A.J. Maguire

Tag: Books

  • Blurbs & The Hated Synopsis

    As of today I have 38,643 words edited in the Tapped novel. According to my calendar I should be on Chapter 11, but I’m actually moving into Chapter 13 next week. I’m supremely pleased with the way it is turning out. Thanks to my developmental editor I’m having a blast fleshing out all those places that were too lean before and bringing more color to the characters/relationships on the page.

    Author’s note : Developmental editors are editors who look at the story as a whole and tell you what works and what doesn’t work. They often note in the manuscript if there are serious grammatical errors because … well, because I think they probably twitch whenever they see you’ve abused every literary device known to man. 

    I also managed to write a new working synopsis to help reflect the changes going into the book. It’s a horrible draft and it’s a mite too long, but at least it’s started so that when I begin the querying process I won’t have to start at square one.

    I’ve decided that blurb and synopsis writing require a different sphere of my brain than my normal writing. And it’s a sphere of my brain that absolutely does not like to work. It’s like a koala when you wake it up in the middle of the day (they’re nocturnal and eucalyptus leaves do fun things to their chemistry so they’re kind of drunk) so what you get when you rouse my koala-like marketing sphere is a hung-over grouch that can barely function.

    So!

    I utilized a marketing professional to help me. She went through my website and suggested several changes that I’ve already implemented (Yay! I’m officially ajmaguire.com!) and helped me draft a blurb for Tapped that looks professional and manages to capture the core of the book.

    The experience working with this professional was quite interesting. She was extremely helpful, kept the dialogue pointed in the right direction, and didn’t admit to cringing when she had to go through the working synopsis to get a feel for Tapped. (Though I’m sure she did cringe at least twice.) She was also reasonably priced and I will certainly be going back to her.

    I highly recommend both developmental editors and marketing professionals to any aspiring authors/writers out there. Both have given me invaluable insight into the business side of novel-writing.

    Tapped – Blurb

    Jorry thought winning a galactic war would be enough to buy a peaceful life. She was wrong. Running from the government she fought so hard for, she carves a simple life out for herself and her family. When her family is dragged into a black market deal Jorry finds herself directly in the sights of those she’s been hiding from and must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect the people she loves.

  • What I’ve Learned from Vampires

    I’ve had this week off from school and was focused almost exclusively on writing/editing for Tapped. (Yep, I’m still not in love with that title.) With a few Vampire Diary deviations I’ve been pretty well focused on getting this draft completed so that I can go to work on editing Persona.

    Yes, you read that right, I’ve been watching The Vampire Diaries. Me, the “vampirism = socially acceptable necrophilia” woman who constantly wrinkles her nose at all things bloodthirsty and angsty actually became addicted to this show. I blame Ian Somerhalder for that. Or rather, I blame the writers who created Damon Salvatore’s snarky, hilarious character for Somerhalder to sink his teeth into. (Pun totally intended. You can kill me later for it.)

    **Author’s note: if you follow the link on Mr. Somerhalder’s name it will take you to the IS Foundation, which is all kinds of awesome. You can look up The Vampire Diaries if you want to actually see him.**

    Now, I should probably mention that there are vampires in the Sedition series, they just aren’t undead and their consumption of a specific kind of blood gives them magic. So it’s not like I totally hate vampires, I just hate broody vampires constantly complaining over their eternal youth and fixation on killing people. Which, I’ll give the writers over there at Vampire Diaries two thumbs up for making Damon very different from this stereotype. They have one broodster on the screen (Stefan) so it’s nice to see a counter.

    But I think the real thing that caught me in this show was that the characters were complex enough that I honestly wasn’t certain what any single character would do in any particular scene. Each character brings a certain dynamic to the story and the writers really know how to use that dynamic well. What one person would do when presented with a half-starved, blood-craving, twitchy man is completely different from what Damon would do. So viewers are left wondering what’s going to happen next and who it’s going to happen to.

    And because I relate everything to my personal craft, this teaches me the value of understanding not only the characters on my page but the dynamic that exists between them. The relationships are paramount. Each character exists within the context of these relationships, has a history grounded in these relationships that will dictate future motivations, and every action/reaction that occurs on the page impacts these relationships.

    There are always conversations in the writing community about how important it is to know your character(s). I’m going to stretch that a little further — know your character(s) and how they exist within the context of their relationships.

    I’ve taken to using 3×5 cards dedicated to discussing just one relationship. For example, using the book I am currently editing, one card reads Johanna Rorry vs. Seach Barlow and everything below discusses how Jo feels about Seach, why she feels it, and how it might hinder/help her in the story. One day I will find a program that I actually like and make these notes on the computer instead, but for right now I need something tangible and easy to access.

    In any case, this is what I learned from vampires.

    Or at least what I learned from The Vampire Diaries. I still consider vampirism a weird form of necrophilia and fully admit that I am torn while watching the love stories unfold in the show. On the one hand, I’m a sucker for a good love story. On the other hand, I see dead people kissing. Or worse, living people kissing dead people. How is this not a problem?

