As some of you know, I was in New York City last week for the 35th RWA® conference. This annual event is the biggest gathering of romance writers in the world. As a first-time attendee and 2015 Golden Heart® finalist, it was an exciting, overwhelming and...
Migration has been a recurring theme in my life and family history.My mother’s ancestors left Ireland in the nineteenth century to seek a better life in what was then the frontier of Canada’s Ottawa Valley.Her lone Scottish ancestor, my great-great...
Before the Golden Heart® class of 2015 named itself the Dragonflies, I hadn’t thought much about that particular insect. I hadn’t had a positive experience with dragonflies, but I hadn’t had a negative one either. Dragonflies were simply peripheral...
I’ve thought a lot lately about my mission as a writer. What do I want readers to take away from my work? To answer that question, I keep coming back to the angel teddy bear perched on the bookshelf beside my writing desk.The bear was a gift I gave myself many...
A friend working on her first fiction manuscript emailed me this week to ask if I had “any words of wisdom” to share. I answered her privately, but her questions made me think about the things I wish I’d known when I started writing in pursuit of...
