For Readers

FOR READERS

Reading has been one of my grandest passions since I was about three years old and first learning how to read. Since then, I’ve only fallen more deeply in love with the written word. I started writing in elementary school, although I only got serious about getting published a few years ago. One thing I know for a fact: published writers are nothing without their readers, and I hope that my writing can bring half the pleasure to readers someday that I have gotten from reading my favorite writers.

This section of the website is dedicated to you, the reader. I’m planning to put up some freebies, some articles, and links to other websites I hope might be interesting to you. Please let me know if there’s something you would like to see, and feel free to shoot me an email any ole time. I would LOVE to hear from you!

The preceding artwork was created for me by the fabulous Kent Madden.  All rights reserved. Do not use without permission.

Freebies

Please enjoy the following freebie short stories.  While novels are generally my preferred writing form, I do enjoy writing shorter fiction on occasion.  Most of these are older, from when I first started getting serious about getting published.

The Value Within – Fantasy short story.  This short was actually my first attempt at first person POV.  Now, that’s probably my favorite POV to use.  Especially for urban fantasy, which it suits so well.  Someday I plan to either re-write this story, or expand it to a novel, since I really love the character and basic storyline but feel it needs a little something-something.

Masquerade – Science fiction short story.  This was one of the short stories I wrote during the brief period of time I spent entering the Writers of the Future Contest before deciding to focus on novel-length fiction, and getting an agent.  I’d like to re-write it completely someday in order to clean up some of the writing and get rid of the head-hopping, but I still have a fondness in my heart for this one.  This is a much cut-down version from an overly bloated first draft, which is another reason I’d like to re-write:  to make sure the necessary backstory gets mentioned briefly earlier on since I removed whole chunks of it.
New Dawning – Fantasy short story.  This is another short story I wrote for the Writers of the Future Contest, as well as one I want to re-work someday.  Mostly to cut out some of the unnecessary backstory that comes off infodump-ish, especially right in the beginning.  I’m also going to re-think the speshul horse companion angle.  It’s obvious I had a great affection for Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books when I was younger.  Not that I