People often ask where we’re from, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. Where is an understated cardinal direction which is used to both connect and distance ourselves from one another. As a consequence, where is often one of the first things that needs to be answered in every story. …

We all have a very bad habit of presuming the people around us are monolithic blocks of a singular emotion. It comes naturally despite self-awareness repeatedly confounding us with how many things we feel at once. It’s simply easier to presume Jane is only mad, Jeff is only sad, and…

I find that world creation requires reminders. With so many moving pieces and parts in Max-verse and Tom/Ronin-verse, characters evolving and changing as they deal with their personal damage and conflict, and the constant tug of war between differing perspectives and interpretations of the same events… names were one of…

From the outside looking in, the back and forth between Tom / Ronin and Angel is a sequence of breaking up, fighting for independence, ending up back together, punishing each other, and then breaking up again only to repeat the cycle. …

Sometimes the key to understanding a character is in the name. The difference between Tom and Ronin, for example, focuses on whether Tom is well-balanced or, when embracing his Ronin alter ego, at war and in survival mode. With Anime Girl’s story arc very much set within the Tom-Ronin universe…

Two and a half million words published, two largescale universes built around a real world and a supernatural one, and I still have over a hundred drafts in my WIP folder as well as plenty of chapter ones for novellas which will need another 50+ thousand words to finish the…