Category: writers

As Promised, more about Writing, and less about Things you can’t control.

As Promised, more about Writing, and less about Things you can’t control.

I have heard the terms act, scene, and beat used as if one is better than the other. I tend to follow the Save the Cat philosophy, but, to be clear, let’s take a closer look at what we are talking about.

Acts, Scenes, and Beats: A Writer’s Guide to Story Structure

If you’ve spent any time in writing circles, you’ve heard these three words tossed around, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes as if they’re rival philosophies. Acts, scenes, and beats are the nested building blocks of storytelling, and understanding how they relate (and where they differ) can transform the way you outline, draft, and revise.Let’s break them down, then tackle the real question: which one actually works better, and does the answer change depending on your genre?

The Big Picture: Nested Units of Story

The simplest way to understand these three terms is to think of them as levels of zoom:

  • Acts are the widest lens, the major movements of your entire story.
  • Scenes are the mid-range, individual dramatic units where something happens in a specific time and place.
  • Beats are the closest zoom, the smallest meaningful shifts within a scene.

Think of it like geography: acts are continents, scenes are countries, and beats are cities. You need all three to have a complete map.

What Is an Act?

An act is a large structural division of your story, marked by a major shift in the protagonist’s circumstances, goals, or understanding. Acts give your narrative its overall shape and momentum.The most common framework is the three-act structure:

  • Act I (Setup): Establishes character, world, and the inciting incident. Roughly the first 25 percent.
  • Act II (Confrontation): Rising complications, escalating stakes, and the midpoint reversal. The middle 50 percent.
  • Act III (Resolution): Climax and fallout. The final 25 percent.

Some writers prefer a four-act or five-act model (Shakespeare famously used five), while screenwriters often subdivide Act II into halves to combat the dreaded “saggy middle.” Regardless of the number, acts answer the question: What is the overall trajectory of change?

What Is a Scene?

A scene is a self-contained dramatic unit that takes place in a continuous span of time and (usually) a single location. Every strong scene has its own miniature arc: a character enters with an objective, encounters conflict, and exits with the situation altered, for better or worse.Here is a useful test: if you can summarize what changed between the start and end of a scene, it’s earning its place. A common structure many writers borrow is the scene-and-sequel model:

  • Scene: Goal, then Conflict, then Disaster
  • Sequel: Reaction, then Dilemma, then Decision

Scenes are where readers actually live. They’re the concrete, moment-to-moment experience of your story.

What Is a Beat?

A beat is the smallest unit of dramatic change: a single shift in emotion, intention, or information within a scene. If a scene is a conversation, a beat is the moment the tone changes, whether a confession, a lie exposed, a decision made, or a door slammed.The word “beat” gets used two different ways, which causes a lot of confusion:

  • Micro-beats: The moment-to-moment shifts inside a scene (originating from acting and theater).
  • Story beats: Major plot milestones across the whole narrative, such as “inciting incident,” “midpoint,” and “all is lost.” Frameworks like Save the Cat! and the Hero’s Journey use “beat” this way.

Both meanings are valid; just be clear about which you mean when you’re talking shop with other writers.

So Which One Works Better?

Here’s the honest answer: this is the wrong question.Acts, scenes, and beats aren’t competitors; they’re the same story viewed at different resolutions. Asking whether acts are “better” than scenes is like asking whether the skeleton is better than the muscles. You need the skeleton (acts) for structural integrity, the muscles (scenes) for movement and life, and the nervous system (beats) for the subtle signals that make it all feel real.That said, they serve you best at different stages of the writing process:

  • Use acts when outlining. They keep the big picture coherent and stop you from getting lost.
  • Use scenes when drafting. They give you a manageable, self-contained chunk to write today.
  • Use beats when revising. This is where you diagnose why a scene feels flat, usually because it lacks a clear turn or has too many competing beats.

If a writer forced me to name the most practically useful unit, I’d point to the scene. It’s the level at which readers actually experience your story, and it’s small enough to fix yet large enough to matter. But a great scene inside a broken act structure still leaves a reader unsatisfied, so you can’t neglect any level.

Is This Genre-Specific or Universal?

The concepts are universal. Every narrative form, whether literary fiction, thriller, romance, screenplay, video game, or memoir, uses acts, scenes, and beats at some level, even if the writer never names them. Human beings are wired to understand stories as sequences of change, and these three units simply describe change at different scales.But the application varies significantly by genre and medium:

  • Screenwriting is the most beat- and act-obsessed discipline. Page counts map almost mathematically to structure, and gurus have turned beats into precise blueprints (the “Save the Cat!” beat sheet lists fifteen specific beats with page numbers).
  • Genre fiction (thriller, romance, mystery) tends to lean hard on recognizable act structures and story beats because readers have strong expectations. A romance without a “dark moment” beat feels broken.
  • Literary fiction often loosens or subverts act structure, favoring scene-level craft, interiority, and mood over tidy plot milestones. Beats still exist, but they may be emotional or thematic rather than plot-driven.
  • Short fiction may collapse everything into a single scene with a handful of crucial beats and no formal act breaks at all.
  • Episodic and long-form TV nests structures within structures. Each episode has its own three acts, and each season has a larger arc.

So while the vocabulary travels everywhere, the rigidity of the structure scales with how expectation-driven your genre is. Commercial and visual media reward precise structural discipline, whereas literary and experimental work rewards knowing the rules well enough to break them meaningfully.

The Takeaway

Don’t think of acts, scenes, and beats as options on a menu. Think of them as three lenses on the same story. Master the wide lens to keep your narrative on course, the middle lens to keep readers engaged moment to moment, and the close lens to make every exchange crackle with change.The best writers move fluidly between all three, zooming out to check the shape and zooming in to sharpen the craft. Learn to switch focus deliberately, and you’ll never again stare at a manuscript wondering what’s wrong. You’ll know exactly which lens to look through.

Before You Go

If this breakdown helped you see your story in a new light, do me a favor and put it to work. Open your current draft, pick one scene, and find its beats. You might be surprised by what you discover.And if you found this useful, here’s how you can help this blog reach more writers like you:

  • Like this post so I know the deep-dive craft content is landing.
  • Share it with a writing friend, critique partner, or that one person in your group chat who keeps asking how to fix their saggy middle.
  • Follow the blog so you never miss the next installment. We’ll be tackling scene-level tension, story beats, and outlining methods in the weeks ahead.

Your support keeps these guides coming, and it means the world. Now go write something worth turning the page for.

Happy writing!

My latest release free on KDP for 90 days:

Forty-two thousand people fled a dying Earth. They were told humans built their salvation.They were wrong.Something has been waiting beneath Mars for three billion years, and it just woke up in a seventeen-year-old’s hand.Quiet Dust 👇 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHGFQZ2X#SciFi #FirstContact

They Called Me Dumbass

They Called Me Dumbass

Why You Should Look Up the Words You Don’t Know

For years, I thought my name was Dumbass.True story. I heard it in the classroom, on the playground, and at home, and I never once questioned it. When you’re a small child, you don’t argue with the world. You believe what it tells you about yourself. And what the world told me, over and over, was that I was slow, that I was broken, that I was the kid who just didn’t get it.Imagine your own father handing you a broom and a dustpan and telling you that the world needs ditch diggers and janitors too. “Here,” he says. “See if you can figure this out.” That was the ceiling someone else built for me before I was old enough to know I could reach higher.This was the 1960s. Back then, they didn’t diagnose learning disabilities; they labeled the children who had them, and the labels stuck like tar. There were no specialists pulling you aside, no gentle explanations, no understanding that a mind could simply work differently. There was only a single, brutal word for a kid like me, and everyone seemed to agree on it: stupid.So I wore it. I answered to it. For years, I honestly believed that was who I was.

The People Who Saw Me

I made it a point to befriend the school janitor. Many afternoons, I would walk the halls beside him as he went about his work, and yes, I helped him. His name was Jack, and Jack was a noble man. He didn’t treat me like gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He treated me like a person. When you’ve been told you’re nothing, you never forget the ones who decide otherwise.But here’s the thing the adults never understood: the problem was never that I couldn’t learn. The problem was that when I looked at text, the words came apart. The letters jumbled together and refused to make sense. It wasn’t until my second attempt at second grade that things began to become clear. I excelled at math, yet when it came to reading, I had nothing. Nada.Still, that math ability told me something important. I could remember almost everything I heard, and I could work through numbers with ease. So I came to a conclusion of my own, one that no teacher ever handed me: I was not stupid. I was an audible learner. My mind worked. It just worked differently.

