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My Books

Pink Ballerina ~ 3 free days at the Kindle store

I am pleased to announce that for the next three days, from June 11th to June 13th, Pink Ballerina will be available free of charge at Kindle store near you. Download a free copy while supplies last! Oh, wait. It’s an eBook, so scratch that supplies last thing.

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Driven to Write ~ Purpose

Ah, the purpose thing. I’ve been dreading writing this one. For some reason I want to spend the next four paragraphs permutating through variations of Steve Martin’s “special purpose” discussion in The Jerk. But if as Daniel H. Pink claims in Drive, Purpose, along with Autonomy and Mastery motivate us to work harder and produce […]

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Driven to Write ~ Mastery

Does a job where you will never get better at what you’re doing excite you? When you examine your ability to write, are you satisfied with what you produce, or rather are you motivated to get better? If the latter, to what extent does that motivation drive your writing? If as Daniel H. Pink claims […]

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The Drive to Write ~ Autonomy

Which task would you rather do, one someone directs you to perform, or one you dreamed up on your own? Answer that question honestly, and you’ll understand why in his book Drive, author Daniel H. Pink argues Autonomy provides us with a powerful motivator for our work. As we previewed in our introduction, along with […]

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Internet Neutrality and the tragedy of the commons

Is the Internet as we know it about to come to an end? If you read a lot of the online discussion on the topic of Internet Neutrality and pending FCC rule changes that will undo it, you would think so. What impact will this have for us average Joes? To appreciate this, we first […]

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The Drive to Write ~ Introduction

What drives you to Write? Where do you find motivation to write and keep writing? If I had to answer this question left to my own devices, I would offer some touchy feely reply about letting my imagination fly, coming up with interesting concepts for my stories, the ability to create worlds like ours or […]

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Bring on the women into our story-telling

Have you noticed how most stories you read or watch have fewer women than men? Does it bother you that in a world where women actually outnumber men (OK, by a small margin) most stories treat them as a by-the-way minority? How do our stories suffer when we tell them in a world nearly devoid […]

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Write with your Heart

Should you write what you know? Have you frozen to a stop when facing a topic or story because you realize how little you know? Do you fear that writing only what you know will limit your writing? A recent blog post by a fellow writer caused me to consider these questions anew. You can […]

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The 4 Cs of Storytelling

I used to ask what made a great storytelling photograph. Now I ask a similar question about written stories, and the answer keeps coming back with 4 Cs: Concept, Characters, Conflict and Context. I’ve heard a lot of broad arguments for what makes a great story, what makes it real and relatable, but for me […]

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About taxi rides and character discovery

How do you discover interesting characters for your fiction? They’re everywhere! For instance… I had an awesome taxi ride last night. I sat in the front seat and chatted up this amazingly gregarious Lebanese guy. We traded immigrant stories, but it was mostly him talking a mile a minute, his franctic speech a perfect match […]

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