What Was Never There is Going on Tour

Posted on April 3, 2024 ·

Image by Frank Gayde from Pixabay

What Was Never There is going on tour! Beginning May 3rd, tune in to Women on Writing for giveaways, interviews, and reviews on my winter release, a collection of literary short stories. 

Although What Was Never There was published a year and a half after The House on Linden Way, it felt too soon to do a full blog tour, particularly since I’m doing one for my next release, Murder by Milkshake, later this year.

Still, I feel I neglected my short story collection a little. I published it at the end of 2023 and then promptly moved on to preparations for my cozy mystery series. I’d planned on writing several blog posts highlighting the stories in What Was Never There and celebrating its release, but the time warp that is full-time teaching magically transported me from fall to spring, and winter disappeared. 

That’s okay! What Was Never There is a patient book. Like the stories within, it meanders on what my admittedly biased opinion is a beautiful journey through the human experience—from the long hazy nights of a defining childhood summer to the silent and spiraling loneliness of adolescence; from the tender hopes and heartaches of marriage to the crushing anxieties of parenthood; from the fractured recollections and reimagined life of a magical diary to the calm acceptance and gratitude of a life well lived. 

Above all, these stories come down to forgiveness. I am inordinately proud of them, and I can’t wait to celebrate the release of this collection in a pared-down reviews tour beginning next month. See you then?

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Happy Spring Break, and Happy Reading!

Posted on March 15, 2024 ·

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Spring is in the air, bringing the scent of orange blossoms, the warmth of sunny afternoons, and a season full of bookish promise. There’s a new Simone St. James’ murder mystery in March, a Stephen King short story collection in May, and another entry in my favorite cozy mystery series in June. I’m looking forward to all of them, but first here’s a look behind at some of the best books I’ve read so far in 2024. 

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

My daughter, Abigail, introduced me to the magic of Studio Ghibli several years ago. When she was in high school, her early-out Wednesdays were a chance for us to have some girl time—grabbing coffee and muffins and watching a movie before it was time to pick up her brother from middle school. The first Studio Ghibli movie she wanted me to see was Howl’s Moving Castle, and I was duly impressed with the gorgeous animation and the unique, charming tale. I finally read the book, which is whimsical and wonderful, with a sassier Sophie and a more dramatic (if you can believe that!) Howl. 

Atonement by Ian McEwan

This was a reread, although I cannot recall when I originally read Atonement. Like Howl’s Moving Castle, I saw the movie first. The faithfulness of the adaptation here is stunning; the movie is like a mirror image of the novel, which is as beautiful and intricate as I remember. Ian McEwan’s stories take place so much in his characters’ richly imagined inner worlds; I love the meandering quality of their interior monologues, the precise descriptions of the world around them, and the slow unfolding of the plot. Something different for me this time around was how much more I appreciated Part 2 and Robbie’s fateful journey to Dunkirk.

Dead City by James Ponti

In my second-period reading class there sits a little red-headed girl who is attentive, respectful, and follows all the rules. Imagine my surprise then, when I had to ask her several days in a row to put her book down at the end of silent reading time. Responses included “I’m almost done with this paragraph…” and “Can I just read to the end of the chapter?” When I asked her about the book she couldn’t seem to put down, she launched into an enthusiastic description of a tale involving a middle school girl who fights zombies in New York City. “You should read it,” she added, and so I did. Sure enough, Dead City is utterly delightful. 

Night Shift by Stephen King

It’s always the right time for a Stephen King reread. Like most of King’s classic works, this book is a staple of my adolescence; I remember long days and late nights spent buried in the pages of these stories. Throughout the years I’ve revisited “Children of the Corn” often, but it had been a while since I’d experienced the supernatural horror of “The Mangler,” the understated beauty of “The Last Rung on the Ladder,” or the bloody good fun of “Battleground,” a story in which a professional hitman who kills a toymaker gets ambushed in his apartment by a set of plastic army soldiers. In the words of my bookish sixth-grade student, “You should read it.”

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What If I’d Stayed Home?

Posted on February 24, 2024 ·

Image by Artem Chunaev from Pixabay

It’s a rainy Saturday in February and I’m sitting in my car, in an empty parking lot, with a notebook in my lap. Usually I go to the coffee shop on weekend mornings to write, but today I’m feeling a little under the weather.