The Hallway

That realization didn’t make things easy. I struggled, and the frustration ran deeper than words can capture. My third-grade teacher, worn thin by that frustration, would send me out into the hallway during reading so I wouldn’t distract the rest of the class. She was not kind to me, and I felt every bit of it. A child sitting alone on cold tile while everyone else learns to read: that image has never left me.Then came a small accident that changed my life. I got my hands on an old college textbook, and I noticed that some of the lines were highlighted. When I traced a highlighted line with my finger, something remarkable happened. Voilà, the sentence made sense. Giving my eyes a single direction to follow was all I had ever needed.From there, I caught up with my classmates. I graduated early, without a single special education teacher guiding me. And what happened after graduation is a whole different story. I went to the half-price bookstore, bought textbooks in every subject I had done poorly in, and taught myself every last page.The boy they called Dumbass taught himself.

Why This Matters to You

Words matter. They have the power to shape our perceptions, influence our emotions, and drive our actions. They are the very building blocks of thought, and the right word, expertly placed, is worth a paragraph of explanation.

I know this in my bones, because for years I lived without them, locked out of the one thing that could set me free.So when you skip over a word you don’t know, you aren’t saving time. You are leaving a small door closed. You are choosing not to grow.

Right now, I’m writing a dystopian science fiction novel centered on AI, and I use a great many technical terms in it.

Terms I understand. From fiction to neurology, from medical pathology to engineering, I spent years working as an engineer in the Medical Center. I remember everything I was exposed to there, including autopsies, surgeries, and much more. From music to flying, the vocabulary is real, and it is mine. Every word earned.

So when you’re reading this book on Kindle and you reach a word you don’t know, look it up. If you buy the print version (title to be announced, so follow for updates), you’ll find a glossary waiting in the back. Please use it.

We all have gifts, and we all have deficits. Not everyone shares the same intellect, and that is simply a fact, though it can feel like a hard one. But dehumanizing people because of it is wrong. We are all worthy of dignity, and we would all do well to remember that.

The kid in the hallway grew up. And he still believes in the power of a single, well-understood word. Currently I have close to thirty published novels and have written over 100,000,000 words. Did my third grade teacher telling me that the lights were on and nobody was home, help or hurt? You decide.

Before You Go

If any part of this story spoke to you, don’t let it be the end. Let it be the beginning.

Follow for updates on the book, including the title reveal and release date. Share this post with someone who needs to hear that a different mind is not a broken one. Comment below and tell me: what is a word you looked up recently, or a person like my Jack who refused to give up on you? I read every one.Best.

The Person Across the Aisle Isn’t Your Enemy

The Person Across the Aisle Isn’t Your Enemy

We’ve all felt it. That flash of contempt when someone mentions who they voted for. The eye-roll. The quiet recalculation of a person we thought we knew. In a single moment, a friend, a neighbor, a family member gets sorted into a box marked them. I want to make a case for putting down that reflex, not because it’s polite, but because it’s the truth. The person who votes differently than you is not stupid, not evil, and not beyond understanding. More often than not, they’re something far more relatable: a human being doing their best with the information they’ve been handed.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Programmers have an old saying: garbage in, garbage out. Feed a system bad data and it will produce bad results, no matter how sophisticated it is. Your mind works the same way. Here’s the uncomfortable part: almost none of us choose our information diet as freely as we think. We inherit it. We drift into it. We follow the sources that feel comfortable, that confirm what we already suspect, that give us the satisfying jolt of being right. If you consume only left-leaning media and dismiss everything else as propaganda, you will build a mental model of the right that is a caricature. If you consume only right-leaning media and wave away the rest as lies, you’ll do the same in reverse. Both people walk away certain, and both are working from incomplete pictures painted by someone else. The tragedy isn’t that we disagree. Healthy societies have always disagreed. The tragedy is that we’ve stopped believing the other side is even reasoning. We’ve concluded they must be broken.

Who Benefits From Your Contempt?

Ask yourself a simple question: who profits when you hate your neighbor? Not you. Not your community. Division is a business model and a political strategy. Outrage drives clicks. Fear drives donations. A frightened, angry, divided public is easy to sell to and easy to steer. There are people (call them puppet masters, call them algorithms, call them incentive structures) for whom your contempt is a resource to be mined. When you dehumanize the other side, you’re not winning. You’re doing the exact job the manipulators need done. You’ve become an unpaid employee of the outrage machine. The moment you realize this, something shifts. That person you were about to write off? They may be a victim of the same manipulation you are. You’re not fighting each other. You’re both being played.

Don’t Feed the Comment Section

Watch the comments under any breaking news clip or live stream and you will see the same pattern: within seconds, before anyone could possibly know what happened, the thread is already a brawl. That is not an accident, and it is not a fair sample of your countrymen. Some of those accounts are bots. Some are paid. Some belong to real people who have learned that cruelty is the fastest way to be seen. All of them are rewarded for it, because the platform measures success in replies, and nothing generates replies like an insult aimed at somebody’s family, faith, or politics. The vitriol is not a flaw in the comment section; it is the product.

So remember what a comment section is not. It is not the public. It is not your neighborhood. It is not a debate. It is a slot machine that pays out in adrenaline, and the house always wins. Do not engage. Do not correct the obvious troll, do not answer the bait, and do not draft the devastating reply you will reread six times before you post it. You will not change that account’s mind, because there may not be a mind behind it, and the algorithm counts your outrage as engagement either way. Close the tab instead. Then go say something generous to an actual person, in a place where your words land on someone who can be reached.

Forgiveness Is Not Agreement

Let me be clear about what I’m not saying. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you abandon your convictions. It doesn’t mean every idea is equally valid or that we should stop debating what’s true and good. Some ideas are better than others, and that matters. What forgiveness does mean is separating the idea from the person. You can think someone is deeply wrong and still treat them as fully human. You can argue passionately and still assume they arrived at their view honestly. You can hold your ground without grinding someone into the dirt. Contempt closes minds, including your own. Curiosity opens them.

A Plan to Reduce the Friction

Good intentions fade fast. So here’s a concrete, doable plan for lowering the temperature in your own corner of the world.

  1. Audit your information diet. For one week, notice where your news comes from. Is it one perspective? Add at least one credible source from the “other side,” not to convert you, but to understand how reasonable people reach different conclusions.
  2. Steel-man before you strike. Before criticizing an opposing view, state it so accurately that someone who holds it would say, “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” If you can’t, you don’t understand it well enough to reject it yet.
  3. Ask one more question. When you disagree, resist the counterpunch. Instead ask: “What experience led you to see it that way?” People rarely hold views for no reason. Find the reason and you’ll find the human.
  4. Draw a hard line at dehumanization. Disagree with ideas all day long. But the instant you catch yourself thinking a whole group is stupid, subhuman, or beyond hope: stop. That’s the manipulation working. Name it and reject it.
  5. Never argue in the comment section. Scroll past it. That thread is not a conversation, and half of it may not even be human. If something you read there makes your chest tighten, that is the design working, so close the tab and take the point up with a real person instead.
  6. Protect relationships over arguments. Before a heated conversation, ask yourself: Do I want to be right, or do I want to keep this person in my life? You can often do both, but only if the relationship comes first.
  7. Practice one act of grace a week. Compliment someone you disagree with. Thank a neighbor whose sign you’d never put in your yard. Small acts of goodwill rehumanize faster than any argument.
  8. Model it publicly. Be the person who refuses to pile on. When everyone else is dunking, be the one who says, “I disagree, but I get where you’re coming from.” Grace is contagious. So is cruelty. Choose which one you spread.

The World They Don’t Want You to Build

Imagine a dinner table where people vote differently and still pass the potatoes with a smile. Imagine a comment section where someone changes their mind because they were treated with dignity instead of ridicule. Imagine looking at the person across the aisle and seeing not an enemy, but a fellow traveler who got fed a different set of stories. That world is quieter, kinder, and far harder to manipulate. Which is exactly why it’s worth building. It starts with a single decision, available to you right now: the next person who votes differently, I will treat with respect. Not because they’ve earned it. Because it’s who you’ve decided to be, and because refusing to hate is the most quietly rebellious thing you can do in an age that profits from your rage.

