TWISTING THE MYTHS

Recently, I moved to Substack but during IWSG, I had some friends who said they don't use it. I get it it. It's another site to join and another password to keep. I decided to cross-post IWSG here for those peeps. I'd still love you to join me on Substack because I post exclusive flash fiction, go on monster hunts, and share arts and crafts. But I'll live if you don't . 😜 November 1st question: November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not? I tried once and my brain thought it would be utterly hilarious to not write a single word to spite NaNo. True story. My brain is a dick. I feel the uncertainty of the future again. Lately, hubby and I have been discussing houses. By the time this goes out, we’ll have looked at least one, and I went through the process with our bank to pre-approved a loan. We’re both terrified because houses aren’t cheap. But our apartment is getting a little too small for us. Hubby’s job as a softwar

Recently, I moved to Substack but during IWSG, I had some friends who said they don't use it. I get it it. It's another site to join and another password to keep. I decided to cross-post IWSG here for those peeps. I'd still love you to join me on Substack because I post exclusive flash fiction, go on monster hunts, and share arts and crafts. But I'll live if you don't . 😜 October 4th question: The topic of AI writing has been heavily debated across the world. According to various sources, generative AI will assist writers, not replace them. What are your thoughts? Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash Like everyone else on the internet, I have thoughts on AI. I won’t get into my thoughts of AI art because, as an artist, I might get ranty. Overall, AI is a tool. It can be used to make your life easier. The main problem is how have the AI tools been trained? A lot of the training seems to be done on stuff people did not consent to be used and without compensation.

Recently, I moved to Substack but during IWSG, I had some friends who said they don't use it. I get it it. It's another site to join and another password to keep. I decided to cross-post IWSG here for those peeps. I'd still love you to join me on Substack because I post exclusive flash fiction, go on monster hunts, and share arts and crafts. But I'll live if you don't . 😜 September 6th question: When did you discover the IWSG, how do you connect, and how has it helped you? I want to say I discovered the IWSG a year after it was created. I’m fairly certain I wasn’t there from the very start, but pretty damn close. I love this group. You’ve lifted me up and helped me through my insecurities so many times. You’ve come out in droves to help me spread the word about my books. Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash You seriously rock. I am utterly grateful to Alex for creating it, and I am happy it is still going strong 12 years later. My last few posts for IWSG have be

Recently, I moved to Substack but during IWSG, I had some friends who said they don't use it. I get it it. It's another site to join and another password to keep. I decided to cross-post IWSG here for those peeps. I'd still love you to join me on Substack because I post exclusive flash fiction, go on monster hunts, and share arts and crafts. But I'll live if you don't . 😜 August 2 question: Have you ever written something that afterward you felt conflicted about? If so, did you let it stay how it was, take it out, or rewrite it? I can’t recall anything. There have been things I’ve written, and afterward, someone brought up a point that made me worry about how others would react to it. I didn’t change it, though. We are now past July. Over halfway through 2023. I’m not sure how that happened. Things have been a little blurry since my father-in-law passed. Hubby and I survived the heat and humidity of Mississippi and are back in cool Michigan. I’m optimistic for

Recently, I moved to Substack but during IWSG, I had some friends who said they don't use it. I get it it. It's another site to join and another password to keep. I decided to cross-post IWSG here for those peeps. I'd still love you to join me on Substack because I post exclusive flash fiction, go on monster hunts, and share arts and crafts. But I'll live if you don't . 😜 The July 5th question of the month is: 99% of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from? Mine tend to come from all over. Some of them have been from dreams. Others have come from books. Some I can’t even remember how I got the idea. Usually, if something can make me ask, “What if?” then a story might start brewing in my head. I’m currently melting from the insane humidity in Mississippi. We went down again for my father-in-law’s birthday. He would have been 70 if not for cancer. Thank you to everyone for wishing my uncle well after his heart attack. He’s doing well,

Last IWSG, I posted that I was moving all the posts to Substack. That's still the main place I want to be found, but I did get a comment from someone who said they don't use Substack. There are probably more people who don't as well. I don't blame people who roll their eyes at yet another site that wants them to sign up to use. So I'm going to cross-post my IWSG posts here for those peeps. I'd love you to join me on Substack because I really like the platform, and I post my arts and crafts as well as exclusive flash fiction, but it's not the end of the world if someone doesn't as all I have to do is copy and paste what I already wrote.   Dear 2023, Man, you’ve been…something. Between the deaths in my family and the ridiculous amount of travel, I honestly would rather deal with 2020. At least, then we got to stay home. Seriously, we were down in Mississippi from February 22nd through April 15th. The next weekend, we traveled for my grandma’s memorial. Th

My IWSG posts are going to my Substack now. I thought it was silly to have the blog and a newsletter when the Substack can act as both. Although, IWSG has it's own segmentation that you have to subscribe to separately from the rest. To do so, you have to go into your Substack profile settings and toggle which segments you want to read. It'd be nice if Substack made subscribing to an author's segmented lists easier as not everyone who subscribes will care to read IWSG or they might not care about Monster Hunting. Having IWSG there might not work and I may end up coming back here. I'll see how this experiment goes, and you can watch and learn from whatever mistakes I make.

With how 2023 has been derailed I feel life is telling me to just be a 24/7/365 panster because every time I try to make a plan for a year, it gets thrown out the window! I'm combining my blog and newsletter since Substack has a nice feature where I can publish posts just to the website or send it out as a newsletter too. I considered just keeping IWSG here, but I want to consolidate things and the blog doesn't let me collect emails like a newsletter does. At least, I didn't get too far into things this year so it's not a big deal to scrap a few things. Here are the social media you can find me on. Substack Pinterest Twitter I want to thank everyone who took the time to read the posts here and leave a comment. I can't explain how grateful I am, especially since this part of my journey is extremely bumpy with lots of potholes to navigate around. I hope this part of the road is short and smooth sailing is on the horizon.

My father-in-law passed last month from cancer so my writing came to a screeching halt. But earlier this week I had a thought. Maybe I'll get to write. I've never been so excited about a thought. I don't know how much writing I'll get in. There are still plenty of things to get sorted with my father-in-law's belongings. But it's nice to know that things are calming and I'm getting closer to writing again. Now, I just need to remember how to do it! Today's post was part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group . Created by the ninja captain, Alex J. Cavanaugh, it's a group for the writers (AKA all of us) struggling with insecurity to gather and discuss our fears or to celebrate writing victors. If you are a struggling writer or need encouragement and friendship, join us. (Someone might have cookies!)   Remember to visit the co-hosts and give them a shout-out for helping. Jemima Pett , Nancy Gideon , and Natalie Aguirre !

 The third book in the Influenced series, Revelation of Love is now available! I've written this post ahead of time, so I'm not sure where I'll be at when it goes live. At the time, I was still down south, helping family after my father-in-law's death from cancer. I really appreciate the friends who are helping me spread the word so I can focus on family. Their voices guide us. Or deceive us. But is there more to Light and Dark? Influencers are the voices that whisper in our ears. Tiny Angels and Devils sitting on our shoulders and guiding our choices. They are sworn to thwart the other. It is their duty. According to the angels. Sacrificing his angelic powers, Kemuel becomes a Light Influencer to discover why they are disappearing. As well as securing the mortal's soul for the war. But with each Light choice, the mortal's soul grows ever darker. What piece of the puzzle is Kemuel missing? Why would a Dark Influencer choose Light? The truth requires great sacri