Haters are everywhere. I hear about them from bloggers I admire and I fear the day a hater shows up in my comments. I hear about them from my kids and it leaps to a whole new level. My heart breaks. I want to punch them in the face.   Haters are the black cloud in a clear blue sky. They will bitch and whine about anything. Everything. “I wanted a yellow Ferrari, not a red one. You suck.” They hide behind clever pseudonyms and fake facebook accounts; they strike and slither away into deep, dark holes. They are no […]

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Today, I’d like to introduce you to Tim Gallen. Tim is a Fiction Friday author-in-arms, and has graciously offered to share his space over at The Daily Gallen with me today.  Click on over and check out my short story about Christmas Eve for a guy that thinks he has it all figured out… Bad enough he had to go along with all of this to keep his mother quiet. Shopping. Spending money he didn’t have on gifts his family didn’t need to celebrate a birthday for a person who wasn’t what people thought and had been dead for two […]

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When I was a kid, I was a geek. I had bushy hair, and I was almost a full year younger than everyone else in my class. And when it came time for recess, I much preferred sitting against the brick wall with a book. Good writers read a lot. (OK, bad writers sometimes read a lot, too) We read to be influenced, we read to be touched, we read to be entertained. We even read to learn what NOT to do. So when people ask “What’s your favorite book?” I have a hard time answering. But because it’s Fiction […]

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The other night, I woke up around 2:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep. You’ve been there before, right? That horrible tossing and turning? Too hot and too cold at the same time? Mind racing like Secretariat? So I started trying to pick apart the reason I was awake — because it didn’t make sense. My brain was spinning, but over nothing. Not even over stupid things, but truly over nothing. Just spinning. That’s when I remembered that all negative emotions — all stress, all anger, all discouragement, all jealousy, all pride —  boils down to fear. I’ve talked about fear before…what […]

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Welcome to Fiction Friday. Since Zach the Zombie made his debut last June, I’ve shared with y’all little glimpses into his world and his mind. I added it up, and Zach has now made 18 appearances here. Each time he’s popped by, he’s shared little bits of himself. (yes, i did that. sorry. couldn’t help it.) But those bits have been terribly random and out-of-order, so I thought I’d share an outline of the story as it stands right now. Yes, there are some really big gaps that I’ll be asking him to fill in.  Thanks for your grace!   History (posted 6 July) […]

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