Halloween Giveaway: A Pair of Wickedly Cute Earrings

October 28, 2016.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Hello Darlings, Dead bodies, cupcakes, and ultra-cute Japanese cartoon animals? If I had designed a pair of earrings based on my novel,The Tokyo Cover Girls, they would look like this. So, to celebrate their fabulousness (and yours) I’m giving away three sets on October 31. For a chance to win follow me on twitter, on instagram, or simply like this […]

The Tokyo Cover Girls in Real Life

May 17, 2016.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Da da da da! After many many years (why put a number on it?) my indie published book is now a real thing. The Tokyo Cover Girls is a young adult novel about three teens modeling in Tokyo who are trapped in a competition where the only escape is to uncover the truth behind a […]

Writing, money, and TOTAL PANIC…Miller-style

September 1, 2013.Reading time 1 minute.

How doth the successful author lead their lives? In his self-titled book on writing, Henry Miller claims that the key is “writ[ing] first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.” Sure, I can agree that if I’m really serious about my craft I should probably wait till after I’ve reached my daily […]

Getting over writer shame…with help from the Gaiman-ster

August 18, 2013.Reading time 1 minute.

Lately I have found myself in the rather clichéd position of suffering from writer’s block. And it sucks. Rather than looking forward to those precious moments when I can sit down at the computer and dive into my manuscript, I have been avoiding the thing like a pile of warm dog barf in the middle […]

Anne Lamott on how to tackle the Great Blank Page

June 2, 2013.Reading time 1 minute.

I finally bid farewell to a manuscript I have been working on for over a year as of just yesterday. My mom’s going to proofread it, then it’s off to my agent friend and the world beyond. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good about the accomplishment, and stoked to start a new project–until […]

Things that inspire me to write #32: Flow

December 27, 2012.Reading time 2 minutes.

Time passes by unnoticed. Noises, objects, even people fall away and nothing exists but the keyboard and the screen above it. A few years ago, back in that exceedingly luxurious period of my life when I had loads of free to myself, not only did I read but also took extensive notes on Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s […]

Things that inspire me to write #33: This Quote from Jane Buchanan

December 26, 2012.Reading time 1 minute.

Where do your ideas come from? My mother-in-law asked me this question a few weeks ago, and I have been pondering over it ever since. Where do I get my ideas? Am I getting them from the right place? Should I be getting them from somewhere better? Ahhh! I’m doing this wrong!! Thankfully, this afternoon as […]