As I’m sitting here, writing this, my neighbor’s lawn mower is whining away in the background. Last spring, I probably would have been out there with him. Not this year. Early each Monday morning, usually as I’m working on my latest Sublime Text-related blog post, a pickup truck with a trailer rolls up in front […]
Continue readingOf all the sparring partners in my karate class, I feared Adam the most. I was a skinny teenager, maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. Adam was a college student, about my height but built. He had at least 60 pounds of muscle on me. One evening we were squared off, circling each other and throwing […]
Continue readingThe little group of Jamaican children kept glancing at me. And pointing. And giggling. I was 17 at the time, and visiting Jamaica as part of a church group on a mission trip. We helped to convert an old warehouse into a church/school building, and it was the pre-teen future pupils who were getting such […]
Continue readingI lost my nerve. That’s it, plain and simple. I’d spent hundreds of hours researching, outlining, writing and editing my second book. And the more time I spent on the project, the less confident I felt that anyone would buy it. After all, I hadn’t done much research with my audience to confirm that this […]
Continue readingA few weeks ago, I was talking with another self-published author, comparing notes about how we market our books. His sales had slowed recently, and his email signups had dropped off as well. He wasn’t sure what was causing the issue, but as we talked, one root cause became apparent. He admitted that he’d gotten […]
Continue reading