Life is full of chances -- and those times when we each trust our own guts and have a terrific outcome reaffirms our ability to make good decisions.

Dear Aspiring Author; Write with heart. Put that open, honest, bare soul on paper.

I believe the first story I ever wrote was about a young girl who was terribly mistreated by her very cruel parents, and one day the girl fled to the woods to live amongst a pack of wolves. Hey, I was eleven, loved wolves, and had been grounded for what I felt was a minor infraction. Can you blame me?

Now death is death! and yet is not one death Another death? Stabbing is not the same As shooting! Would you say a strangled man Was drown'd? The end is one, the means are many, And there the difference lies!

Here's a news flash--writers are selfish people. Truth is, creative types like me are driven by one impulse--to make up a world in which we get to control everything and everyone. We decide who enters and who exits, what the weather will be, who will hook up with whom, who will win and who will lose. It makes us feel powerful and, in all honesty, has relatively little to do with thinking about what will make anyone else happy.

Life is full of chances -- and those times when we each trust our own guts and have a terrific outcome reaffirms our ability to make good decisions.

Death has an energy. It is thick as sludge, heavy as iron, and pulls you down into yourself like an imploding building.