Why Should I Join a Group or Club Like CLW, When Writing Is Such a Solitary Process?

Why Should I Join a Group or Club Like CLW, When Writing Is Such a Solitary Process?

Writing feels solitary.

You sit at your desk, stare at a blank page, and wrestle with ideas that only you can hear. Yet, some of the most celebrated authors swear by the power of a writers’ community. Below, we’ll explore why joining a group like Carrollton Leage of Writers https://www.carrolltonleagueofwriters.com/(CLW) can transform that isolated habit into a dynamic, growth‑fueling experience.

In my travels I promote CLW, the Carrollton League of Writers (and since we meet over Zoom, as well as in person, distance is no barrier). The pushback I often hear is that writing is a solitary act. My response: writing may start as a solitary act, but the journey to becoming a better writer is inherently social.I offer this reminder to them: CLW provides the feedback loop, accountability, creative spark, and emotional scaffolding that solo work often lacks. By tapping into the collective intelligence and goodwill of a writers’ group, you gain the following:

  • Sharper prose, thanks to honest critique
  • Faster momentum, through accountability
  • Richer ideas, by way of synergy
  • A supportive community that celebrates every step

So the next time you hear that writing is a solitary process, remember: the best stories are often forged in collaboration, even if the final product bears a single name. Join CLW, and let the power of many minds make your voice louder, clearer, and more compelling.

1. Instant, Honest Feedback

  • Speedy critique: Instead of waiting weeks for a beta reader, you get fresh eyes on a paragraph within days.
  • Balanced perspective: Group members point out both strengths and blind spots, helping you tighten prose, clarify plot holes, and sharpen dialogue.
  • Safe space: CLW’s “constructive criticism only” policy ensures feedback is honest but never hurtful.

2. Accountability That Actually Works

  • Regular deadlines: Knowing you’ll share a chapter at the next meeting keeps procrastination at bay.
  • Progress tracking: Seeing peers hit word‑count milestones nudges you to stick to your own targets.
  • Public commitment: When you announce a goal in a group, you’re more likely to follow through—psychology calls it the social contract effect.

3. Creative Synergy & Idea Cross‑Pollination

  • Brainstorming boost: A single “what if?” from another writer can spin an entire subplot into existence.
  • Genre mash‑ups: Exposure to diverse styles (poetry, speculative fiction, memoir) sparks fresh approaches you might never try alone.
  • Collective problem‑solving: Stuck on a character’s motivation? Someone’s life experience may hold the key.

4. Skill‑Sharing Beyond the Page

  • Editing tricks: Learn when to use a semicolon vs. a dash from a peer who’s an editor.
  • Marketing basics: Members often share insights on query letters, social media outreach, and self‑publishing platforms.
  • Technical tools: Discover new software (Scrivener, Dabble, or even AI‑assisted outlines) through demos and peer recommendations.

5. Emotional Support & Motivation

  • Writer’s block relief: Hearing that others face the same dip in inspiration normalizes the struggle.
  • Celebrating wins: From finishing a first draft to landing a literary agent, the group becomes your cheer squad.
  • Loneliness antidote: Regular meet‑ups—whether virtual or in‑person—replace the echo chamber of a solitary desk with genuine camaraderie.

6. Networking Opportunities

  • Guest speakers: CLW often invites published authors, agents, and editors for Q&A sessions.
  • Collaboration projects: Anthologies, joint newsletters, and co‑authoring experiments arise naturally in a tight‑knit community.
  • Referral pipeline: A member’s agent may become your agent—word‑of‑mouth connections are priceless.

7. Improved Discipline & Craft Mastery

  • Writing prompts: Weekly prompts push you out of comfort zones, expanding your stylistic range.
  • Workshops: Structured exercises (e.g., “show, don’t tell” drills) give you a tangible way to practice and internalize techniques.
  • Progress reviews: Periodic “where am I now?” sessions highlight growth that’s easy to miss when you’re only looking at drafts.

TLDR

Writing may start as a solitary act, but the journey to becoming a better writer is inherently social. CLW provides the feedback loop, accountability, creative spark, and emotional scaffolding that solo work often lacks. By tapping into the collective intelligence and goodwill of a writers’ group, you gain:

  • Sharper prose (thanks to honest critique)
  • Faster momentum (through accountability)
  • Richer ideas (via synergy)
  • A supportive community (that celebrates every step)

So, the next time you hear “writing is a solitary process,” remember: the best stories are often forged in collaboration, even if the final product bears a single name. Join CLW, and let the power of many minds make your voice louder, clearer, and more compelling

Speaking of writing…Here is my latest release:Gods And Insects... Ted Smith’s title says Special Advisor, Office of Administration.

For nineteen years his actual job has been making problems go away, and the largest one is a fleet of tanker trucks that emptied radioactive drilling waste along nine states of interstate shoulder, one rainstorm at a time.
The cancers never clustered around the wells, where anyone would have thought to look. They gathered in a thin ribbon along the highways, in truck stops and hay fields and school districts downhill of the road, spread across a map nobody owned.

Then an oncologist asks Ted about occupational exposure, and Ted lies.

Three pages after a senator’s airport earmark, buried in a spending bill nobody will read, sits a rider that seals twenty years of monitoring data and makes every one of those deaths legally unprovable. It reaches the Senate floor in nine days. The only reporter who can stop it is the one the White House is busy making famous, and she has not yet understood that the medal they are hanging on her is a leash. Nobody has to lie once the bill passes. That is the point of the bill. Gods and Insects is on KDP

Frozen at Forty-Five

Frozen at Forty-Five

A drunk stranger, a thermos of coffee, and 115 miles an hour: what one second cost me.

My speedometer stopped at forty-five. Frozen there, like a clock that gave up mid-tick. The rest of the world had slowed too: glass tumbling past my face one shard at a time, the dashboard rising to meet me, the steering wheel folding into my chest. People say your life flashes before your eyes. Mine didn’t. Time simply stretched, and in that stretched second I understood I was about to die. I was wrong, but only barely, and only because I like coffee.

You’ve been in that lane. Maybe not drunk, maybe three drinks in and certain you were fine, or looking down at a text for what felt like half a second. Half a second is the whole story. That’s all the time it took to take the rest of my life apart.

That was thirty sevenyears ago. It made the front page of a small East Texas newspaper, and it earned me my fifteen minutes in the most austere way a man can get them.

Driving home tonight, I passed more than one driver weaving across lanes. Usually it’s texting or checking a missed call, and of course they’re convinced they can do it more safely than anyone else. Sometimes the weaving is simpler: they’re drunk or high. I know exactly where that road leads, because in 1992 it led straight into me.

A head-on collision at freeway speeds with an intoxicated eighty-year-old forced me to reinvent myself. I survived treatment at a small country hospital that doubled as an emergency vet clinic (joking . . . I think), and I was clearly destined for other things.

The broken bones and lacerations healed, but the scars remain just beneath the surface. Pain is a constant reminder of that day.

I still have my legs because I like coffee. Minutes before impact, I’d stopped for gas and filled a stainless steel thermos, setting it upright on the passenger seat. Cresting a hill, I found a Cadillac barreling toward me in my lane. My options were to swerve or brake. A red truck blocked the next lane, so in the split second it took to say “Oh, shit,” it was over. That fast. I’d locked the anti-lock brakes and bent the brake pedal. He never touched his.

The combined collision speed was 115 miles an hour. How they calculated that, I have no idea; my speedometer was frozen at forty-five.

That split second is etched into my brain, a permanent reminder of what happens when idiots drink and drive. Time fascinates me now, because I believe it isn’t linear but relative. During impact, the world became a high-speed film: glass tumbling frame by frame, left to right; the dash rising to meet me; the steering wheel crushing my face and chest. What I remember isn’t a bang. It was a long tearing, metal giving up all at once, and then the smell: gasoline, hot coolant, and my own blood. The thermos launched to the floor and wedged between the firewall and my seat frame. Full of liquid, its hydraulic resistance stopped the dash from severing my legs and likely kept the steering column from piercing my heart.