I probably should have stayed home, but my habit of leaving the house to write is so deeply ingrained, and the parking lot is just across the street. There’s warm air blowing softly from the vents and the sound of rain pattering down on the windshield.

Maybe I won’t write anything good, but maybe I will.

Maybe I’ll write the sentence that leads me into my next story, and maybe that story will be the best one yet.

Maybe I’ll write a few messy pages that will later need to be reworked several times, but at least I’ll have something to work with.

Maybe I’ll write the outline of an essay that I won’t be ready to draft for another year, maybe two, but it’s a start.

Maybe I’ll write a whole poem, beginning to end, one of those surprising pieces that arrives fully formed and perfect as-is, and maybe I’ll keep that one for myself.

What I won’t do is leave this parking lot without writing anything. Because every time I put pencil to paper and create something good, I wonder, what if I’d chosen not to write today? What if I’d stayed home?

What if I gave up after fifteen minutes of staring out a windshield on a gray and cloudy morning, thinking I had nothing to say?

Then I wouldn’t have this. This sentence, this poem, this beginning.

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Sweet Dreams for 2024

Posted on January 7, 2024 ·

Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay

Setting goals for the new year is always a challenge because there’s so much I want to do. As the years pass, the projects accumulate, to the point where I now have too many to choose from (admittedly a good problem to have). 

I thought long and hard over Winter Break about which project I should focus on in 2024. There’s my micro memoir, a collection of 100-word pieces meant to distill the stories of my life, mostly for my children. There are two novellas and a middle grade book completely drafted and waiting for edits. There’s a middle grade fairy tale and a young adult magical realism, both with beginnings but no end. 

I want to work on all of them. I want to write new essays. I want to write new short stories. I want more time in which to do it all.

But something I’ve learned over the years is this: simple is better and commitment is everything. I can accomplish much more when I try to do less and commit 100% to my choices. 

With that in mind, my writing goal for 2024 is pretty simple: I’m going to self-publish my cozy mystery series. 

Sweet Dreams is a project I dreamed up in 2019 after realizing there were no cozy mysteries for young adults. I planned out several books and wrote two in a six-month period; the following year I self-published the first one on Kindle Vella during their launch. I had a lot of success on that platform but ultimately decided to publish the books as actual books. Now that I’m nearly done drafting the third one, 2024 seems like a good time to release all three.

The first book will be released in summer, the second in fall, and the third in December, just in time for a Christmas bundle. That’s the plan anyway. And why shouldn’t it work? It’s simple enough, and I’m committed to seeing it through.

As for last year’s goals, here they are again, along with the results!

1) Self-publishing my short story collection, What Was Never There

What Was Never There was released on December 21.

2) Publishing at least one piece in a literary magazine

My short fiction “Windows” was published in Best Microfiction 2023 in July; another piece, “Wrapping Paper,” was published in 5 Minute Lit in August (and featured at the Salem Lit Fest in September!).

3) Reading 30 books

Here are the 31 books I read in 2023.

Happy 2024, everyone!!

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What Was Never There Now Available in Print and Ebook!

Posted on December 22, 2023 ·

Long before I penned rough drafts by hand or typed them into online word processors, I used a simple offline version of Microsoft Word. Like most of us who once wrote without the benefit of programs that save your work as you go, I experienced the daily harrowing fear of losing hundreds or thousands of words before I remembered to hit “save,” not to mention the dread of losing everything due to the untimely death of one’s computer.

To circumvent this, I established the habit of emailing myself each day’s work, usually with a brief note on what I accomplished, what I struggled with, what hindered or inspired me. This is how I managed to capture my process and progress writing What Was Never There. My story collection was published this week, and although it includes a handful of pieces written pre-2015, the heart of the collection was dreamed up in April of that year, during an intensive session of Camp NaNoWriMo. 

In that month, I outlined and then drafted several stories whose main characters were haunted in some way by a memory. That memory—sometimes distant, sometimes near—threaded its way through all others, becoming foundational to the character’s reality. It’s a common theme in my work; I’ve always found it unsettling how our world is shaped by memories that are so often false, misremembered, or incomplete. 

Maybe this is why I journal so faithfully. And although I write by hand now or draft in Google Docs, where I feel secure in never losing a work-in-progress, I’ve continued to record my process and experiences throughout each project. Still, those journal entries are in long-running documents, not attached to snapshots of my work the way they were back then. It’s intriguing to re-open old emails and see exactly what I wrote on any given day. 

