My life has been pretty simple. I grew up in Alabama and graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor's in Advertising. I have spent about the last ten years in web development. In 1998, a friend of mine and I started a web design company we ran for three or four years before deciding to close it due to the demands of school. Since then, I stayed in the web working with various companies in Alabama. I worked for a brief period with Southern Progress, namely with Southern Living magazine and Health magazine, in their web departments. While there, I also wrote for Southern Living magazine, Health.com., and the company's internal newsletter. I write as much as I can. For the last five years, I have been working on my first novel. I am on the third revision now and hope to be finished with this draft by the end of the year. I also write short fiction, though not as frequently as I used to due to the time I spend on the novel. My goal is to have my novel published in the next three years. Other interests include: History (particularly medieval and ancient civlizations), Reading, Foreign Language (I currently speak Spanish but plan to learn as many as I can), Landscape Photography, the outdoors, sports (especially college football), and Travel.
Planning to write is as important as planning to go to the gym. If you give yourself a set time to write everyday, you’re more likely to accomplish something. I know writers who can’t write until they feel compelled or inspired to write, but I’ve found in my experience that… Read More »The Habits of Writing
Each year Writer’s Digest magazine puts out a list of the 101 best websites for writers. Categories include: general writing resources, publishing, challenges/creativity, genre/niche, protecting your work, agent blogs, and a list of writing communities. I’ve looked at a lot of these sights before, and overall, I’ve found the list… Read More »Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers
The character Harry Potter apparently appeared in the 1986 film Troll starring Noah Hathaway and June Lockhart and directed by John Carl Buechler. Not the same Harry Potter, although both films do share a commonality in their use of magic. Harry Potter (Noah Hathaway) and his family move into a… Read More »Harry Potter in Troll
I learned recently that George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is going to be made into an HBO series. A Song of Ice and Fire includes four novels (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows), with a fifth… Read More »HBO Series: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
I came across this excerpt from an unpublished novel the other day. “Through this mantic glass I watch Manayunk dissolve. Perhaps the rain’s pursuing mist inoculates its vision, or its pandect vantage from this garret dormer. Or perhaps no eyes can ever be so low to truly see from ground… Read More »Good Writing is Simple
Sarum is the sweeping epic of England, a rich history that blends the ancient and the modern, beginning with the Ice Age 10,000 years ago and transporting the reader through the worlds of Stonehenge, the Black Death, the Industrial Age, World War II, and ending in modern times. It follows the fortunes… Read More »Sarum: The Novel of England by Edward Rutherfurd
If you tell someone you’re writing a novel, one of the first questions most people will ask you is “What’s it about?” Such a tough question to answer, especially when I was writing the first draft. It seems like the author should be able to easily describe what his/her novel… Read More »What’s It About?
This was forwarded to me in an email this morning: For the past 25 years, San Jose State University’s English department has been asking writers to do their worst. That is, to submit the worst opening sentence of the worst imaginary novel they can, well, imagine. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest… Read More »The Worst Sentence of the Year
Storytelling in written form goes back as far as Virgil and Homer and even the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and Indian narratives such as Ramayana and Mahabharata, though the oral tradition of passing down stories dates far beyond that, before recorded time. Stories enrich our lives and increase our knowledge;… Read More »Chapter 1: How I Got Started