Baby Steps

The more I READ,The more I think,And the more I think,The more I understand,And the more ideas I have. The more I WATCH,The more I think,And the more I think,The more I understand,And the more ideas I have. The more I STUDY,The more I think,And the more I think,The more I understand,And the more ideas

“White People, Just Don’t.”

I belong to several online Facebook writing groups. Mostly I just lurk. Sometimes I’m encouraged by the activity I read in these groups, such as when someone posts that their book is finally self-published – so what if it’s not selling, it’s FINISHED – or when someone reports that they finally found an agent (these

Information is Everywhere!

Gosh, how did writers do research before the Internet? Before Netflix and Prime Video? Sure, there were libraries, and libraries did (at least in recent history) have videos you could check out… but dang! I’m feeling so lucky to live in this Information Age, in which so much information is available. Books? Yep, I’m finding

The Challenges of Realism

Once I decided to place my story within the real, historic events of the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, I knew that the research required was not only going to be arduous, but absolutely critical. Any time an author attempts to weave actual history into a work of fiction (or, rather, fiction into actual history),

The Initial Book Idea

Several years ago, for some reason, I — a white woman in my 40s at the time — had this completely off-the-wall (for me) idea for a story: When their grandmother and sole caretaker dies, two young African American boys must travel by foot to Memphis to find the father who abandoned them. Why Memphis?

Why This Blog?

Years ago, my daughter was struggling to write an essay for her high school English class. It was about 11:00 at night, the paper was due the next day, and she had a major case of writer’s block. More specifically, her perfectionism and — bless her heart (because she gets this from me) — her