The Art of Storytelling

Image: the Red Wing Blackbird I always laugh at Groundhog Day and the idea that the little varmint can predict an early spring. It...

Do you remember, when you were a kid, playing with your food? I can remember shaping mashed potatoes into a mountain and digging a hole...

Growing up, my brothers and I had a love-hate relationship with fireworks. We loved them and our neighbors hated them. The truth was, we...

*Our Emotional Relationship with Money In my secret life as a Higher Education administrator who leads a team that includes our financial...

Image: The offending shoes on our wedding day I met my wife, Denise, when she was 16 and I was 17. We attended rival high schools and...

Image: Not camping in Ohio Did I ever tell you about the time we came home from the mall in the early evening and there was a line of...

Image: a fictional rendering of Jefferson in grade school *Find out how you can win a free kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and...

In August 1977, a few days before the death of Elvis Presley, my brother Andy and I were backpacking through the Great Smokey Mountains...

In this day of GPS taking us from doorstop to doorstop, many people forget what it was like to travel using a map, let alone to travel by...

It was just over a year ago that Love: a novel of grief and desire was published and over the 2022 holiday weekend jumped to the #1 New...

I mentioned in my last post that we didn't open presents on Christmas until later in the afternoon. That 'tradition' began when I was in...

I don't since and I don't dance, which means when the annual Christmas concert rolls around at church, all I can do is emcee, and share...

My high school English teacher, in her creative writing class, had a rule that we couldn't end a short story with someone dying. She said...

The Ogre Prince, a young adult fantasy, is the first novel I published. Written for my three children, when they were in their early...

Last time, I wrote about what was behind Forgiveness. Let me assure you, Retribution is the exact opposite of forgiveness, although it...

People frequently ask 'How do you come up with your stories?' I've written before about how I start with an image and draft a book from...

Red likes to sleep under my writing desk. He spends way more time there than I do. Truthfully, the desk is a space of refuge for both of...

People often ask me how I come up with the ideas for books. I always tell them the same thing: I start with an image in my head, often...

Those were the last words my dad, Dick Smith, said to me before he passed. He had been dealing with dementia for a number of years, his...

Our Friends at Reader's Choice are giving away a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire. You can enter the monthly...