The other driver was pinned under his dash. He left in the first ambulance with a single cut on his forehead and was released that day. He wasn’t even wearing a seatbelt. I never learned what became of him. Since we shared the same insurer, I was “lucky” to be compensated. The claims adjuster was nasty on the phone. They wouldn’t replace my six-month-old truck, and they didn’t care that I was upside down on the loan. I understand adjusters work for the company, but I was surely not in “good hands.” If you’re lucky, insurance is money pissed away on something you’ll never need. Either way, they do whatever they can to avoid paying. Worth knowing: you get two years to file every claim. What surfaced in me after those two years was a diagnosis football players collect from the punishment of the game. I’m certain the insurers know that timeline as well as the doctors do. Two years, then it’s “piss off.” Some injuries take years to declare themselves, growing new bone that either steals your range of motion or hands you pain you never escape, until death.

As I said, my trip to the hospital began only after they’d removed the man responsible.

My vision faded as the pain in my chest intensified. Certain I was going to die, I made my peace with God, and strangely, I didn’t mind. There was a peace in it, as if the answer were finally at hand. God had other plans. Waiting for the end, I managed to unbuckle my seatbelt, but the pain remained.

With what vision I had left, I watched them pull the other driver onto a stretcher. A man came to my window. Talking hurt, and breath was scarce, so my answers were short. My face had met the steering wheel (or the wheel had met my face), so speaking clearly wasn’t an option anyway. Blood was leaving my body through every orifice, visible and not.

The engine and tires of my truck had come to rest beneath my seat. I heard the Jaws of Life popping the metal as they cut the door away, then sliced through what remained of my seatbelt. My vision was nearly gone, but I could still hear the equipment and the voices. People talk about the white light; mine faded from white sparkles to a blank white screen. “It’s a miracle he’s alive,” one responder said. They fitted a collar and pulled me out.

I wanted to say something, anything, to prove I was still a person and not a body they were working on. Nothing came out. My hands wouldn’t close. Somewhere behind the ringing a woman was crying, and I couldn’t tell whether it was for me or for him.

Once they laid me down, my sight returned. I saw the emergency vehicles and the wrecker driver gathering my belongings, scattered across the freeway. Steam rose from under my seat, where the engine now sat. The truck bed was warped and twisted by the force of the crash.

In the ambulance, the medic warned me the 18-gauge needle for the sugar water would hurt. Compared to everything else, it was a mosquito bite.

At the hospital, they were already working on the man who’d hit me, separated from me only by a curtain. He was old, drunk, and on medication. His wife had recently bought him this big old Cadillac after he’d totaled his last car, so he’d be protected if he crashed again. He bragged that she’d been right, since here he was.

Listening to him praise his classic Cadillac, what was left of my blood boiled. Bad enough they’d taken him first; now I had to share a room with him.

Then it was my turn to be treated like meat.

As they cut my clothes off, there was no shortage of spectators: doctors, nurses, a physician assistant (young, attractive, long curly brown hair), and a burly old cop who’d clearly never missed a meal.

The accident report was read aloud to everyone, including the note that my seatbelt was unbuckled. I tried to explain that I’d taken it off, but the cop was more interested in fault and writing a ticket than in me. He looked down as if to say, Sure, we’ve heard that one before. Arrogant son of a bitch. If he couldn’t read the evidence, he was a moron.

Then they cut off my shirt and revealed a wide purple stripe across my chest and belly, the mark of the belt. The cop put his ticket book away. I don’t mean to sound churlish; I count many police as friends. But thinking about him still makes me angry.

The doctor arrived in a black silk sports jacket with a yellow logo, on call from some sporting event and clearly unhappy about it. His bedside manner left much to be desired. There were two hospitals in town, one for the poor and one for people with means. I had insurance and means, and they’d brought me to the one in need of everything.

After examining my naked body in front of the crowd, the “doctor” flipped me over and stuffed a finger up my rear as the last insult. Broken bones, crushed chest, shattered face and legs, and without so much as an X-ray, he finished his exam like I was a slab of meat, scribbled orders, and left. A sonogram showed my heart was bruised. Then came X-ray, near the morgue. I could smell the dead, or maybe that was me.

Water-stained ceiling tiles told the story of the building’s finances. The X-ray machine wouldn’t stay put; its old, loose joints let the head slide every time she stepped back to trigger it. We shot several images before she finished. God knows how much extra radiation that museum piece gave me.

Back in the ER, the man’s wife arrived. “They said I was in the wrong lane,” he told her.

He got three stitches and was soon released. Before leaving, his wife came to me. I was covered head to toe in my own blood, my beard caked with it. She rubbed my forehead and apologized: “I knew better than to get him another car.” Then she added, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but we have good insurance.”

Even in my state, I was too polite to tell her what she could do with her good insurance. First I had to survive the day, the night, and another day before I could think about any of that.

After hours in the ER, I was moved to the ICU. If you’ve never been hospitalized (and I hadn’t), it’s not an experience I’d recommend.

Because of the bruised heart and they didn’t know what drugs I was on, they decided I couldn’t have pain medication. A dentist checked the teeth that had gone through my face and stitched me up from the inside out, no anesthetic. Next came the doctor who set my broken nose, a man who reminded me of the professor from Back to the Future. He pressed with his thumb, couldn’t get it straight, then jammed enormous forceps up my nose and forced it into place. The pain was unbelievable, ending only with the final crunch of bone.

The monitor echoed the throbbing in my body. As long as it beeped, I knew I was alive.

The PA kept pressing me to admit what I was taking. “C’mon, we know you’re on something. We need to know.” “Really, I don’t do that. Never have.” She tried again and again; my answer never changed. I may be the only person on this planet who’s never touched the stuff, but I haven’t. “If we know what your on we can give you pain meds.” True story, they were bribing me with pain relief.

“We don’t know what you’re on, so we can’t give you pain medicine,” she said. What was I supposed to do, lie so they’d treat my pain? I am not making this shit up, it happened. Whoever this Andy person was, they were protecting him.

After the worst week of my life, the toxicology report came back: low potassium. “What are you doing to make your potassium low?” asked the doctor with the bad bedside manner. “Um . . . I don’t salt my food. I had the flue a few weeks ago…???” I never got so much as an aspirin.

The days and nights blurred. I couldn’t sleep. My nose, packed with cotton, throbbed for days. With broken ribs, even breathing hurt.

Every few hours someone jabbed me repeatedly for blood; whoever they were, they were bad at it. Still on saline, urinating was the only activity I could manage, and lifting the sheet was nearly impossible. More than once I needed help. Humbling doesn’t cover it.

By the third day, glass from the crash was still embedded in my hands, arm, and face. My beard remained a solid chunk of dried blood, and not one person offered to clean me up.They had extracted some of the glass but much like a splinter in your foot, the glass in my body was a constant reminder that I was still alive.

For entertainment, I discovered I could control my heartbeat through biofeedback, slowing it to an eerie crawl or speeding it up. I was wired to telemetry so someone, somewhere, could watch my rhythm; a camera on the ceiling watched too. One night I wanted a nurse and couldn’t get one, so I pulled off the leads. The monitor went silent, and nobody came for nearly fifteen minutes. If this was the ICU, I shuddered to imagine a regular room.

The next day I asked to be transferred to Houston. I knew Dr. DeBakey and many other quality doctors personally; he’d once told me to call, if I ever needed him. If something was wrong with my heart, I wanted him and his team, not these people.

Instead, they moved me to a private room in the hospital’s “best” wing, built with someone’s donation. There, with my family’s help, I got myself into the shower and stayed until every trace of dried blood was gone from my hair and skin. Then I dug my own tweezers out of my luggage and pulled the glass from my body myself.

Before releasing me, the doctor with the crappy attitude was noticeably kinder. Maybe he’d finally accepted I wasn’t on anything, or realized the wreck wasn’t my fault, or maybe he’d just gotten lucky the night before. Either way, I was glad to leave. Holding a pillow to my chest, an old friend drove me home, where I lost months of work, and eventually had to leave the job I loved, no longer able to do it.

I never did get Dr. DeBakey and his team. I’d spent years caring for the physicians of the Texas Medical Center, only to end up in a small East Texas hospital that was a joke by any standard.

Months of lost pay later, I got a call from MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I could barely afford it, but I sent them money anyway.

Thirty-seven years to date, I’m still teased about my driving. I’m defensive; I leave plenty of room, and I preach to anyone who’ll listen, watch the traffic at least fifteen cars ahead, and leave enough space to see it. People say I drive like a slow grandpa. “Slow” means the speed limit, give or take a mile or two for terrain.

