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My 5th Novel Has a Name (at least for now)
Today, it’s official. I have a book title. I have a copyrighted ISBN number. I have a “mood” for the cover. And while I am going to seek traditional publishing this time around and solicit an agent to represent me, I still need to go through this process to help move in the right direction and keep me motivated should I venture down the self-publishing road again. The characters in this novel are not only in my head, but in my soul. Each one is a part of me, and a part of you, and a part of everyone we have met along the way. With five main characters, a…
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The 6 a.m Pledge for My Health
To the year 2020—you’ve been a disaster in so many ways. So many of us are tired and feeling the angst that has befallen us during these last many months. We’ve lost sleep, contact with people we love, the ability to move around in society in a normal way, and for many people, pay reductions and loss of jobs and livelihoods. Just this morning, I heard the story of someone who lost their store and is now homeless thanks to the pandemic. Additionally, as a consummate consumer of news, I’ve realized the very nature of this much negative news consumption that I inhale on a daily basis is affecting my…
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An Easter Contemplation About Grandparents
* Two days ago, my aunt posted the above photo of my grandparents on Facebook, wishing my grandmother (we called her Nanny) a happy birthday in Heaven. She’s been gone from us for quite some time, but seeing the photo, while we simultaneously fight this coronavirus pandemic and Easter is upon us, made me contemplate my pretty blessed life thus far. While no life is perfect, and my own family’s past year and half has been beyond weird and strange and sad and disruptive, I look back with joy on all that we have been blessed with in our lives. I was very fortunate to have all of my grandparents…
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On This Valentine’s Day, LOVE
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ Today is what life is all about, people: LOVE. And it’s not always romantic love—just love in general. I’ve spent years writing books with love as a core theme. Love for a father, a mother, a grandmother, a grandfather; love for a daughter or son; love for one’s work; love for dear friends; love for life; and letting go of one love to begin another. . We’ve all been there. We’ve experienced euphoric relationships and devastating ones. We’ve felt the waves of a new love and the crushing sensation of a broken love. . People often ask me how much of “me” goes into the…
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Unlost – Sharing a Short Story from The Postcard
Today, I’m sharing a short story I wrote that was published in my book of 2018 titled The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry. It’s set in London, a place I’ve only visited once, but loved. In striving to write about female friendships as I did in my new novel, Little Milestones, I guess you could say I practiced with this very short story. I love writing short pieces of fiction, as they test both your ability to tell a condensed story, as well as test your proclivity for further expanding the story. This one stayed put as a short story, but another one I wrote for that collection, Life with Nan, turned into…
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An Update and the Plot Overview of Little Milestones – Coming Soon
Right now, my beta readers are looking over the draft of Little Milestones. I am reading the manuscript again, as well, for the hundredth time. As well, I’ve started to create some of my marketing materials for the book. For those of us in the trenches as independent authors, it’s a never-ending cycle of book promotion, writing, and editing. We’re at it all the time as we try to build our brand and find our niche of readers. I’m still at it and I haven’t given up. Today, I’m sharing the draft of the copy that goes on the outside of a book or inside a book jacket—you know, the…
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Update on My (currently unnamed) WIP
On Friday night, I reached over 71,000 words on my #WIP (work in progress). I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love the direction change I made with this story back in December. Now, the novel has glue and a backbone and characters I wish were my friends. I still have a way to go, but it makes me so happy to sit down and write when I’m writing about places I love and I can live vicariously through my characters. I took this lovely photo back in September in Oxford when, in the name of research, I spent time in both #oxfordmd and #stmichaelsmd. I can’t…
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Life Philosophies, Not Resolutions This Year
This year I decided to do something different. Instead of making New Year’s Resolutions that we forget two weeks into the year, I decided to adopt some life philosophies full of wisdom and put them into action the whole year long. I love quotes, sayings, and the ability that people have to say succinctly what I’m thinking, hence the use of so many quotes, some from well-known folks and some that were posted anonymously that I found searching for the right ones for me. What follows are the ones that speak to me the loudest. And what follows are the ones I plan on adopting in 2019. May all your…
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When You Majorly Alter Your Work in Progress After Writing 50,000 Words: The Hard Truth About Writing A Novel
* Today, my dear readers, I am going to give it to you straight. Straight up, as Paula Abdul once sang. And believe me, what I’m about to share with you is going to cause me to do quite a bit of work. Lots and lots of work. But in the end, I am hoping it will all be worth it. And also, you must know this about me: if I didn’t love crafting stories and the agony that goes along with that job, I wouldn’t do it. If you’ve been with me for a while, you know that I am a professor, writer, author, and as you see me…
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Reflections on Feeling a Loss of Hope
It’s probably pretty shocking to some of you who follow my blog, a “safe space” for positivity and a place where lifting up others is standard operation. It’s always been my goal for Steph’s Scribe to inject a dose of inspiration into people’s lives. But today, just days before Thanksgiving, I’m feeling something tampering with my state of hopefulness. A bleakness has entered my atmosphere. A sense of time slipping away and dreams fading a bit. I hate this feeling. A culmination of many things swirling around my personal domaine, I felt it was appropriate to be real with you for a moment, to illustrate that life is not always…
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Friday Fiction : I Hate You (a flash fiction story)
On Fridays we write. Answering a prompt is a good way to stay in touch with your writing, storytelling, and creativity. In this flash fiction piece, the goal was to “write a story with the word ‘hate’ in it.” Simple parameter. I write a lot about relationships, mostly happy ones, and sometimes ones that are on their way back from devastation. This is one of those. Here’s what I came up with for this week’s FICTION FRIDAY. *** I HATE YOU | Flash Fiction There was nothing left to say. The words hung in the night air as the sound of the sea pounced against the rocks. The breeze caught…
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Fiction Friday – 30 Years Later
THIRTY YEARS LATER Kate crossed her legs and swallowed hard. She looked at her feet and wondered if the shoes were right. She played with the bracelet around her wrist and looked around the smokey bar, the sound of a cheesy Bryan Adams song filling in where conversations dragged. She wondered why she had ever agreed to this. She wondered what had made her say ‘yes’ to meeting here, in this bar, of all places. The lights were dim and the mahogany bar was dark. She sat at al table adjacent to the bar and caught snippets of conversations between the patrons sitting on stools and the bartender. The bartender’s…
