Book release & #GIVEAWAY: As Good as a Feast

As Good as a Feast: Essays on Enough is now available on Kindle and in print!

I am pleased to announce the release of my latest project, As Good as a Feast: Essays on Enough, which is now available on Kindle and in print! To kick things off, I am hosting a couple of book giveaways that I hope you will all enter.

The first giveaway, which is going on right now, is through Amazon. You can enter here. Please feel free to share this giveaway with all of your reading and writing friends!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. This giveaway started March 22, 2016 7:44 PM PDT and ends the earlier of March 29, 2016 11:59 PM PDT or when all prizes have been awarded.

The second giveaway will be through GoodReads, and I will announce that one officially when it becomes available.

I am currently accepting short stories and creative nonfiction essays for my next two anthology projects. For submission guidelines and additional information, please visit the Elderfly Press Submissions page.

Book Giveaways: A How-to

This is the first time that I have done giveaways of actual print edition books, so it has been a learning process. As always, I want to bring my writing readers along with me on this process and share a bit of what I am learning.

How to know when you’ve “made it” as a writer

Hitting a writing milestone is one of the greatest feelings for a writer, especially when you meet your own self-imposed deadlines early. This week, I finished writing book two of my Valley of the Bees novel series and am now working on my second draft (my goal was to finish the rough draft by the end of March). I also just ordered the second proof of an essay collection that I am editing, titled, As Good as a Feast: Essays on Enough. Once I have reviewed this second proof, the book should be ready to go to print!

Yesterday, an article popped up in my newsfeed. The title caught my eye, but I decided not to read it. The topic was on how to know when you’ve “made it” as a writer. I didn’t need to read it because I feel like I have already made it.

Freewriting on freewriting: A writing exercise

This is my writing notebook for the semester.

One of my assignments for this week was to use one of the “Ways In” exercises from chapter 2 of Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. I ended up taking the lazy route and just did a freewrite, but I was kind of pleased with what I ended up with:

I was going to write a Springboard line, but I couldn’t find a line that appealed to me, so I’m just going to freewrite. Except, it’s hard to freewrite when you know there is a good chance that you might have to read it aloud to your classmates. The filter is automatically switched to “on,” so it almost defeats the purpose of freewriting. To me, freewriting is all about giving that inner censor a break and getting to your creative side. It’s hard to be creative with the little voice inside your head criticizing your every word.

When you freewrite, the inner censor says, “Oh, you’re sitting down to write garbage on purpose? Well, I’ll just go take a nap and rest up for next time when you sit down to write your “Great American Novel.” And of course, she laughs at you as she walks away.

Creative nonfiction writing exercise: Your name

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to be doing a lot of writing this semester in my creative nonfiction course. I am working my way through my first reading assignment and am already coming across small writing exercises that I would like to share with you. This post might turn into a series!

This is my sisters and me. I’m the oldest.

Writing Exercise

For today’s creative nonfiction writing exercise, you will write two paragraphs about your name. The first paragraph should be strictly objective, while the second should be more subjective. In other words, the first paragraph will contain facts about your name. The second will tell what it is like to be YOU while wearing the mantel of your particular name. Here’s an example from Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction:

School is back in session: Creative Nonfiction

It’s that time of year again, folks. Time to go back to school. I don’t know about you, but I would be perfectly happy not to send my kids back to school. I’m going to have plenty of homework of my own! I just downloaded my syllabus for the creative nonfiction course I’ll be taking this fall, and it looks like I am going to be doing a LOT of writing. That’s a good thing though, right?


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I have started reading the “recommended text,” In Fact, which the professor mentioned we might like to look at. I already have a list of ideas for topics that I have been meaning to write about. I am excited to have deadlines in place to force me to put the pen to the paper and get the words out of my head already! I’ll be sharing my work (and probably griping a bit here and there too, if I know me!) throughout the semester. It will be a lot of work, but I am excited to get started!