Driving a big truck full of airbags is only part of my strategy. When I see people fiddling with phones behind the wheel, part of me wants to scream. And the cops? They’ve got radios, phones, laptops, and a dozen other distractions, right through school zones. Folks, they’re no different from you. Watch them drift as they mess with their gadgets. I’ve seen it, and I cringe.

Keep your distance: from big trucks, from cheerleader types who think a selfie in a school zone is smart. They do it, and it’s all over Facebook. Just the other day, a young woman picked up her child and tore out of the school at 40-plus in a 20 zone, texting as she passed me. “Where’s a cop when you need one?” I said, and right on cue, a motorcycle officer pulled onto her bumper. She drove a long way, still texting, before she noticed him. That ticket had to be pricey.

I wish I could say this was fiction. It isn’t. It happened. Some memories have surely faded, but most remain, including the pain. For thirty-seven years I’ve lived in unrelenting pain. I take nothing for it. I manage with exercise as best I can, because no medication would leave me mentally sharp. With opioids and such they work, then you need more, and more, and more, and soon enough you have all kinds of other problems like you can’t poop! No thank you. You would be shocked to learn how many people die on the toilet because they have a heart attack trying to poop.

I don’t know what became of the man who hit me. I finally read the police report in 2016 and learned the only charge against him was driving left of center. He and the cop who worked the scene went to the same church.

The cop came in, prayed with Andy, then crossed to my side of the curtain and watched them cut my clothes off. He had his ticket book open when someone told him my seatbelt hadn’t been on. I’d taken it off to see whether that would ease the pain. It didn’t; my sternum was cracked in two.  When he saw the long purple bruise the belt had left, his face turned to disgust. He’d wanted to ticket me, to make me the villain instead of his church buddy Andy. On his way out, he told the attending to test my blood for anything and everything known to man. Some East Texas cops and sheriffs really do suck.

I do know that when you share an insurer, you lose. He’s surely gone by now, but there are plenty to take his place. There were no smartphones then; now everyone has one. Weed is legal in some states, and I fear those drivers will be impaired too. Even where it’s illegal, I’d bet one in three drivers is under some influence.

He got three stitches. I got thirty-seven years of pain, PTSD, and counting.

That’s the part I need you to sit with. The man who hit me felt almost nothing. He went home that afternoon, praised his Cadillac, and let his wife apologize on his behalf. The cost didn’t land on him. It landed on a stranger cresting a hill with a thermos on the seat beside him, and it has stayed with that stranger every day since.

So if you’ve ever done the arithmetic in a parking lot, counting drinks against miles and telling yourself you’re fine, understand what you’re actually wagering. Not your license. Not your record. Someone else’s life, spent on your behalf, without anyone asking them.

My speedometer stopped at forty-five. I’ve spent every year since trying to keep yours from doing the same. Hand someone else your keys. Take the defensive driving course. It’s the cheapest insurance you’ll ever buy

I’ve written a memoir. You can get your copy here. This story is in it in full, along with many others. the cover art is different with more stories than this version but the link will get you there.

Best,

© All Rights Reserved 2026

Gods and Insects, yes it feels like that.

Gods and Insects, yes it feels like that.

The Day a Leaky Truck Inspired a Novel: The Story Behind Gods and Insects

In the late 1900s, I was spending a significant amount of time on the road, driving nearly 1,000 miles a week. Back then, I lived in Houston, a city notorious for its unpredictable weather and sprawling roadways. One of the most well-known highways in Houston is Loop 610, a giant ring encircling the city. It was (and still is) a requirement that hazardous material trucks use the loop instead of cutting through the downtown area. This rule made sense, given the risks involved in transporting dangerous substances through such a densely populated area. But one particular day on the loop changed the trajectory of my life in the most unexpected way.

A Rainstorm, a Leaky Truck, and a Spark of Curiosity

Houston weather is nothing if not unpredictable. You can be driving under sunny skies one minute and find yourself in the middle of a torrential downpour the next, and that’s exactly what happened on this day. As I made my way around Loop 610, following a chemical transport truck, the skies opened up. The rain poured down, and visibility became challenging. Yet, something about that truck caught my attention.There was an unusual amount of water draining from the back of the vehicle…far more than seemed normal, even during a rainstorm this heavy. My curiosity got the better of me. Why was there so much water spilling from this truck? Was it just rain runoff, or was there something else going on?Instead of continuing on my usual route through town via Highway 59, I decided to follow the truck, keeping a safe distance. I watched as the rain let up and the sun came out again. But here’s the strange part: the water draining from the truck didn’t stop. It kept flowing as if the storm had never ended.

A Suspicious Pattern and a Moment of Realization

The truck didn’t return to Highway 59 after completing its loop around the city. Instead, it kept circling. I followed it for a while, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Was something leaking? Was the truck dispersing something intentionally? After completing more than one full loop around the city, I realized I’d wasted enough time, and likely exposed myself to who-knows-what. I decided to let it go and head home.But the experience stuck with me. Long after I stopped following that truck, I couldn’t shake the questions from my mind. What could have been leaking from that vehicle? Was it an accident, or something more sinister? The idea kept nagging at me, and before I knew it, a story began to form in my imagination. That day, the seed for my novel Gods and Insects was planted.

From a Leaky Truck to a Novel 30 Years Later

It took over three decades for the story to fully come to life. Gods and Insects, like my previous novel The Corrected City, sat in the proverbial file cabinet for years, stored away on an old hard drive while life moved on. But writing has always been my craft, my passion. With over 100,000,000 words written (yes, that’s with an M!), my skills have sharpened over time, and I finally felt ready to breathe new life into this story.The result? A novel born from a real-life moment of curiosity, suspense, and a little bit of danger. Gods and Insects is now available, and for the next 90 days, it’s free to read on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

Why You Should Give Gods and Insects a Read

Sometimes, inspiration strikes in the most unexpected ways. For me, it was a mysterious chemical truck, a rainstorm, and a moment of curiosity that I couldn’t ignore. The resulting novel dives into themes of mystery, danger, and the unknown…born from a real-life experience that could have ended very differently.If you’re a fan of suspenseful, thought-provoking stories, I think you’ll find Gods and Insects well worth your time. Plus, it’s free on KDP right now, so there’s no excuse not to dive in and experience the tale for yourself.Enjoy the read, and remember, inspiration can strike when you least expect it. Sometimes, all it takes is a leaky truck on a rainy day to spark a story worth telling.

Your Turn: Join the Conversation and Dive Into Gods and Insects

Now that you’ve heard the story behind the story, I’d love to hear from you!

💬 Drop a Comment Below

Have you ever had a moment of curiosity that stuck with you for years? Maybe an unusual encounter, a strange sight, or a “what if” question that wouldn’t leave your mind? Share your story in the comments. I read every single one, and who knows, your experience might just inspire my next novel! I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this piece. Did the mystery of that leaky chemical truck grab your attention? What do you think was really going on?

📖 Grab Your Free Copy of Gods and Insects

Ready to see where that rainy day in Houston led? For the next 90 days, Gods and Insects is completely FREE on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). That’s right: zero cost, all suspense. Whether you’re a longtime sci-fi fan, a lover of mystery and intrigue, or someone who enjoys a story with real-world roots, this novel has something for you.👉 [Click here to download your free copy today!] (Insert your KDP link)Don’t wait. This free offer won’t last forever. Once the 90 days are up, the opportunity is gone.

⭐ Loved It? Leave a Review!

Here’s the thing about being an indie author: reviews are our lifeblood. They help other readers discover the book, they boost visibility on Amazon, and honestly? They mean the world to writers like me who’ve poured decades into their craft.So if you read Gods and Insects and enjoy it (or even if you have constructive thoughts to share), please take just two minutes to leave an honest review on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be long. Even a sentence or two makes a huge difference. Your words could be the reason another reader picks up this book and gets pulled into the mystery.

To recap:

  1. 💬 Comment below with your thoughts or your own “curious moment” story.
  2. 📖 Download Gods and Insects for FREE on KDP (limited time!).
  3. ⭐ Leave an honest review after you read it.

Thank you for being part of this journey. Every reader, every comment, and every review helps keep the stories coming. Now go grab that book, and happy reading! 🚚💧📚

How to Write Characters Who Do Stupid Things Without Making Your Story Stupid

How to Write Characters Who Do Stupid Things Without Making Your Story Stupid

Don’t Make Them Dumb. Make Them Desperate.

