Author's posts

My Book is Out in Paperback!

If you’ve been dying to read my short story collection, Unsanctioned Experiments, but you just aren’t into the ebook thing, then it’s your lucky day. It took me a year, but my book is finally available in paperback here! Who knew formatting a print book for the first time would be time-consuming? Thanks to everyone …

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My book is live!

After literally years of scrawling away in stolen moments, and lots of effort spent learning how to format an ebook and get it ready for prime time, it is finally live. My ebook of 6 short stories is available on Amazon here. Run out and get yourself a copy (or several)! And please leave me …

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My favorite kind of mention

So I took a break from this blog for a while (a while? three years?!?) to work more on fiction writing. I actually spent that time writing short stories. Then I started getting some of them professionally edited. And my editor suggested I submit to the Writers of the Future Contest. It’s run by the …

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Scrivener is on Sale

If you’re an aspiring writer like me, you’ve probably heard of Scrivener. If not, it’s the software tool used by lots of successful indie authors to both write their books, and to format them for e-publishing. If you listen to the Self Publishing Podcast, The Creative Penn Podcast, or the Rocking Self Publishing Podcast, all …

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The power of positive Powerball

Like a lot of people, I joined in an office pool for the $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot last week. Spoiler alert: we won $4. And like a lot of people, during the days leading up to the drawing, I spent a few idle moments going on a mental spending spree with all my potential winnings. When I was …

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Going to Zoo Atlanta, for Free!

On Sunday we had a family outing to the Zoo in Atlanta. This was our kids’ first visit, and they and their grandparents had a great time. The weather was great, and we were very lucky that lots of the animals were active and visible in their exhibits. The gorillas were moving and clowning around, and the elephants …

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We Ate Bugs… and Lived!

Back in September, we took the family to the Insectival at the Athens Botanical Gardens. If your kids like bugs (and ours do), it’s a fun event. There were lots of cool educational displays, crafts and a big butterfly release. This was all fairly standard fun kid stuff. The thing I didn’t expect to see was a …

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Make Your Own Slime

A while ago, I was watching the kids on a rainy Saturday. There were so many fun things we wanted to do outside, but there we were, stuck indoors. Fortunately, the kids had found videos on how to make slime a few weeks before. This seemed like the perfect time to try some out. Choosing a …

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Speed Reading: Does it Work, and Do You Want it to?

I had heard of speed reading, just like you have. I’ve seen people making crazy claims about how fast they could get through a book, and I always thought of it as a bit of a parlor trick, like hypnosis. Yes, I believe it exists, but so what? I guess, more exactly, I was suspicious …

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How to get Siri to read you a story

Or: How to turn your ebooks into (mediocre) audiobooks A few weeks ago, I was listening to the Rocking Self Publishing Podcast Episode #15 interview with self-published author Kevin Leigh. Leigh talked about trying to find time to write while constrained with both a day job and a long commute, which certainly hit home for me. One trick …

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