About a month ago, I had the idea to write the backstory for Zolithia as a series of short stories that I could give to anyone for free. Immediately, I began working on one that is referenced early in my novel. It’s about the birth of a princess and a young boy desperate to protect her.

To make a long story short (pun definitely intended), the first story is available now! If you sign up for my email list, you can get the whole thing right to your inbox!

But… if you don’t want to do that just yet, here is a little excerpt for you.

“It’s a…” Sierre whimpered, but she trembled immensely. Harlo rounded the corner to see why she had squealed.

The first thing he saw was the overturned basket, which explained the crash he’d heard. In their father’s study, Sierre trembled in one corner. And…

I’ve been talking about writing some free short stories so I can put my work out there. I am a writer, I promise! While blogging is a great way to get words published online, my heart is for creative writing. For some time, I’ve been at war with myself over what kind of blog I should have and what type of material I want to share. If you know me personally, you probably know I’ve failed with a few different blogs.

I’m not afraid of failure anymore.

Success is not the absence of failure; it’s the persistence through failure.

Aisha Tyler

Now, I’m trying something different. Honestly, something I wanted to do a long time ago, but had no idea how to do. And I still may be in over my head. I’m going to write short stories and put them here for free.

Now, yes, it’s true that I…

Carrie Rubin, author of “Eating Bull” and “The Seneca Scourge”

[I recently read the bookEating Bull, by Carrie Rubin. I loved it, and contacted the author.  She very kindly agreed to be interviewed about her work.  Enjoy!]

BG: I’ll start at the beginning: how did you get the idea for “Eating Bull”? Did the idea just come to you one day, did some specific incident suggest it, or…?

CR: A little bit of both. Overweight/obesity is a professional interest of mine. I’ve dealt with it in both a clinical and research setting. Many people assume a large BMI means a lack of willpower, but that’s both inaccurate and unfair. Many other factors come into play, especially our disastrous food environment where processed food, mega-sizes, and sugar-laden junk bombard us wherever we go.

Through fiction, I wanted to bring the issue of the food industry’s role in obesity…

December 14^th. You must be joking.

How, after telling myself Christmas would never sneak up on me again, has it done exactly that?

Youngest teen son, card magician extraordinaire, gave me permission to use this photo. Perhaps he’ll regret it.

But my loss is your gain, because today’s post is simple. I’m too covered in wrapping paper and flour to wax poetic.

But I’ll let you in on a secret. I’ve already received some gifts. Unexpected gifts that come in the form of kindness and generosity from others. So before I get back to flinging flour and packing brown sugar, I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to:

1. A**holes Watching Movies for mentioning my book on their fabulous film-review blog AND for giving away two copies of Eating Bull. In fact, the contest is open for two more days, so if you’d like a chance to win…

A recent blog post has my mind churning.

Kristen Lamb, an author, social media sage, and guru for writers, penned a wonderful article titled “Three NEVERS of Social Media for Writers.”

One of the things she recommends is never writing a bad book review. In fact, she suggests writers should not publish book reviews on their blogs at all: “Our BRAND is AUTHOR, not ‘book reviewer.’ My opinion is we can’t do both.”

Original Image from Microsoft Clip Art

In terms of publishing book reviews on my blog, I tend to agree. Only on rare occasions have I posted a review. But up until now, my hesitancy stemmed mostly from not wanting to change the tone of my blog. Given the number of books I read, I would soon be posting nothing else.

But now I’m wondering about the wisdom of reviewing books at all, either on my blog or on Amazon…