There’s a moment every writer dreads. You’re reading a review of your own work, or a beta reader’s notes, or a comment from a critique partner, and you see the sentence that stops your heart:

“This only happens because the character is an idiot.”

That’s the ghost that haunts fiction. The dreaded Idiot Plot: a story that only functions because its characters refuse to behave like thinking humans. Doors get opened. Warnings get ignored. Secrets get kept for no reason. And the reader closes the book feeling insulted.So writers overcorrect. We start scrubbing our characters clean of bad decisions. We make them cautious, competent, and reasonable. And then something worse happens.They become boring.Because here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud: real people do stupid things all the time. They sabotage relationships. They chase desire over reason. They lie when the truth would be easier. They text the ex at 2 a.m. They touch the obviously cursed object. They open the basement door.The trick isn’t avoiding stupidity.The trick is making the stupidity psychologically believable.

Readers Don’t Hate Bad Decisions. They Hate Artificial Ones.

This is the distinction that changes everything.A reader will forgive almost any reckless action, whether infidelity, betrayal, self-destruction, or murder, if they understand the emotional logic driving it. What they won’t forgive is a decision that exists only because the plot needed it to exist.The difference isn’t in the action. It’s in the engine behind the action.An “idiot plot” character doesn’t check the security footage because the writer needs them not to. A believable character doesn’t check the security footage because they’re terrified of what they’ll see, or because they’ve spent thirty years learning not to look at things that hurt, or because their pride won’t let them admit they were wrong about the person on the other end of that camera.Same action. Completely different story.

Humans Are Not Rational Machines

Here’s where fiction has to catch up with psychology.We like to imagine ourselves as reasoning creatures who occasionally slip into emotion. The research says the opposite. We are emotional creatures who occasionally slip into reason. Fear, memory, shame, lust, anger, grief, and hope are running the show. Logic is mostly the press secretary trying to explain the disaster after it’s already happened.Or to put it more bluntly:

Humanity is not a rational species. We are emotional animals with car keys, Wi-Fi, and access to explosives.

If your characters make decisions the way a spreadsheet would, they’ll feel like spreadsheets. If they make decisions the way people actually do, through the fog of feeling, memory, and want, they’ll feel alive.

Give Every Bad Decision an Emotional Cause

This is the working rule. Every stupid choice in your fiction should be traceable to something underneath it. Not an excuse. A cause.Consider the difference:

  • A character ignores a clear danger because they need approval more than they need safety.
  • A detective withholds evidence because his pride was wounded by the person he’d have to admit was right.
  • A lover returns to a toxic relationship because desire feels like destiny, and destiny is hard to argue with at midnight.
  • A scientist activates the machine because being right matters more to him than being safe, and it always has.
  • A soldier disobeys a direct order because the past is louder than the command structure.

None of these characters are stupid. They’re human. And the reader, recognizing something of themselves in the wreckage, leans in instead of pulling away.

Pressure Makes Stupidity Plausible

Here’s a craft principle worth tattooing somewhere visible:The worse the pressure, the more believable the mistake.A character who makes a catastrophic decision while relaxed, well-rested, and fully informed just looks foolish. A character who makes the same decision while exhausted, aroused, terrified, ashamed, grieving, or cornered looks like a person.So before you let your character do something reckless, ask what’s pressing on them. Sleep deprivation. A dying parent. A secret they’ve been carrying for a decade. An old wound reopening. The threat of exposure. The nearness of someone they were supposed to have gotten over.Pressure is the writer’s best friend. It’s the atmosphere in which bad decisions become inevitable, and inevitability is the twin sister of believability.

Consequences Are What Make It Literature

Here’s where a lot of writers flinch.They set up a beautiful, psychologically rich bad decision, and then they protect the character from the fallout. The affair gets forgiven too easily. The lie gets buried too neatly. The reckless choice turns out fine.The reader feels cheated. Because they came for the crash, and you gave them a fender bender.If a character does stupid shit and nothing happens, the story deflates. But if the decision creates real fallout, whether guilt, danger, betrayal, revelation, or transformation, then the stupidity becomes story fuel. It generates the next scene, the next conflict, the next choice.Bad decisions aren’t a problem in fiction. Unearned consequences are.

The Rule: Don’t Protect the Character

This is the hardest part of the craft, and it’s where most writers, especially newer ones, get stuck.You will love your characters. You will want to shield them. You will feel the impulse to soften the blow, to let them off the hook, to write the version where everyone forgives them and moves on.Resist it.Let bad decisions cost something. Let the character lose the friend, the job, the marriage, the version of themselves they thought they were. That’s where tension lives. That’s where tragedy lives. That’s where comedy lives, too, because there’s nothing funnier than a person insisting they had no choice while the wreckage of their choices piles up behind them.Your job isn’t to keep your characters safe.Your job is to make their choices matter.

Stop trying to write smart characters. Start writing desperate ones.Desperate for love. Desperate to be right. Desperate to be seen. Desperate to escape a version of themselves they can’t stand anymore. Give them wants so loud they drown out reason, and then let those wants drive them into decisions that any outside observer would call stupid.Because that’s what people are. That’s what we do. We are magnificent, ridiculous creatures who know better and do worse, and fiction that pretends otherwise is fiction that isn’t paying attention.Don’t make them dumb.Make them desperate.And then let the reader watch, breath held, as your character reaches for the doorknob of the basement they were told never to enter and understands, with terrible clarity, exactly why they had to.

Yes, I need to plug one of my books that is close to this… The Girl Who Broke Everything

Ellie Morrow has spent six years in the foster care system learning one lesson above all others: she breaks things.

Televisions implode when she’s angry. Pipes rupture when she dreams. Crows gather wherever she goes, silent and watchful, as though waiting for a signal only they can hear. And deep behind her sternum, something that is not quite a heartbeat pulses with a power she never asked for: a residual fire left over from the night a mysterious golden light filled her parents’ car on Route 9, killed everyone inside except her, and left a seven-year-old child without a scratch or an explanation.“You are not broken, Ellie. You are not dangerous. And you are not disposable.”But the foster care system disagrees. And so, when an estranged grandmother named Agatha Morrow arrives to claim her, a woman who chose thirty years of silence over the burden of explanation, Ellie is pulled from the only world she has ever known into something older and stranger: the breathing, sentient world of the Morrow women.

A bloodline of immense power stretching back centuries. A house on a nameless mountain, built above a nexus of forces older than language. A legacy of magic and grief, of doors that should not be opened and things that sleep beneath foundations, of wards that answer to family and a home that has been waiting for the right Morrow to return.But Ellie is not merely inheriting power. She is awakening something. The blood moon is coming, and whatever has been dreaming in the deep places beneath the Morrow house, vast, impossibly old, and stirring for the first time in generations, has begun to rise, drawn upward by a girl whose emotions can crack buildings and whose light can fill a room with the color of old gold.

Part coming-of-age story, part Gothic supernatural mystery, and part meditation on grief, survival, and the terrible weight of belonging to something larger than yourself, the Girl Who . . . series asks one question and dares its heroine to answer it:

What are you becoming—and what will it cost?

A Story to Start or End with Wheels

A Story to Start or End with Wheels

A story from a prompt:

Imagine this: a room filled with the hum of creativity, the scratching of pens against paper, and the occasional burst of laughter as ideas collide.

That’s where you’ll find me, well by zoom since I moved to the country, a proud director of our small but fiercely passionate Writing Group in my old hometown.

This week? Oh, this week is special. The challenge is simple yet brimming with possibility: craft a story that begins or ends with a bicycle.

A single object, two wheels, infinite potential. Will it be a tale of freedom, of mystery, or perhaps of heartbreak?

The group is ready to dig deep, to wrestle with their imaginations and see where the humble bicycle takes them.And you?

You’re about to get a front-row seat to the magic that unfolds. Buckle up (or should I say, hop on?). The journey is just about to begin.

The following is my story from a somewhat childhood memory, and an imagination, as a girl with freckles and red hair is a part of the story.

The Bicycle and the Bay Mare

The summer Thomas turned twelve, the world smelled of hot asphalt and cut grass, and his blue Schwinn bicycle was the finest thing he owned.

His father had rescued it from a yard sale for eight dollars, sanded off the rust, and painted it the color of a robin’s egg.

