When I started writing in 2015, I knew I would see my story through to the end. December 6, 2017, my thirty-third birthday, I signed my first ever full length project to a small...

Being best and otherwise strictly known for my fiction, it seems fitting to start a collection with short stories. I warn you again; I attempt nearly every genre of writing w...

Historical fiction carries a fairly intuitive explanation. With a robust following, the genre will never fade in popularity. Transportation to a distant time and p...

In 2018, the Horror Writer’s Association chose to resurrect the popular children’s book “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”. I took to social me...

Mary Magdalene Gilliam was my grandmother. My father’s mother. She passed away in February 2015. The years leading to this moment were riddled wi...

In July 2017, I finished my very first novel. As a reward, and much needed mom-vacation, I booked my first writer’s retreat. Ghost Town Writer’s Retreat in Georg...

I enjoy a nice cozy romance every now and then, but very little of my stories have anything to do with relationships. To date you will not even find a single sex scene in my boo...

In October 2007, I deployed to Iraq for the first time. I spent the fifteen months resolved to the fact I would just live there forever. This mentality kept me from over anticipat...

Shauna wiped soapy water from the young woman’s slender rib cage, sending skin into goose-flesh chills. Removing the excess ink revealed the sharp illustration of a songbird in ...

I was inspired this by the lovely Donna Munro at a flash fiction workshop to write a creepy little short while attending the Ghost Town Writers Retreat. Equipped wi...

I am probably wrong to assume men don’t have feelings, but shutting them off helps me kill with a clear conscious.

“No, mister. Please don’t. Pluh-lee-hee...

Soon after starting my first novel, I got stuck. I researched ways to work through blocks and stumbled on the suggestion of working on something else. This began my journey in ...

Nonfiction is called many things: memoirs, essays, journals. To me, nonfiction is most entertaining when we take the form of a life story verbally told, and translate the same tone and...

I like to keep my goals in writing and hang them in common places around the house - my bathroom mirror, my planner, on the wall in front of my face when I fall asleep and wak...

My grandmother, Ms. Mary Magdalene Gilliam (Werner), was a true matriarch in the most humble and meek sense. She never talked about herself or told stories about growing...

From October 2007 to January 2009, I was deployed for the first time to Baghdad, where I worked as a medic in the Emergency Room of Saddam’s former hospital, Ibn Sina. Though...

War and coffee

For me, war and coffee go hand in hand. I simply cannot have one without thinking of the other.

“Dacia, do you mean war figuratively?”

No, I mean war in the very literal sens...

Much like military family life, the railroad has many challenges. A common struggle is being on call 24/7 and the effect not having a set schedule of constant travel h...

I am quite a gregarious introvert with a large fear of missing out, or what the kids call Fo-Mo. Fo-Mo keeps most people scrolling through social media at all hours of the night. I mig...

My weakest talent in writing rests in the prosy flows of poetry. All but one of these pieces were written before I ever considered myself a writer, and only then because I was forced t...

I hate the way you love me

The way you feed on my misery

Thirsting for my tears and sweat that fall to the ground,

Watering the garden of your ego

I am your accessory

I smile for your convenienc...

Erase me from this painting of chaos

If you can find me

I seem to fit in so well

Captive of my own choices

Pride and lust are my brushes

I paint with colors of shame and regret

Mistakes ...

For Jude and Val

Don’t you know that you are mine

That I will carry, and feed and warm

That I will always see and watch you

Don’t you know that yo...

As a novelist, I do not have a particular opinion or insight about writing plays aside from the literary form being far from my favorite. I do not plan to adapt my books to films when t...

In studying the later Victorian Era and writers such as Oscar Wilde and the ceaseless traveler Robert Louis Stevenson, I was tasked with exploring the perpetual i...

Characters

JANNETTE: a 40 something year old woman

MICHAEL: JANNETTE’s husband

NANCY: JANNETTE and MICHAE...