Author: Susan
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Simone and Dean: A Complex Teen Romance Unfolds
Simone raked a pile of horse manure into the scooper, then looked at her watch. Five-forty-five. Her shoulders slumped as she stared at the scooper, not wanting this morning to end. From the last stall, she heard the soft scraping as Dean spot cleaned it and she wished she could just stay in the barn…
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The Struggle for Survival: Andre’s Journey Through Poverty
Author’s note: This was the original opening, but my editor, Caprice Hokstad, recommended a rewrite. The published chapter one is much stronger, but this was a good chapter (just not the best) and thought I’d share it with you. Chapter 1 Eighteen-year-old Andre Collinger ripped open the thick plastic bag and jerked it open, ignoring…
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Talkin’ about dialogue
I love dialogue. Effective dialogue brings the story to life. It is literally the starting breath of all my novels. A snippet of conversation bounces around my brain and I have to figure out the who, what, when, where and why of those one or two lines. But, how is novel writing dialogue different from…
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Rax quits the team
OUTTAKES I realized as I developed characters, I literally had hundreds of scenes written just to get to know them. These scenes would never be used in any published work, but it seems wasteful just to have them saved in a file unread, except by me. So, I plan to publish them here on my…
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Griping supernatural journey-The Wringler doesn’t disappoint
I’m currently reading “The Wringler: A Letter from Home” by Daniel Swarthourt. It’s a supernatural thriller that is well written with good pacing. Great cliffhangers between storylines that sometimes made me glare at the book. . .but it also kept me reading. The story follows Tatum, a young man who goes NC with everyone following…
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That annoying word
Pet-peeves. We all have them, but writers seem to possess an extra dose of grammar and syntax idiosyncrasies that drive us bonkers.
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Hey guys!
I’m back! It’s been a minute (sometimes a frustrating, banging my head on the wall minute), but here I am.