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Late May Update
So, I’m officially retired as a teacher. It’s been a week out of the classroom so far. I thought I’d have a lot more written by now, but I’ve mostly been working on formatting The Saga of Tarod the Nine-Fingered, which is up for pre-order now. Amazon’s KDP won’t allow pre-orders for paperbacks, but the…
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Foray Into Fantasy
The first novel I finished writing was The Prometheus Syndrome, a horror novel you can buy here (it was not my first published novel). My second finished book was another horror novel called The Living Dark that has never seen the light of day. For my third novel, I decided to write a sword-and-sorcery fantasy…
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OWFI Recap 2023
It had been more than 10 years since I last attended the annual Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. conference. The main reason was cost and return on investment. I’ve always been poor, and when I did attend OWFI in the past I seldom felt like I learned enough to justify the expense. So, I had no…
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Retiring from Education
It is with a heavy heart, and nervousness over the future, that I’m announcing my retirement from public education. I have been a teacher for 17 years. It has brought me great joy, a sense of purpose, a feeling of satisfaction, some awards, and many great friends. It also contributed to me missing a fair…
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SEO for Fiction Authors
Search engine optimization. It’s something I only heard about a few months ago when, of course, I realized I wasn’t doing it and need to. So I’ve been looking into what it is and how it helps authors. Here’s some stuff I’ve learned. First, what is search engine optimization (SEO for short)? SEO refers to…
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7 Mistakes Authors Make
Here are seven common mistakes or obstacles that can keep people from achieving success as fiction writers:
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March Report Card
March is over. It was a long, strange month, with some ups and down in terms of my writing goals. I never actually set out my goals for the month, so I’m going to detail some things that happened, then give an update on the missed goals from last month. Most importantly, my new novel…
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Yes or No Launch
It’s 3:09 a.m. on Sunday, the last day of spring break. The last night I can stay up late like this. I dread going back to the school, back to the students who don’t want to learn, and back to a life where I can’t work on books all day. But it is what it…
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Yes or No
Today is my new book’s birthday! My latest novel, Yes or No, is one I’m kinda proud of. It’s a literary novel about a man in his 50s who is confined to a nursing home and suffering from COPD. Daniel’s led a hard life that’s included prisons and rehabs and loss. One day a woman…
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February Report Card
I set pretty lofty goals for February, and I failed miserably. There were a couple of weeks with a nasty cold and all I wanted to do was sleep. Most recently, the depression crept back in, and I’m trying to get receipts collected for 2022 taxes. I’m not a good recordkeeper and I hate tax…