Let me begin by saying that I am well aware of the controversy around AI-Generated art, and this post is in no way suggesting commercial use. The legal arguments are still rather murky on AI art, and some platforms will remove your work if you use it. Add to that, my own experience produced results that were often not commercially viable. I have, however, found a non-commercial use that serves me well. I think all writers want their descriptions to be both vivid and ring true

Advice in writer blogs goes in cycles. Lately, I've read several posts about villains and antagonists. They come with the usual admonition: don't stereotype your villain; humanize him/her. After all, even Hitler loved his dog. More succinctly: The Joker need not apply; Jack Torrance, come on down. It's good advice. Notice whenever someone commits an atrocity, the neighbors say how ordinary the perpetrator was. They would NEVER have guessed. Not in a million years. I am one of

A young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis attempts to answer the question: What makes a life worth living? in his posthumously published novel, When Breath Becomes Air. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” Paul Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon and writer. He graduated from Stanford wi

I am motivated to publish this year, and my goals for 2022 reflect that motivation. Since it's the last day of the first month, I decided to share those goals. Without further ado, my goals: Edit final draft of Something Wiccan This Way Comes Finish and do final draft edit of Season of the Witch Prepare Queen of Heka and Reeds of Time for release Format all four books for release by the end of June 2022 First draft of The May Babies Ball and hopefully do a final draft edit Le

The year 2021 is not a year on which I will look back with undiluted pleasure, as Queen Elizabeth II famously said. There was a rather serious operation, a deadly Texas ice storm, an unexpected death, and the never-ending pandemic that often forced me to question what year I was living through. Almost everyone I know has similar feelings about 2021, although the details may vary. Perhaps that's why a member of my scrum team said she hoped we might use our final meeting of the

Game of Hounds and Jackals, Ebony, ivory | c. The Metropolitan Museum When I was deep in Egyptian research mode for Queen of Heka and Reeds of Time, the games ancient Egyptians played intrigued me. I'd seen people playing games on the walls of their tombs and on the game boards themselves in various museums. How could I write a novel set in ancient Egypt without including a game? The game of Hounds and Jackals (or Jackals and Hounds as I insisted on calling it) had interesti