Welcome to Pairings

Whether you’re a Scrivener power user or a beginner, here are a few things Scrivener can do that you probably can’t do without.

Read my review of DAMAGED by Cam Torrens, which delivers the fast-paced, all too real-life suspense prequel Tyler Zahn fans await.

Henry Miller's own Eleven Commandments of Writing helped him maintain his focus on work in progress. Can they help with yours, too?

Here's how four words — Create First, React Later — can help to keep you on the writing track.

The popularity of historical fiction with book clubs has soared. Read why in my conversation with historical author Janis Robinson Daly

Do rainy days always get you down, or are they the best days for creativity?

Kay Smith-Blum's debut, TANGLES, spans two timelines and two star-crossed narrators in the dark shadow of radiation contamination, during th

Reading (and writing) historical fiction is generally my jam. But there are lots of other novels that nudge me outside of my comfort zone.

Knowing when to stop writing is a lot easier than starting to write in the first place. But it's simple: You just have to show up.

Crowded out by more robust tools, typewriters have vanished from our desks. But not our back yards.

Don’t fight it. Creativity is a choice. Once you make it, the ups, and the downs, are the fun part.

In 2006 I wrote this ode to my creative spirit, "Artist's Poem," and found renewed inspiration.

"The work never never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with" — William Faulkner

Inspiration strikes in strange and unexpected ways. But when it doesn’t strike, there are three tricks to juice it along.

When you let go, you create space for something else to move in to your life, as Holiday Mathis told me in my horoscope.

Embrace your dual gifts: you can inhabit two worlds, and you can slide between them with ease. It’s just what writers do.

In one short paragraph author Flannery O'Connor nails down her work ethic — one that will motivate your creative soul.

Inspiration comes from many places. No use pretending it all comes out of our heads with no other stimulation. We rely on influences.

To ignore a creative funk is to imperil your creative stamina. Here's out to take a time out to tend to your creative soul.

There’s a saying in real estate, that it’s all about location. Location. Location. Location. It’s just as true in writing historical novels.