Thomas rode it everywhere: to the creek, to the library, to the little store on Miller Road where Mrs. Halvorsen sold penny candy that hadn’t cost a penny in thirty years.

That Tuesday afternoon in July, he was flying down Ridgewood Lane with a paper bag of licorice ropes bouncing in his front basket.

The wind pulled at his hair. His legs pumped in perfect rhythm. He was, he decided, the fastest boy in the county, possibly the state, possibly the world.

He was thinking exactly this when a horse came around the bend.

It was enormous, a mountain of muscle and gleaming chestnut hide, hooves hammering the pavement like a blacksmith’s anvil.

Thomas had just enough time to see the flash of a red-gold mane, both the horse’s and the rider’s, before he yanked his handlebars sideways and sailed straight into Mr. Peterson’s hedge.

The Schwinn went one way. Thomas went another. The licorice went everywhere.

“Oh my gosh, are you alive?”

A face appeared above him, upside down through the tangle of privet leaves. Freckles. Green eyes. Hair the color of a maple tree in October, spilling down in wild waves that seemed to catch every scrap of sunlight and hold it hostage.

“I think so,” Thomas managed. A leaf was in his mouth. He spit it out with what he hoped was dignity.

“I am so sorry. Dolly spooked at a plastic bag. She’s a total drama queen about plastic bags, and I couldn’t get her to …”

The girl paused, tilting her head. “You’re bleeding.”

Thomas touched his elbow. He was, indeed, bleeding. It seemed a small price to pay for continuing to be looked at by this person.

“I’m Ellen,” she said, offering a hand streaked with horse sweat and dust.

“Ellen Brennan. We just moved into the yellow house on Fox Hollow.”

“Thomas,” he said. His voice came out slightly strangled.

“Thomas Kepler.”

She helped him up, retrieved his bicycle (which had a new and interesting bend in the front fender), and gathered up as many licorice ropes as could be salvaged.

The horse, Dolly, watched all of this with the mild, unimpressed expression of a creature who had caused chaos and considered her work done.

“Come by the stable sometime,” Ellen said, swinging back into the saddle with an ease that struck Thomas as miraculous.

She clicked her tongue, and Dolly wheeled around and cantered off, and Thomas stood in the middle of Ridgewood Lane holding a bent bicycle and a bag of dirty licorice, and knew with absolute certainty that his life had changed.

He waited three days. Three days felt appropriately casual.

Three days felt like a boy who had many important things to do and only happened, in passing, to remember there was a stable on Fox Hollow.

In truth, he thought about it every waking minute.

The Brennan place was set back from the road behind a row of oaks, with a weathered red barn and a paddock ringed by white fencing that had gone gray at the posts.

Thomas leaned his Schwinn against a fence rail and walked toward the barn, and there, in the shadowed doorway, was Ellen, not in the jodhpurs and boots he’d half-expected, but in cutoff jeans and a t-shirt with a hole in the shoulder, mucking a stall with a pitchfork nearly as tall as she was.

“You came!” she said, and her whole face lit up in a way that made Thomas’s ears go hot.

“Come meet everybody.”

Everybody, it turned out, was not just Dolly.

There was Dolly, yes, the chestnut mare from the road, but also a stocky black gelding named Pepper, a spotted pony called Bandit who had, according to Ellen, “opinions,” and an ancient white horse named Mr. Biscuit who was thirty-one years old and, Ellen said solemnly, the finest gentleman she’d ever known.

Thomas offered his palm the way Ellen showed him, flat and steady, and Mr. Biscuit breathed onto it with a warm, hay-scented sigh.

Something inside Thomas’s chest turned over.

“You should ride,” Ellen said.

“I don’t know how.”

“That,” she said, “is exactly why you should learn.”

He came back the next day. And the day after.

Ellen was a patient teacher and a merciless one.

She made him groom Mr. Biscuit for a full week before she’d let him sit on the old horse’s back, and even then, only at a walk, in circles, in the corral, while she called out corrections from the fence.

“Heels down, Thomas!”

“They are down!”

“Down like you mean it. Like gravity is your personal friend.”

He fell off twice. The first time he landed in soft dirt and Ellen laughed so hard she had to sit down. The second time he landed in something considerably less soft, and Ellen laughed so hard she cried, and Thomas found that he didn’t mind at all, because when she laughed her whole face crinkled up and her freckles danced.

By August he could trot without bouncing.

By September he could post.

By the time the leaves turned, Ellen let him ride Pepper, and the two of them went out along the trails behind the Brennan property, ducking under low branches, Dolly and Pepper’s hooves whispering through the fallen leaves.

The Schwinn stayed in the yard, propped against the fence.

Years unfolded the way years do: quickly, when you look back at them; slowly, when you’re inside them.

Thomas grew tall and lean, with a rider’s hands and a rider’s seat.

Ellen grew into her freckles.

They rode through four autumns and three summers together, through a hundred sunsets over the ridge, through a season when Mr. Biscuit lay down in his stall and did not get up, and Thomas held Ellen while she cried into his shoulder for the finest gentleman she’d ever known.

There was the winter Ellen’s father lost his job and she came to school with red-rimmed eyes, and Thomas learned that sometimes the most useful thing a person could do was simply be present, and quiet, and steady, the way Mr. Biscuit had once been for both of them.

There was the spring Thomas’s mother got sick, and Ellen rode over on Dolly every single afternoon, and sat with him on the porch, and didn’t try to fix anything, because some things can’t be fixed, only witnessed.

There was the first kiss, under the oak tree by the corral, when Thomas was seventeen and Ellen was seventeen and a half and had never let him forget the half.

There was the college years, and the long-distance letters, and the summer they both came home and knew, without saying it, that they were done pretending to be uncertain.

There was a small wedding in the Brennan’s front pasture, with folding chairs borrowed from the church and Dolly, gone gray around the muzzle now, watching over the fence like a chaperone.

The blue Schwinn stayed leaned against the fence rail where Thomas had first left it.

At first, someone would move it. Ellen’s father, when he mowed; Thomas himself, when he remembered. But the years wore on, and the bicycle wore down. The tires went flat. The chain went orange with rust. Ivy found the wheels first, then the frame. A morning glory climbed the handlebars one summer and never really left.

A robin nested in the basket the year Ellen turned twenty-four, and the year after that, and the year after that.

Nobody moved it anymore. It had become part of the fence, part of the yard, part of the place. A blue-green ghost of the boy who had once been the fastest in the county, possibly the state, possibly the world.

It is a Saturday afternoon in late June, and Thomas is thirty-four years old.

He and Ellen are down by the lake behind what used to be her parents’ farm and is now, deed and mortgage and all, theirs.

A red plaid blanket is spread on the grass beneath the willow. The picnic basket, her grandmother’s, the wicker frayed at the corners, one hinge held together with baling wire, sits open and mostly empty.

There are the last crusts of a sandwich. A jar with two swallows of lemonade. A peach with two bites taken out of it, one small (hers) and one large (his).

Not far off, in the shallow slope of the pasture, two horses graze in the slow, unhurried way of horses who know they are home.

One is a bay mare with a white star. The other is a chestnut gelding whose sire, if you traced the papers back far enough, was a mare named Dolly.

Ellen is lying on her back with her head in Thomas’s lap. Her red hair, still absurd, still catching every scrap of sunlight it can find, is spread across his knee. He is twirling a piece of it around his finger, the way he has been doing for fifteen years, the way he suspects he will still be doing when they are eighty.

“Do you remember,” she says, eyes closed, “the licorice?”

“I remember the licorice.”

“It was disgusting. The licorice.”

“It was covered in gravel.”

“And you ate it anyway.”

“I did not.”

“You did. I saw you. You ate a piece with a leaf stuck to it because you were trying to seem casual.”

Thomas laughs. Somewhere up by the house, on the other side of the pasture, leaning against a fence rail nobody has repainted in twenty years, a blue Schwinn bicycle is quietly dissolving into the landscape. Weeds have grown up through its spokes. A morning glory is in bloom on its handlebars. If you didn’t know it had once been a bicycle, you might not guess.

If you did know, you might think it looked less like a ruin and more like a small, patient monument. To a boy who rode too fast around a corner. To a girl on a horse who couldn’t stop. To the exact and unrepeatable accident of two lives colliding on a summer afternoon and choosing, ever after, not to come apart.

