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Showing posts from 2020

What if Winston and Adrian played truth or dare?

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 Happy Thursday. Maybe you saw my FB post this week about choosing a character to do a little development piece on? If not no worries. It's already done. I got one vote for Adrian and one vote for Winston. I decided to include them both in this short piece that puts them both at a college party. As far as the novel is concerned, this party never happened. It is just a means to an end, and that end is to get to know these guys a little better. Ray Bradbury once said "Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations." Since Ray Bradbury is not someone you contradict, I have taken his sentiment to heart. Enough said. I will now let you see what would happen if Winston and Adrian had met at a college party and played drinking games together.  Writing Exercise, Character Development  Winston and Adrian go to a party                 Winston hesitated at the door. He could hear people inside, they were l

Where the World Ends

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Every year I try to do something on my birthday, something that is uncompromisingly me. This year I went one step further and spent a whole week in the BWCA. I'm guessing you already know what that stands for, but if not, it is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and it is a one million acre protected wilderness located in the Superior National Forest of northeastern Minnesota. If you've read Hearts of Prey  you know that the beauty and wildness of northeastern Minnesota is the setting that makes the story possible. The boundary waters have been a special place to me since I went on a week long canoe trip when I was thirteen. My appreciation for the area only grew when I made a friend from Ely, Mn while going to college in Bemidji. Ely is the last town before the boundary waters begin. In my first year of nursing school I made more than one trip up there where we would step lightly into the woods by day, then try our young hands at drinking whiskey and singing karaoke at night. I ha

The Spark in the Dark

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It's been almost two months since I released Hearts of Prey . By now there's a decent group of people who have read it. If you haven't you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089DR2B11?pf_rd_r=EA49XK0X2B1QTWSE9SPK&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee  It will look like this:  There's been enough feedback so far to recognize the most frequent compliment I've gotten: "It was an easy read." That is a relief. While I do envy those writers who can elegantly pack each sentence with layers of meaning, I definitely don't want my first self published novel to be a difficult read. And at the end of the day, not even I have very much say in the style and tone of what I write. It just comes as it does.  If that is in a manner that other people can appreciate, than I am lucky.   So in the spirit of sharing, I thought I'd share the answer to a question someone asked me at the book signing I did in Brainerd last weekend. The question

We All Like Shiny Things

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This will be my first post since I came up with a direction for this blog, and the direction is all things northern Minnesota. I guess ten years of waffling between topics on my blog was long enough. I felt it was time to make a commitment, and since this blog is a hobby it only makes sense to steer it in a fun direction. Well, what is more fun for a nature nerd than learning about the forests, places, people and events that make northern Minnesota unique? It was my intention to kick off this blog with a post about one of my favorite places, but since we aren't supposed to be going places right now I decided to jump ahead to a topic that pretty much any person in Minnesota can experience from their own deck. What is one thing we probably all have in common? If we listen hard enough we could all probably hear the shrill call of the American Crow by the end of the day. Though often seen as a nuisance, I for one have been intrigued by these birds for years. Not only do they have an e