Love that word, maelstrom. The Scandinavian word maelström was introduced into English by Edgar Allen Poe, and anyone who knows my love for things dark and on the outskirts of mainstream, Poe has got to be a favorite of mine. But maelstrom is defined as a powerful whirlpool. And that's what my muse has been dragging me through as new story ideas and plot enhancements to WIPs have been taking me by storm. 

I have yet another story that has yanked my attention away from Tree of Life. It's a fan...
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And when I say "muse", I mean me. I was in the middle of story editing and doing further research for Tree of Life when an idea struck me. 

I've been playing around with an idea about cult deprogramming for a while and the plot smacked me so hard and out of the blue that I had to stop what I was doing and get an outline started for it. After a few hours of cursory research on the subject I developed characters and story line. What if a deprogrammer realizes who he's attempting to debrief is tr...
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For every writer, the process of creation is different. What inspires us is unique. The birth of a story, the whispers of a character, all come to us in a potpourri of ways. I recently attended a mini-writers conference with a fellow writer and good friend, Eisley Jacobs. The meetup was free--Sacramento Writers Who Mean Business, hosted by these lovely ladies (known as the Michel(l)es) --and the key note speaker was an author of a middlegrade book, Karen Kostlivy. She spoke to us of her journ...
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