I don’t love pranks. I’ve never been a fan of April Fools’ Day, even as a little kid. Pranks always seem to me like they’re designed to pointlessly humiliate the other person so that everyone else can laugh at them. Life is hard enough without purposefully making it harder for someone else when they’ve done […]
writer's life
Tasting Notes for Books
“We should rate books the way we rate wines,” an author friend of mine told me. She’s absolutely right. Books have flavors, after all, and essences. Some make you breathe deeply as you imagine a stroll through a rose garden in chapter 3, while others stink like skunk grass from page 1. Imagine you’re at […]
Finding Inspiration and Joy on a Girls’ Trip to Cabo
Two little words can carry a wealth of promise. A promise of adventure, magic, nourishment of the soul, and, you know, margaritas. What are these two mystical words? “Girls’ trip.” I recently spent almost a week in the beautiful Cabo San Lucas area of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula with two dear friends I’ve known for four […]
How to Make 2024 a Better Year (Mayhem Optional)
Welcome to 2024, a shiny new year full of promise and good intentions and definitely not heinous deceptions. Like you, I’m positive this is the year eight billion people will suddenly and inexplicably—all prior evidence to the contrary—morph into rational, caring, kind human beings. I hope I bought the right shoes for the occasion. Anyway, […]
Holiday Gifts for Writers 2023 – on the RMFW Blog
It’s back—my annual list of holiday gifts that any writer on your list will love! Writers can be hard to shop for, what with them being bleary-eyed and stuck in alternate realities most of the time. But never fear, my gigantic list of gift ideas will surely have just the thing for that hard-to-shop-for writer […]
Sharing Experiences with Your Characters – On the RMFW Blog
In our writing, we often make our characters go through experiences we haven’t gone through ourselves, such as breaking a horse, picking a lock, riding in an ambulance, or frosting a wedding cake. It’s so easy to fall back on the internet and watch videos or read blog posts about how those experiences might feel. […]
