For most writers, success is measured by big events: book sales, great reviews, financially exciting contracts, unexpected sales rankings, a won award. These things are certainly not meaningless, but they’re transitory. They come; they go. They happen; they don’t....

We all have to anchor our stories to get the best responses from readers, and one of the best ways to do that is to establish a clear beginning, middle, and end. How you go about it, whether you outline or not, is your business. How it turns out is the readers’...

One of the most powerful ways to deepen anthropological realism in literature is to determine what your characters consider sacred. If you think about it, the answer to this question is what rules our lives; why should it not guide the characters you write? When I say...

Americana literature is storytelling that captures America’s character through its people, landscapes, struggles, traditions, and shifting dreams. The genre reveals America’s identity through lived experience rather than abstract or academic philosophy. One of the...