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Sunday afternoon I took off for a week on Oak Island, the very southern tip of the North Carolina outer banks. Being someone else’s guest and also being relatively naive about fishing in [...]

The best part about hiring a coypeditor besides being provided with peace of mind that I’ve done all I can to make my manuscript as design-ready as possible, is the fact that I learned [...]

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of learning for me, as my agent and I negotiated our way through the final amendments to the book contract. But one clause in that contract, perhaps more [...]

Coon Ridge is a little outcropping between Burnt Mountain and Woody Ridge, shown here without a label on the Polaris Cartography view of the Black Mountains. Even as a teenager I marveled at maps [...]

This is the final post in series about the long process of finding my way to a first book contract. To learn about just how many presses, how many agents, how many months and weeks and contract [...]

It’s fall here on Coon Ridge and in the rest of the Appalachians, for that matter. There’s nothing like that twinge of cool in the air and the way it lets me breathe fully, drop my [...]

A bit of weatherstripping on the front door and utility panels of the Airstream. Hauling one more locust tree for a water bar. Replacing two windows. Digging the hitch out from the dirt to [...]

Of course after the reading and re-immersion to find my creative impulse again, I’m hit with a slough of questions. Like a stray raindrop that inexplicably lands on your forearm on a clear [...]

It’s been six weeks since I handed over the first 59 pages of my novel-in-progress to the big NYC agent and two weeks since I received their reply. They weren’t chomping at the bit to [...]

A few hours here, a few hours there. Another big push on the weekend. Finally, all the gravel is spread, the locust trees are cut and hauled to line the walkway, the lime/grass seed/straw are [...]