Ollie’s Bargain Outlet is a fever dream incarnate. From one aisle to the next, there’s no rhyme or reason to what’s for sale. It’s not unusual to find protein Poptarts stocked next to the curling irons. I had just placed three bottles of sugar-free coffee syrup in my shopping cart when I ran into a little old man who could have been Ollie himself. Liver spots dotted his balding head, and wisps of snow-white hair sprang from his scalp. He smelled of mothballs. “Young lady, I h

The seventh draft is done, and it’s time to stop making excuses. I’ve been writing a book, Called from Darkness, since I was about sixteen years old. It started with a nightmare I had while visiting my grandmother on her farm in rural North Dakota's Great Plains. I shelved it for a decade and came back to it about two years ago. I kept the characters and the major plot elements, but I fleshed it out into something deeper and darker than my sixteen-year-old brain could have

I started a Facebook page! I’ve avoided social media for a while now, but the longer I run this blog, the more I realize I need it as a...