It’s how I know the first three sentences I typed on April 1st of 2015, while drafting the title story, remain now exactly as they were written then—a perfect beginning to a story that falls somewhere in the middle of this strange and melancholy collection, like the fragment of a dream.

The moonlight saved us. A distant, cold illumination that softened at our feet, cast shadows on the path. The moonlight saved us, but it also cast shadows.

Click here to purchase a copy of What Was Never There.

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Candles, Cozies, and Lemon Chess Pie: Things I’m Grateful for This Autumn

Posted on November 23, 2023 ·

Image by Vassilis lappas from Pixabay

Gratitude is something I strive to practice daily, but in the spirit of November I thought I’d make a list of things I am especially grateful for this autumn.

Family

Of course, family comes first. In a year that’s seen my daughter move out and my son begin driving himself to school, I’m more aware than ever of the invaluable moments that make up a mother’s life, and I cherish every one.

Writing

There’s less time for writing than there used to be, but that just makes me appreciate it more. I’m grateful for the stories that still whisper their secrets to me and for the memories that wait patiently until I find the right words.

Friendship

My critique partner Carrie has been there for me for over a decade. We hold each other accountable in weekly emails, exchanging stories and sharing our struggles and triumphs, and I am so grateful to have her in my life.

Teaching

For many years I was a practicing nurse, and although I was good at my job, I never loved it. Now that I’m teaching, I’m amazed that I ever did anything else. Whether preschool or middle school, education is where I belong.

Candles

It’s important to appreciate the little things in life, and little gives me more simple pleasure than holiday-themed candles. This autumn I’ve been indulging in the warm scents of Pumpkin Carving and Movie Night Cocoa.

Lemon Chess Pie

I quit sugar four years ago, but I still love baking sweet treats for my family. Lemon chess pie has become an autumn staple; it’s not officially Thanksgiving until our home is filled with the sweet smells of buttery pie crust and freshly grated lemon zest.

Hogwarts Legacy

Going back to simple pleasures, after spending a day managing 11- and 12-year olds, there’s nothing like cheerfully casting Crucio on an armored mountain troll. I bought a PS5 solely for the privilege of playing this game, and it’s been worth every penny.

Cozy Mysteries

My go-to guilty pleasure, cozies are short and sweet and laugh-out-loud funny. The latest in my favorite series came out in October, but I saved it for Thanksgiving Break so I could relax and read in long stretches on my sunny porch.

Right about now, that sounds like a good idea.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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A Few of My Favorite October Stories

Posted on October 17, 2023 ·

(A version of this post appeared in The Faerie Review in 2022)

‘Tis the season for ghosts and goblins, misty graveyards, and haunted houses. When long summer days are overtaken by autumn darkness there’s nothing like curling up with a good October story, so in honor of Halloween month, here are a few of my favorites:

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

No one writes October stories quite like Ray Bradbury. The celebrated fantasy and horror author famously loved Halloween month, a fondness he indulged in books like The Halloween Tree, The October Country, and my personal favorite, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Reading Bradbury’s dark fantasy about a sinister traveling carnival spreading evil in a small Illinois town is like falling into a dream. The story is told in prose that’s more like poetry, rich with the warm hues of autumn and a deep hypnotic dread.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Written like a classic Victorian ghost story, this Gothic tale embraces requisite tropes of the genre: an isolated house shrouded in fog and ruin, a mysterious figure lurking in a graveyard, phantom cries that can only be heard at night. Wrapped in a Christmas memory, the story does take a while to warm up, but once the haunting begins it pulls you along in a slow luxury of terror. A perfect October read.

“Children of the Corn” by Stephen King (from short story collection Night Shift)

The 1984 movie adaptation of Stephen King’s classic October story was a favorite of mine as a teenager. I loved it so much, when my high school sweetheart said he had family in the little town of Salix, Iowa, where part of the movie was filmed, I immediately suggested a road trip. Unlike the film, the short story is bereft of sentiment and does not end well for our main characters. This version is as much a grim portrayal of a failing marriage and the cruelties we become capable of inflicting on those with whom we’ve fallen out of love as a story of supernatural evil.