Ellen opens her eyes and looks up at him. The freckles are still there. The green eyes are still there. Everything, somehow, is still there.

“Thomas,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I’m really glad you didn’t die in that hedge.”

He bends down and kisses her forehead. The horses graze. The lake laps at the shore. The picnic basket holds its small ruins with dignity.

“Me too,” he says. “Me too.”

A Whisper from the Past, a Chance at Redemption

If that little taste of my writing intrigued you, then you won’t want to miss my novel, Nothing But Time.It begins with a letter…a letter that arrives three weeks after Jack Harper stopped mattering.Jack gave everything to his career.

His marriage slipped through his fingers. His daughter grew up without him. Forty-one years of sunsets went unwatched, and the roses? Never smelled.

Now retired, redundant, and utterly adrift, Jack is left wondering if it was all worth it.

Then, out of nowhere, he inherits an old farmhouse from Ed, the friend who once tried to warn him.

Ed, who escaped to Vermont years ago, died alone, and left Jack with one simple instruction:

“Tend the roses. Stop and smell them. Live.”

But the farmhouse isn’t what it seems. The radio crackles with broadcasts from 1943. The roses bloom when Jack kneels in the soil. And at the edge of the orchard, Ed keeps appearing—smiling, waiting, calling Jack to finally understand what he refused to see all those years.Some second chances come with instructions. Some come with ghosts.

Are you ready to discover which one Jack will choose?

Nothing But Time

Your Voice Matters

If this story resonated with you, don’t hold back, leave a comment! 

Your thoughts, your reactions, and your support are what keep this journey alive. I know you’re out there, and your presence means everything to me.

Go ahead, share your voice, and let’s keep this connection alive.
Have a blessed day…you’re the reason I do this.

-Scott

“From 9/11 to Flock Cameras: The Dystopian Novel I Started 15 Years Ago”

“From 9/11 to Flock Cameras: The Dystopian Novel I Started 15 Years Ago”

September 9, 2011, started like any other day. While stuck at a traffic light, I was on the phone with our New York office. Something happened; they put me on hold, and as I drove to the Dallas office, I listened to the world change. We can argue about the rumors that still surround Building 7, but suffice it to say, the world changed.

My normal way of dealing with grief is not to drone on about it with friends or family. My way is to write about it. If you follow me at all, you have no doubt read my blog post about writing letters or emails to people who are, let’s say, less than congenial. I use expletives and what have you to get the anger out of me and into the digital ethos, and of course, as much as I want to, I never send it. Burning bridges and being known as a hothead will get you nowhere.

Fast-forward six weeks after 9/11 and at least 3,000 deaths by “some people who did some things.” Bush and his administration enacted the Patriot Act, which is still alive and well today. The things those people did allowed our government to strip away some of our rights, trading them for safety. “Do you feel safe?”

Fast-forward to the Flock cameras, data centers, Alexa devices, smartphones, and, of course, drones. Do you feel safe?

Those Flock cameras, I learned, have microphones.

So, while spending these summer months of 100-plus-degree days clearing out old computer hardware, I found that file from 2011. I had started a book about a fictional city where a horrible event occurred, and much like the Patriot Act, what we see today closely resembles what I put into my book. Being a fan of Orwell, I wrote a dystopian near-future novel that is all but ready for one last edit.

Stay tuned for more updates and for when the book drops.

I am thinking about putting it on KDP Unlimited for those of you who can read it for free. Follow, hit that like button, and comment below if you have ideas you would like to share.Best,

Here is a link to my current books on Amazon.

What Are the Odds?

What Are the Odds?

A Writer’s Honest Take on Contests, Scams, and Chasing the Dream

What are the odds?As a writer and author, I occasionally post a story from a prompt and feed the machine $5 for a “chance” to win a contest. I also play the lottery from time to time. Not that I have an ice cube’s chance in hell of winning, but I do it when I travel. Long car trips on flat, nothing roads are a great way to ask the proverbial “what if?”

What would I do with X millions if I won? It could happen, right? Fortunately, I know what statistics are, so I don’t get too carried away with the fantasy. The same is true for casting my story onto the Reedsy website. Often, I look at the winning story and ask, how the hell did that one win?! I think I know.

The Predators in My Inbox

Putting my own vanity aside, the same skepticism applies to the predators who comment on my books through email, asking me if I would consider allowing them to be my agent. Truthfully, I could use their pitch about my book as a cover blurb. Of course, AI wrote it, and of course, it’s a scam designed to prey on my ego.

So I ask once again: what are the odds?

I have at least five people with the first name “Lauren” as new followers on my Reedsy story site.

All of the Laurens have different last names, and each of them is tempting my ego to override my God-given good sense. They want me to hand over money so they can “take my writing to the next level.”

The Engagement Game

IMHO, if I really wanted my story to win, I’d get everyone on this blog to go over there and “like” my story. That would tweak the algorithm, and maybe then a judge might actually read it and think, “Wow, that’s pretty good.”

Again IMHO, I seriously doubt someone sits down and reads 300-plus stories, each week and carefully weigh the pros and cons of each before crowning a winner. Much like monetized social media with its clicks, likes, and comments, contest platforms probably use engagement as a tool. (If I’m wrong, feel free to comment.)

So Why Do I Keep Paying the $5?

Ever since I ran across a young woman on YouTube (I think her name was Laura) who was going through school at the time parroting what she learned in vlogs, I wanted her company to succeed. They’re a bona fide business now and offer many services. I write, and I pay the money for feedback from other writers that range from “Wow, that’s a great story!” to “You need to make your character feel more like a living person instead of a zombie.”

A Modest Proposal for Reedsy

I propose the following adjustments to the current contest model:

  1. Introduce Written Feedback for All Entries Provide each contestant, regardless of outcome, with a brief written critique from a qualified reader or editor. Even two to three sentences of constructive commentary would deliver meaningful value.
  2. Adjust the Entry Fee to $10 Increasing the fee from $5 to $10 offsets the cost of providing individualized feedback and positions the contest as a premium, value-added service rather than a low-stakes lottery.
  3. Expand the Prize Pool A larger prize, funded in part by the adjusted fee structure, would attract a greater number of participants and elevate the prestige of the competition.

Anticipated Benefits

  • Increased Participant Retention: Writers will feel they are receiving tangible value for their investment, win or lose.
  • Enhanced Platform Credibility: Offering expert feedback reinforces the platform’s role as a professional development resource, not merely a contest host.
  • Higher Entry Volume: A larger prize purse combined with guaranteed feedback is likely to draw new entrants and reengage lapsed ones.
  • Stronger Competitive Positioning: Few writing contests currently offer feedback as part of the standard entry package. Adopting this model would differentiate the platform in a crowded market.

Feasibility Considerations

Assuming contest judging is conducted by human evaluators rather than automated tools, the additional effort required to generate short-form feedback should be minimal relative to the review process already underway. In practical terms, if judges are already reading entries to determine winners, capturing a few lines of impressions per submission is a modest incremental task with significant participant-facing value.

The proposed changes represent a low-risk, high-reward adjustment to the existing contest structure. By transforming the entry fee into an investment in personal development rather than a speculative gamble, the platform can strengthen participant loyalty, grow contest participation, and reinforce its standing as a trusted partner to the writing community.

A Note to My Fellow Writers

To every writer out there navigating this strange landscape with me, this one’s for you.

If you’re like me, your inbox is probably overflowing with “We love your book!” messages from “xyz Publishers” @gmail.com.

Go ahead, borrow that AI-generated blurb if it flatters you, have a laugh, and move on.

We’ve all seen them. We all know the game.

And if you, like me, still enter contests with your eyes wide open, take heart. The genuine followers you gain along the way, the ones who take the time to read your story and leave a thoughtful comment, are the real prize.

They aren’t trying to scam you. They’re walking the same road you are.There are too many of us to name, but we share something powerful in common: the desire to be the best writers we can be.

We keep showing up. We keep submitting. We keep writing, even when the odds feel long and the noise feels loud.

That shared drive is what makes this community worth being part of.

I’ve shared several tips on this blog to help fellow writers sharpen their craft, and I’ll keep adding more.

If any of this resonates with you, follow along for future posts, drop a comment below and tell me about your own experiences, and let’s keep lifting each other up.We’re in this together.

Have a blessed day!

MY Current Books