Let’s be clear: I am no feminist. I do, however, write stories about strong-willed women who overcome some pretty stout obstacles. Often, my heroines are based on real people. So, why am I not a feminist? Isn’t modern feminism basically the belief women should be treated the same as men? One dictionary defines it as advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men. Hmmm. Let’s not give that platform a blank check. The FACT is women are

Last time, if you will recall, I related that in back in 2000 I had started writing A Lady in Defiance and my computer crashed. Several thousand words into the story I lost ALL of it. Well, I had my hands full with a baby. I shrugged and thought I would probably come back to the story one day. If it wasn’t dead and buried for good. Maybe God would resurrect it…Who knew? Fast forward to 2007. I took a job working for a vanity press doing author promotions. One day at a book si

I would like to thank reader and friend Jeannette Shields for tipping me off to this intriguing lady in defiance–a real one! I get so tired of the feminists making us feel like victims. We’re only victims if we choose that road. I’ve profiled many, many women who simply refused to accept their societal limits and shot right past them. So, here ya go. Here is another one, a gal breaking the rules, exceeding the expectations of society, living life to the fullest. When Isabella

Apparently, author Amélie Wen Zhao hasn’t heard the famous Lincoln quote: You can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time. As Publisher’s Weekly put it, “…particularly that a slave auction scene in Blood Heir was insensitive to POC readers due to the history of slavery in the U.S.” Well, uh, I would suggest the mere historical FACT of slave auctions is pretty darn insensitive to POC (People of Color, if you’re not familiar with yet ANOTHER hip acronym). This is a shame. T

Abortion. Yeah. I’m going there. As a history freak, I’m pretty well acquainted with how hard life was for the women who settled and–might I add–fought–for this country. Sometimes they manned cannons or rode through hell and high water to deliver intelligence. They fought marauding Indians, beat off snakes with sticks, stared down cattle rustlers, stamped out brush fires with handmade quilts, heck, even crawled through blizzards. And a lot of the time our ancestors did these

As a nation, not only have we become deeply divided, but we’re divided over stupid things. Maybe–here’s a crazy thought–if we were a little less sensitive we’d all get along a little better. Instead of scouring the universe for something that hurts our little feelings, maybe we could be more concerned with things that matter. So, here’s the reason for my rant. I recently read an article (Writing with Color Description Guide Part One) that said writers shouldn’t use words like

Feminism. Do you ever wonder how in the world America was built without those early pioneer women being told (incessantly) they were strong, brave, and didn’t need a man around? Golly, it’s a wonder we were able to help build a country. I think about the way our culture is working so hard to feminize men and make women masculine and it really ticks me off. Generally speaking, we’re smaller, daintier, physically weaker, more emotional–we’re VERY different from men. And that is