    But for now I’m just going to ignore it and enjoy Damon’s snark. He is the king of snark.

     

     

     

  • What Makes a Hero? – Round Robin

    In order for me to continue reading (or watching) a story then the hero has to be intelligent. There are reasons why I enjoy Sherlock and Elementary (or any variation of the Holmes mythology) and it has very little to do with the physical appeal of either lead actor. It’s because I loved the character when I read him.

    I wrote a Top Ten list for myself several years ago and I revisited it in order to see if my tastes had changed any. The answer is no, by the way. I’m pretty much still on the hunt for a real life James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser. That’s the main hero from Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, which I hear is coming to television in the spring.

    In order to answer this month’s Round Robin topic I decided to really dissect Jamie and see what made him so likable for me. Here’s what I came up with.

    #1) He’s smart.

    The poor guy is engulfed in political machinations between his two uncles when we meet him. But he’s managing to keep from having to swear allegiance to the clan (they’re Scottish, for those who haven’t read the books) until the girl comes along and kind of messes things up for him. But even when he is presented to a mob of drunk Scottish men he manages to decline swearing to the clan without getting himself killed in the process.

    #2) He’s brave.

    In the series Jamie has managed to live through several battlefields, but more than that he faces down his personal demons quite often. I don’t want to tell more because I don’t want to ruin the books for anyone who hasn’t yet.

    #3) He laughs.

    I meant it last time when I said that laughter was the truest sense of strength in a person. It isn’t just for women, it’s for men too. A hero has to be able to see his own weaknesses and faults and laugh at them just as much as a heroine does. (Double points if they can laugh at each other and not get annoyed at the other person because of it.)

    So … that’s it. Those are the three reasons why I love Jamie Fraser, and they’re what I look for when I’m doing my writing as well. It probably goes without saying that I dislike brooding characters no matter which gender they happen to be. Broody people make my eye twitch.

    That goes for real life too.

    But honestly, there are authors and genres that I specifically avoid because of the “brood factor.” If a character is so torn up about their past then they are far too weak for me to enjoy. I get that there is a period of grief for loss, I really do. And I know that grief is something that lasts a lifetime. But what I need, what I want, what I look for in a hero is someone who has managed to deal with that grief and live again.

    And I prefer if they’ve managed to do this before Chapter One.

    Round Robin Continues! Check out what some of my fellow authors have to say about this subject!

    Diane Bator at http://dbator.blogspot.ca
    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
    Lynn Crain at http://lynncrain.blogspot.co.at/
    Beverley Bateman at http://beverleybateman.blogspot.com/
    Ginger Simpson  at http://mizging.blogspot.com
    Connie Vines at http://connievines.blogspot.com/
    A.J. Maguire at https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/ (You are Here)
    Rhobin Courtright at http://rhobinleecourtright.com/

  • The Dream Life of an Author — AKA Conquistadors?

    I cannot be the only author out there who wakes up after a dream and wonders what the heck just happened.

    Case in point — last night as I slumbered I found myself being chased by ex-communicated 15th Century Conquistadors.

    I should qualify that statement with the fact that I am not in history class at present, nor have I browsed the history channel since I’m in the middle of a semester and truly do not have the time. So … I have no idea how or why these Conquistadors would show up in my dream. I just know they didn’t like me very much.

    From what I could gather from the one Conquistador who actually befriended me and attempted to aid in my escape from said ex-communicated faction, I had written a book which exposed something about them that they were particularly displeased with.

    Which is ridiculous as I have never attempted to write anything about Conquistadors before. (Though I am sorely tempted to use them now.)

    Oh! And the Conquistador who befriended me?

    Yeah, he totally looked like Benicio Del Torro. Don’t ask me why, but for the sake of this post let’s go ahead and name my Conquistador friend “Benny.”

    So … Benny helps me on this escape, which for reasons unbeknownst to me takes us through an amusement park featuring none other than the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs. At this point in the dream I have established that it is, in fact, one of the most bizarre dreams I have ever had but … Hey, Benicio Del Torro is leading so I’m gonna just go for the ride.

    But then we hide in one of those old photo booth things. Because obviously no self-respecting Conquistador will be caught dead checking out a little photo booth regardless of the fact that our feet can clearly be seen under the curtain.

    At this point I push the button for the photo booth to take our picture. (Heck yes, I did! It’s Benicio Del Torro!) Only instead of spewing out real pictures, it spits out three totally different photographs. Benny proceeds to explain that said photographs represent what we desire most, what we fear the most, and one lie. In no particular order. So you sort of have to guess which is which.

    Bizarre, right?

    Anyway, I only got to see one of the pictures before the alarm woke me up. I’m thinking it was the picture for what I feared the most, but I can’t be sure. All I know is that I sort of laid there for a while wondering what had just happened and where that had come from.

