Category: Fiction

Hot Blacktop Ch. 6 – Test Ride – Part I

One week turned into two. Sienna had tried Saint’s patience, but he’d worn her down, with phone calls and small hand written notes that he’d had delivered with a single Gerber daisy every other day. The instant connection they’d made was something Saint couldn’t ignore. He didn’t want to seem too eager though, or…stalkerish. He …

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Got Plot? Or Not

Like the stepping stones in the serene Japanese Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden, storytellers recount tales moving through a series of classic plot points. The concept of plot stretches back to the earliest recorded histories: cave drawings, tribal tattoos, epic poems, plays and theatre. Plot is the weave of our history, ancestry, immigration and …

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So, I Asked Alice…

Here comes fall. What an appropriate name for a season in which the leaves drop as fast as the temperature. My blog last month talked about possibly using crowdsourcing to publish Broken String, my new novel that is now in final edit. I received several comments at Deadwood Writers Voices and thanks to all of …

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Diary of a Binge Reader

Donna Tartt’s, The Goldfinch, hijacked my social life for the past two weeks. And consequently, my life as a binge reader emerged once again. For months, I can exist perfectly content on my diet of short stories. Then, the unwieldy novel finds me unsatisfied in my 5000 word count stories, lures me to a world …

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Hot Blacktop – Ch. 3 – Saint

Stuart “Saint” Paulson looked down at Sienna, his brow furrowed, shoulders tense, his own headache inviting itself in. “Stay.” “I can’t do that,” he replied after a long pause. She didn’t respond. She’d fallen asleep. He sighed, went back to the bed, sat down and looked at the woman who had pulled at something deep …

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