Safe Harbour

  • The Author is Back

    All right, I admit it, it’s been a long couple of under-productive years. Even though things are open, back to “normal”, there is a lingering fog of post-lockdown effect. It makes me sluggish, anti-social, lazy. After a lengthy lethargy, I seem to have found an antidote. What the cowbell is to a fever, the Pretzel

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  • Writers Inspire

    Writers Inspire

    I attended a very good friend’s Book Launch yesterday. It was a wonderful event in a terrific location celebrating a great accomplishment. Seeing the fruits of her labors, experiencing the accolades of friends and family, readers and writers, it was the most feel-good I’ve been exposed to in a long time. And it inspires me

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  • AND WE ARE LIVE!

    AND WE ARE LIVE!

    School Spirit, Book 3 of the Kimmie Jillison Mystery series, is published and ready for READER consumption! Click here to download a digital copy for $1.99.Click here to download for FREE if you are a member of Kindle Unlimited.Click here to order a paperback for $6.95.Click here to download Kinder Garden, Book 1 in the

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  • Is it Chilly in here or is that just a Draft?

    It’s a spectacular feeling to get through an entire story idea.Beginning, middle, and end, BOOM! written down.I have many partial first drafts.Many. It’s very drafty in here. Brrrr. (a little writer’s humor that might be funnier if I didn’t live in frigid Northern Illinois) I recently returned from a very successful writer’s retreat where I

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  • I woke up this morning with a great idea for a new novel…

    Just kidding. IT’S REAL LIFE! As a fiction author who has dabbled with post-apocalyptic and dystopian themes, I am both fascinated and freaked out. Which is fascinating in its own way. You just can’t do this kind of research from a distance. You can Google potential, you can imagine and expound based on limited personal

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  • The value of X

    The value of X

    We’re in the final stages of The Writer’s Alphabet… and I’m x-static to introduce the letter X. X-ing out is an important (and sometimes painful) part of the editing process. No matter how poetic the verse, exceptional the passage, or lovely the prose, sometimes it’s just gotta go! For letters A through W in The Writer’s

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  • IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!

    Happy Birthday to me! For those of you who have the day off work (teachers and mail carriers, mostly), YOU’RE WELCOME! I encourage you to eat cake today. I’ll be eating cake, and even though we’re far apart, it will be kind of like we are together.           No presents, please.

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  • NaNoWriteMore

    It’s almost November! Can you feel the excitement carried on the brisk winds? The anticipation filling the air like so many golden leaves? The thrill of shorter days and longer hours tackling a wordy adventure while power-caffeinating? November brings National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. I first joined in 2011. I have “won”

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