Reading Opens Minds selects Radio Head as a book club pick!
I’m thrilled to announce that Reading Opens Minds has chosen my novel RADIO HEAD for book club participants, thanks in part to a generous donation from the John Aaroe Group. Reading Opens Minds, a non-profit organization, brings the book club experience to at-risk adults and children in the Los Angeles area through county jails, halfway houses, and schools. The […]
My book selected as a gift at New Media Film Festival
I’m so excited to announce that Radio Head was selected as a gift for the judges of the 2016 New Media Film Festival. The only book included in the gift bags, the judges for the Film Festival represent HBO, The National Academy of of Television Arts and Sciences (the Emmy’s), Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), The Screen Actors Guild […]
Cara Lopez Lee’s Thoughtful Rules for Compassionate Critiques
Note: I love when readers tell me WHAT they think they just read. Often what we are trying to imply in a scene comes across differently to different people, and this technique helps me gauge whether I’ve nailed it–or not.
Finally, a Simple Solution to Handling Backstory
Rule of Three “For every three sentences (or in some cases, paragraphs) of backstory, go back to the present scene at least briefly,
Using Dream Analysis to Develop Your Fictional Characters
Have you ever been chased by someone in your dreams? Been naked in public? Flown like a bird around a city? Or just felt utterly lost in a maze-like building? There are twelve basic dream patterns that all of us dream, regardless of who we are, what we do or where we live. An in-depth […]
Revise Your Novel in One Month with PlotWriMo
The amount of time, heartache, frustration, and hell that these videos are saving me from is immeasurable
Boiling Down Story – Creating a Pitch
As a competing mentee in this year’s Pitch Wars, I’ve been working on formulating a pitch. It would seem that, having dreamed up, outlined, and written an entire novel (and I won’t even go into the number of revisions I’ve done) that I should be able to write a sentence or two about what the novel […]
Is a Writer’s Retreat for you?
When was the last time you walked through a meadow? Not a cut-lawn city park expanse, or your own back yard just before mowing, but an honest-to-goodness meadow? Last weekend I attended an intimate writer’s retreat at Prue’s House at Hilltop Park on Bainbridge Island, WA, led by author Margaret Nevinski. The drive up wound […]
Character Outline: Portraying Realistic Teenager Fears
Here are Jude Bijou’s seven highly effective techniques to help writers identify fear-causing triggers for students and aggravate those fears to cause serious anxiety before the final act–and how to help your protagonist let go of those fears, and arc into a realized theme goal.
How to Use an Unreliable Narrator in Your Story
In general, even people who commit the worst crimes do not go around thinking of themselves as monsters; they justify their actions to themselves. In Lolita, Vladimir Nabakov signals Humbert Humbert’s unreliability to the reader in a number of ways such as his outrageous claims, his endless justifications for shocking acts and his contempt for others.
