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Friday Fiction: A Short About Reincarnation & Love (and in need of feedback)
I’ve been researching the idea of reincarnation lately. I’m not exactly sure why this particular concept has been stuck in my brain for several weeks, but it has. I’m in between books right now, having begun a new manuscript, but not sure where that one’s going, and the idea of reincarnation—a love story about reincarnation—keeps popping into my mind. Last week, I posted a poll on my Instagram story to see how many of my connections actually believe in reincarnation, and the result was a resounding 50/50. I’m not sure what I believe myself, but the concept sure is interesting. I’ve met people in my life that I have felt…
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The Slump: A Short Story in the Absence of Baseball for Fiction Friday
What I’m sharing today, in the absence of Opening Day for Major League Baseball, is a short story I wrote about a ballplayer in a slump. Working in baseball, we saw a lot of slumps, from top-tier players to rookies. I’m not sure when or why this short story popped into my head, but I’m glad it did. I enjoy writing about baseball. It’s the one baseball story that’s included in The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry, and I thought I’d share it during these days of being at home and social distancing due to the coronavirus outbreak. The second book I published, Baseball Girl, is a novel…
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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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The Water Wheel: A Short Story
I promised myself I’d write ONE thing during this year’s 2019 NaNoWriMo, and today I hunkered down and did it. It’s not a novel or the 50,000 words required to “win” at NaNoWriMo, or even the 43,000 words of Little Milestones I wrote during last year’s NaNoWriMo. It’s just a short story about grief with a little bit of a twist. I’m not sure what, if anything, I will do with this piece of writing, but for some reason, I needed to write it. Today was the day, and here is the story. The Water Wheel by Stephanie Verni There were many ways he could show his appreciation for her.…
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The Postcard Gets 5-Star Review from Readers’ Favorite
Honestly, it’s been a pretty rough 2019 for so many reasons, but seeing this review this morning from READERS’ FAVORITE put a big smile on my face. It’s when I read something like this that I know that despite all the work and effort it takes to be an independent author, it is all worth it in the end. Thank you also to my former student, now PR pro, Grace Clark, for the amazing cover photo, which helped earn us a perfect 5 score for the collection, from writing, storytelling, to cover design. Cheers! THE BOOK REVIEW Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers’ Favorite A postcard is more than just…
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Fictography For Old Time’s Sake and as a Teaching Tool: Back Home
/FICTOGRAPHY/ def. — The intersection of photography (submitted by readers) and fiction (written by me!). A few years ago, I executed a writing challenge whereby readers submitted travel photos they took, and I would write the story that I imagined went along with that photograph. Today, as I write this, my students are engaged in an activity that asks them to write using their five senses—and to see where those senses can take them. They smelled something, tasted something, and touched something, and then they used photos and clips of music to spark a story. When it came to “sight,” I posted three photographs that they could use as…
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For the Love of Postcards (and other written correspondence)
I’m romantic about travel. I’m also romantic about writing. Actually, I’m kind of romantic about everything. I have a really bad case of hopeless romanticism, and have been accused many times by people who know me that I tend to see the world in an unrealistic way. That may be true, but I also do see the world in quite a realistic way. Sometimes that makes me resort to my hopeless romantic bubble, which I don’t mind being inside. When we travel, we learn more about the world around us AND ourselves. This is just true and tough to argue. No matter where you go or how far you travel,…
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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…
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My Newest Writing Project
People always ask me what I’m working on next, so I thought I’d get this out of the way. It’s a common question I field often. It may disappoint some folks, but it’s not the sequel to Inn Significant, though I still play with that manuscript a little. Instead, there’s a short story in my latest release, The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry, that I fell in love with and that wouldn’t leave me alone, kind of like a pesky fly that won’t go away. After publishing that book this summer, the characters in that story–Life with Nan–sort of came to life in my imagination–and then more characters…
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Goodbyes. Gripping Pain. And a Giveaway.
*** Hi there! I feel as if I’ve been away from my blog for a while, and I actually have, although it’s been entirely unintentional. Today, I wanted to explain why, especially as I wanted to write about the past week, which has been somewhat momentous for my family. My son started his freshman year at a university, and it’s not the one where I teach. The preparation, though, was all that you’d expect. The day before he left, we were frantically getting everything together, making sure he had all he needed. We washed clothes and ran to Target. We created a checklist and began ticking things off. We organized…
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How to Put A Book Campaign Together: A Writer’s Life Tackling Book Promotion
*** Below you will find the entire social media advertising campaign that I’ve been sharing bit-by-bit on Facebook and Instagram. I’m sharing the whole campaign here in one place. (I’m going to do the same with the 22 teaser ads I created–one for each short story from The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry). This […]
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Rolling Out An Ad Campaign for The Postcard
One of the things I didn’t do well when I launched my three prior books was to create a social media ad campaign. Nowadays, it’s imperative that we do this–to help spread the word about our work. And as my fellow writers who undertake this challenge can attest, it’s about writing, editing, producing, and then MARKETING. And this is the most difficult aspect. As a professor at a university, I teach a course called The Advertising Campaign. In that course, students must create their own campaigns over the semester and then pitch them. As I always say about teaching—the wonder of it and the beauty of it—is that you get…
