Book Cover Reveal!!

Here it is: THE book cover! Like most authors, I was very nervous to open the file and see my cover for the first time. I closed my eyes, opened them slowly, and my immediate reaction was… 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍 It’s hard to capture any book in a cover, and mine was no exception. Alina’s appearance changes

Stress kills Creativity. Creativity reduces Stress. Which one wins?

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” —Arthur Ashe During this period of quarantine, I’ve heard many authors lament their inability to reach ambitious writing goals. With all this extra time at home, every writer should be polishing dozens of manuscripts and concocting a slew of brilliant ideas. Right?   Sure,

Book Review: Unfit

He knew the same inevitable truth I did but was too caught up in his own prestige and pride to do anything about it…too comfortable in his new life to risk any of it with something as trivial as the truth.” —From Unfit, by Karma Chesnut Once in a while, I read a book that

Blessed with a Curse (Or Cursed with a Blessing)

Try to think of writing as a gift — more complexly put: it is the curse and the cure.” —Julianna Baggott Last month, a fun challenge circled among 2020 debut authors on Instagram, encouraging us to share interesting tidbits about ourselves and our upcoming books. I enjoyed the posts from my fellow authors and participated

Grief = Love

“You can’t have living without dying. So you can’t call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road.”  ― Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt  What would our world be like without death? This was the central question that inspired my novel, The Perfect Outcast. It led me

The Beauty Paradox

I knew I had power when I was eight. I climbed a tree and four boys helped me down.” —Marilyn Monroe I can’t verify Marilyn Monroe said those words. But nonetheless, they are true. If it didn’t happen to her, it happened to someone else. This fascinating video on the halo effect explains why.   I

Persist and Conquer

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” ~Albert Einstein The idea for the Perfect Outcast came to me during the hardest year of my life. September 27, 2010 was a busy Monday. My youngest was five months old and had significant health needs due to a genetic condition called 22q deletion syndrome (though I didn’t