more than usual (a simple result of the fact that I feel tired all the time). I am having a hard time getting motivated. I feel generally down a lot. It doesn’t really make sense that after a few years of battling depression, and, I thought, beating it, that this has come back. It’s a mild case compared to the way I used to feel, but I still recognize the symptoms. So why? Well, I have a theory on that too, but…

I just finished reading Suzanne Collins’ brilliant sequel to The Hunger Games. Catching Fire is a book I’ve wanted to read since the final pages of The Hunger Games, and it did not disappoint. Katniss and Peeta’s victory in the games spurred a sort of revolution in the various districts, and Catching Fire is about facing the consequences of their actions – namely Katniss’ decision to pull out those berries and defy the Capital during the games. If you haven’t read the Hunger Games series, you should definitely pick it up. It’s one of those Young Adult series that easily…

Entering writing contests is a scary thing. First of all, you never know for sure who your judges are going to be in these things. Most of the time, for me, it’s an RWA chapter holding a fund raiser contest where you pay $30 or so for some of their PRO and PAN members to read and rate your manuscript. I know there are tons of other writing contests out there, but for where I am in my writing and my writing communities right now, the RWA contests are the most beneficial and the most accessible. So, like I said,…

Weather predictions have me pretty excited that we might actually get snow here in the Carolinas tonight. Regardless of the fact that it got up to sixty degrees yesterday, a cold front is supposed to push through tonight and bring temperatures down to the low 20’s and high teens. With 100% chance of precipitation, we are expecting up to 6 inches of snow and possibly a “wintry mix” of sleet, rain, ice and more snow. I’m not necessarily looking forward to more dangerous roads, but I am definitely looking forward to seeing snow on the ground for a couple of…

Coming up with a great plot isn’t easy. In fact, once you’ve come into your own voice and started to really write well, plot is one of the main things that can hold a writer back from getting published. My rejection from Silhouette Desire seemed to be mostly about plot. According to the letter, I am a “strong storyteller” but flaws in the plot slowed down the pacing of the novel. Now that I am working on something with less rigid guidelines, holding onto a tight plot is even more difficult. In my current WIP, I only have about 1/4…

This is a question I ask myself every once in a while, and even though I’m writing about it today, I don’t have an answer. An author choosing their own book title, from what I hear, is a rare occurrence. Sure, authors choose a title when they’re writing it and then when they submit to an agent or publisher. But from what I’ve heard from my author friends (particularly in the romance industry), the title is usually changed by the marketing department or the editor anyway. People are mainly “given” their book title rather than getting to choose it themselves….