“Self-exploration is my favorite hobby,” my new friend said. And I nodded vigorously, glad to have found a kindred spirit. In the past year, though, I’ve been trying to make some life decisions and finding that all of this personal study has left me a bit confused. Is it the Leo in me that makes...
Tag: authors
The Human Side of Celebrity with George Takei
Yes, this is a picture of actor/activist George Takei holding my children’s book, The No-No Boys! I heard him speak recently at the National Speakers Association convention. When he came out on stage, everyone expected him to talk about his role as Mr. Sulu on Star Trek or his pop culture persona or his enormous...
Greater Must Our Courage Be
I’ve been a Shakespeare buff all my life. There weren’t many cultural events in Boise when I was growing up, but we did have the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, and my family went every summer. Two years ago, I was contemplating a major change in my business and feeling hesitant, no, scared, about whether I should...
Know Your Genre
Okay, this post is mostly for my writer friends, but if you love to read, you may find this topic of interest too! Click below to view my newest writing video from my YouTube channel. This one is on understanding the difference between various genres in literature. It’s a confusing topic for new writers, but...
Art Cafes – Great Ideas Giveaway
Think of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald hanging out in Parisian cafes in the 1920s. Think of all those writers and critics and actors exchanging barbs at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City. Think of the many movie stars, singers, and musicians who waited on servicemen during World War II at the Hollywood...
My Regards to Broadway
It’s impossible to talk about Broadway musicals without sounding corny. So let’s acknowledge that and move on. I’ve been obsessed with musicals for as long as I can remember. Why? Because on Broadway, the dreamers were the heroes. And they were not head-in-the-clouds dreamers, they were people who took action and changed everyone around them...
Do You Dream of Agents?
I have lots of writerly dreams that may or may not come true. I dream of seeing the words “based on a novel by Teresa Funke” roll by on the silver screen. I dream of being the first self-published author to win one of the prestigious literary awards. I dream of keynoting at a major...
Are Gatekeepers Still Relevant?
Several times over the past few years, I’ve listened to colleagues tell me that an editor who loved his/her work had called, sometimes in tears, to say they could not make an offer on their book project. Why? Because the marketing and sales departments at the publishing house decided that the book, though good, was...
Are We Doomed Through Censorship to Repeat Our Mistakes?
Not to wax political, but it’s almost impossible for me not to talk about censorship this week. As many of my author friends are blogging about Banned Books Week, I’ve been taking note of a different type of censorship. Recently, high school students and teachers in several Denver schools walked out to protest a school...
How to Write Great Dialogue – Part II
I do a one-woman show based on my book Dancing in Combat Boots, but few people know that the show actually started out as a fundraising effort for a local theater, and I performed it with several actresses. As we were back stage prepping before the show, one of the actresses was running some of her...