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Growing Up.
I’m 28 years old, and by many accounts you might say I’m all grown up. I did a bunch of adult things in this past decade: got married, bought a house, got a dog, bought a car, sorted out my life. Now I’m doing this big grown up thing I never wanted to do and…
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Let’s not pretend.
I’m terrible at keeping a blog. I have no excuses, and finally I no longer feel like I need one. So let this be the last thing I say on the subject. Moving on: what’s been going on with me? I’m in a 2 personal year, which is boring. If you follow numerology at all,…
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Regeneration.
I have this scene from an old draft of a novel that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use, but it’s one of my favorite scenes ever and it speaks so deeply to me now. In the scene, the devil’s son is telling the MC about the phoenix cycle, how so many people…
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Secrets! Or: I Got Fired From My Day Job and I Liked It
I’m going to tell you a secret: I think I’m actually a fucking AMAZING writer. Did that make you feel uncomfortable? Did you just think, “wow, someone’s full of herself”? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. We’ve all been programmed to think that if a person is proud of their ability, then they don’t…
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Haunted at 17: Being Silenced
My favorite YA author [not going to fangirl, not going to fangirl] Nova Ren Suma is celebrating the release of her newest work, 17 & Gone, all week by asking fellow authors to blog about what haunted them at 17. Her first YA novel, Imaginary Girls, is to-date the greatest YA novel I have ever read,…
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Spring, Sprang, Sprung
It’s officially SPRING! No, don’t look at the snow outside. Or the thermometer. Or the clouds obscuring the precious, golden, lemony sunlight… it is officially spring! JUST GO WITH IT. Spring, like many things in our calendar and in our world, is rife with symbolism and meanings that have been liberally applied by human beings since…
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The Art of Giving Up
Have you ever tried, and tried, and tried, until you were blue in the face, and all the world felt stale and useless and without-purpose all for the fact that you could not succeed and it was making you miserable? And have you ever, actually, given up? Because I did. And as it turns out,…
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Abusing the Use of Sexual Assult in YA
If you haven’t seen this article on The Victimization of Lara Croft, read it. It brings to mind an issue I have, specifically about YA novels, that has been bugging the hell out of me lately: there is too much god damn sexual assault. Before you get upset and say “it’s a real thing and YA…
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5 Reasons Why Aspiring Authors Should Not Trust The Internet
Call me a hippy, or an optimist, or whatever you like, but I have a personal rule about any kind of advice: if it makes you feel good, take it; if it makes you feel like shit, it’s probably wrong. At least, it’s probably wrong for you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve…
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On the Road Again
I’d like to take a moment here to wax philosophical on the idea of The Road to Publication. Depending on how long and deep you dig into the over-flowing informational pool on “What to expect when you try to publish a book,” you’ve probably come across all kinds of stories, and have been told to…
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In Like a Lion
It’s MARCH. WHAT? Winter has been shockingly–shockingly–mild here in Buffalo. For the first time in years, we can accurately say at the beginning of March that spring is right around the corner. For me, spring always brings with it a surge of passion and determination. My To-Do list quadruples, but so does my Got-Done list (and…
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Wailing at the Wall
Life has been a whirlwind. Let me tell you about the past few weeks as succinctly as I can. Nothing major has happened, not by certain standards anyway. But my brain and my heart have been on a strange journey that can’t quite be captured in words. Perhaps that’s the reason behind my blog-silence–it’s certainly never…
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On Words, Human Creativity, and the Ineffable
Friday night I was driving from South Buffalo to a friend’s house in Amherst. The radio was playing all kinds of awful music, so I turned it off and just drove. I kept being struck by how familiar the roads were–the roads I grew up with, that I know like the back of my hand…
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The Artist as Batman
Like most of you, I have a day job. I happen to work at a pharmaceutical telemarketing group from 8:30 to 5, not using my degree in media study whatsoever. Maybe I’m using a little bit of my anthropology minor when dealing with a bazillion unpleasant receptionists (however, the cross-cultural appearance of generic job dissatisfaction in a particular segment of the working population is…
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Things Never Said
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart I was inspired by a post on twitter that my friend made about writing to her old college professor, the one who helped her to believe in her writing. It reminded me of the people in my life…