Tag: featured
Release Your Inner Book—Two Pages at a Time
Do you have an unwritten book inside you? You may have been hearing that inner voice that says “Quick, find a post-it, write that down.” Maybe you find yourself stepping back in life, viewing encounters from a far-away place and hearing words that describe the chaos or angst or bliss. Whether stuffing the post-its […]
Why We Wrote Being Boss
Our book Being Boss: Take Control of Your Work and Live Life on Your Own Terms was born out of almost a decade of conversations about creativity, productivity, habits, money, “fraudy” feelings, systems, processes, and balancing family and career. You see, we started building our own businesses in branding (that’s Kathleen’s jam) and developing […]
How Mindfulness Can Help You Enjoy Your Book Release Day
It’s 5 am on Saturday, April 7. My head is ready to explode. I am supposed to speak at a wellness conference in Pennsylvania in a few hours and on Tuesday, April 10, my debut U.S. novel, “Louisiana Catch,” comes out. That very evening, I am doing an intimate wine and reading celebration with a fellow author at Bluestockings bookstore […]
Location! Location! Location!
This may sound like an intro for a real estate ad, but not this time. Rather it’s an intro to considering the importance of location in stories. The sense of ‘place’ is often vital to the heart of a novel and, speaking from a personal perspective, it’s absolutely essential to the stories I want to […]
How Writing a Memoir Reshaped My Approach to Fiction
My memoir Sweet Hell on Fire was written about a year in my life when I worked at a prison. It was the darkest time to date, and the most transformative. When I started writing, I thought it would be—if not easy—a rather straightforward process. Just write down the facts, right? The recounted events already […]
Galveston Gal Practices What She Preaches
Growing up in Galveston, I always had something to write about: the beach, the hurricanes, the people. I always had people encouraging me to write, as well, Ball High teachers like Mari Allmond and Mary Pennington, the latter of whom required me to enter one writing contest after another. Each contest won inspired the next, […]
How To Deal With Inadequacy
Writers will say that their job is both the best and worst job on earth. Best, well, because we spend our days in recreating the world as we want it, from the safety of our desk. Worst…well here the list is longer: writing is the cause of hunched shoulders and a flat butt, you’re stuck […]
When a Book Release is Truly a Release
I wasn’t sure I’d ever finish writing my memoir. The Art of Misdiagnosis is centered around my mother’s suicide; she took her own life exactly one week after I gave birth to my youngest child in 2009. I felt great urgency to try to make sense of that charged, disorienting time, but the story felt so […]
My Body: My Words
When we think of revolution, we think of college students planting daisies down the barrel of a gun, courageous young men and women staring down tanks in Tiananmen square, or children marching with their parents on the streets in Baltimore, but for those fighting the war on body image, the struggle isn’t always so obvious. […]
The Inspiration Behind The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter
The story was initially inspired by my own stranger-than-fiction friendship with well-known Spanish flamenco guitarist, Josemi Carmona – that started with a tweet. After many years in a highly successful flamenco fusion band, he had come out with a solo album. I’d liked clips of it on YouTube but, unable to find it on Amazon, […]
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