17 & Gone by Nova Ren Suma

This absolute gem of a young adult novel is set in winter but is 100% an October story. Suma, with her hazy, languid prose, skillfully weaves a tapestry of missing teenage girls whose stories haunt the main character, Lauren, in ghostly visions and terrible dreams. Lauren becomes further estranged from her real-life relationships as she’s pulled deeper into the psychic mysteries of these lost girls. A mesmerizing story with a shock of an ending that somehow works.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…” Ah, what better first line to lure a reader into the sublime gothic nightmare that is Rebecca? Fraught with mystery and dread, this slow burn of a novel settles into your bones like the chill of autumn itself. The isolation and fear that Daphne du Maurier creates for her unnamed protagonist, and the bleak, ominous atmosphere of the estate of Manderley where she is haunted, combine to grip the reader in a dark and gloomy embrace. Pure October horror.

Enjoy the season, everyone, and happy reading!

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New Book Out in December!

Posted on September 30, 2023 ·

Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay

Every year when the nights grow longer and September arrives, it feels like a new beginning. There are stories calling to me and I long to write them, but first it’s time to close the chapter on one of my oldest and dearest projects.

When I began writing my second book in the spring of 2015, it was meant to be a novel. Several hundred words in, I realized the story I was working on was a novella at best, but I had ideas for more short pieces that would complement it nicely. So I decided to write a book of short stories instead of a novel, not knowing at the time that collections are notoriously difficult to sell.

If I’d known, would it have changed things? 

Maybe. I’m glad then, that I did not know. 

What Was Never There will be released December 21 in print and ebook on Amazon. Here is the book description and the beautiful cover created by Deranged Doctor Design: 

A mother and daughter lost in the woods must overcome their worst fears to find their way back. A father going through a divorce witnesses a seemingly impossible motorcycle accident, which forces him to question the truth of his own perceptions. A little boy with a terrible secret routinely steals away at night to meet a girl beneath a willow tree—only to discover she has a secret of her own.

What Was Never There is a collection of short stories with the common theme of memory, or rather, the way memory haunts us.

Includes Pushcart Prize nominated stories “We Never Get to Talk Anymore” and “The Dinosaur Graveyard” and the award-winning “Windows,” selected for Best Microfiction 2023.

Pre-order on Kindle here (the print edition will be available for pre-order in October!).

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Ten Years of Blogging

Posted on August 20, 2023 ·

Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay

This will be the last anniversary post for a while—I promise—but I couldn’t not shout out about the fact that this month marks my 10th year of blogging!

Having my very own corner of the internet to share my work, writing tips, and personal journey has been a joy. Other online spaces for me have come and gone: Facebook, Instagram, and probably soon the site formerly known as Twitter, but this space remains—a quiet place where I can be me and share things with you, a place you’re always invited to and where you’re free to comment safely, something always appreciated but never expected. Here there are no anxieties about numbers, no one shouting at each other, no ads.

I love it here. I hope you do too. And I hope, so much, that personal blogging becomes a thing again and that you’ll invite me into your little corner of the online world. I’ll probably be quiet.

But I’ll be listening.

In writerly news, my new micro, “Wrapping Paper,” was published this week in 5 Minute Lit. It’s a piece about Christmas, growing up, gifts, and motherhood, all wrapped up in 100 words. As always, thank you for reading.

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A Few Special Occasions

Posted on July 29, 2023 ·

Image by Bea Kamhal from Pixabay

This month I’m celebrating a few special occasions. One is my 48th birthday (today!), and the other is the one-year anniversary of The House on Linden Way. 

If you’ve read Linden Way, the above image will make sense. The story, after all, relies heavily on the concept of time and the ways we become trapped within it. 

Life can feel fleeting in how days move swiftly and take with them so many memories. As both a writer and a mother I feel bound to the responsibility of capturing those memories. Journaling becomes almost an act of despair, driven by the persistent knowledge that a moment not captured is a moment lost. 

I want to remember.

And yet we cannot spend our lives reliving the past, and not everything needs to be preserved. A writer’s job is distillation. 

That’s part of what makes Linden Way special. It distills so much that’s important to me—motherhood, childhood, and sibling bonds—into a story half real, half imagined, and unburdened by details that belong in those late-night journals.

Happy anniversary to the book of my heart, and here’s to another year of writing.

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