    I cannot be the only author who has moments like this, can I? I mean, I had a dream where I was Medusa once and that was weird, but Conquistadors? Really?

    And if I’m honest, I did use the Medusa dream to write my short story “The Man Who Loved Medusa” so I’m not necessarily complaining. I’ll probably use that photo booth idea somewhere, too. It’s just that these dreams are sometimes so bizarre that I just can’t help mentioning them. I truly hope that I’m not alone in this.

  • Women and Science Fiction

    So … apparently there’s this thing about women writing science fiction. I think I’ve read five or six articles about a couple of male science fiction authors (I really don’t know how many there are or even who they are)  who are displeased by women writing science fiction.

    The general arguments I have encountered in these articles are that women are somehow incapable of writing “real” science fiction. That women tend to muddy the waters of what should be science fiction with romance instead. That somehow this romantic tendency was damaging “real” science fiction.

    (Please tell me I’m not the only one who sees the oxymoron in that sentence. I mean … “fiction” … “real” … C’mon, people.)

    Well, in August of this year my first science fiction — Deviation — will be released by Double Dragon Publishing.

    I am also a woman.

    So I imagine that gives me reason enough to make a response to these naysayers.

    Here it goes …

    When I was in the Army I was trained to roll my socks a particular way. They had to be little balls of white and black (only white and black socks; white for physical training and black for the uniform) and they had to sit side-by-side in perfect arrangement so that when the drill sergeant did a locker check he or she would be pleased.

    Granted, I did this because I wanted to avoid doing push-ups, but the habit eventually became so ingrained in my person that when I got out of training I still folded my socks that way.

    And then one day my (ex)husband folded the socks. It drove me nuts.

    He did it completely the wrong way. There was no tight little ball of black or white. There was no dress-right-dress in the top drawer. There was chaos; little flappy tongues of white and black that only proved what a civilian he was.

    It was offensive, I tell you.

    If I heard the dryer go off I would dash for it, praying I got there before he did so that I could fold those socks the right way. The Army way. Because God help me if my First Sergeant decided to come visit my home and check my sock drawer.

    And then I realized … they were socks.

    It didn’t matter how they were folded or who folded them. Unless, of course, I was about to go out on assignment, in which case the socks really did need to be folded into those little balls to save space in my duffle bag. But that’s besides the point.

    The point is … you’re looking at socks. If you don’t like the way a woman folds them, don’t pick them up. They probably won’t fit you anyway.

    But you know what? They’ll fit somebody. And that’s who they’re for.

    My science fiction is not a romance. It does, however, feature women. A lot of women. This does not make it less science fiction. It just makes it mine.

    Respect the craft regardless of its form. And respect the authors around you.

    Because really, this argument is about as pointless as fighting over socks.

     

     

     

  • What Makes a Heroine? – Round Robin

    What makes a heroine?

    Honestly? A sense of humor.

    The leading lady in any book that I read (or any show that I watch, for that matter) has to have a sense of humor. It doesn’t matter how rough, tough and tumble she is, if she can’t laugh at herself then she’s not worth my time.

    True strength is in the ability to recognize and understand our own weaknesses. People who can do that tend to be able to laugh at themselves.

    I know there are broody-life-sucks-I’m-dark-and-dangerous female characters out there, but they really don’t interest me. I’ve got enough stuff in my own life to brood over, I don’t need a character to show me how to do it right. What I need is a character who can remind me that even when life sucks there’s something to smile about.

    So that’s my fundamental rule while hunting bookshelves. (And if Trenna is any indication, it’s my rule for writing as well.)

    Strength comes in various forms, but I’ll admit that I do enjoy watching a woman punch a man in the throat every now and then. (In fiction, of course.) But as I was writing Persona over the summer I came to one particular scene that lingers in my mind. Megan, the main character, is not a fighter. But her moment of strength is when  she makes the decision to help an escaped POW even though she knows it’ll put her in danger.

    That’s strength.

    I can punch a guy. I’m trained to do it.

    But if I were sitting in Nazi Germany with an unconscious POW in my bathtub and the Gestapo knocking on my door, would I have the strength to hide that man?

    I hope so. I certainly admire that kind of bravery. And that’s the kind of bravery I’m looking for out of a heroine. She has to be able to make the right decision even when it could cost her dearly.

    And hey, if she can punch a few people while she’s at it and cackle like a madwoman, all the better.

    Round Robin Continues with Beverly Bateman! So head on over to her blog and see what she looks for in a heroine.

    And just in case you wanted it, here’s the full list of authors writing for this Round Robin event:

    Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
    Lynn Crain at http://www.awriterinvienna.blogspot.com
    Kay Sisk at http://www.kaysisk.com/
    Ginger Simpson at http://mizging.blogspot.com
    Connie Vines at http://connievines.blogspot.com/
    Geeta Kakade at http://geetakakade.blogspot.com/
    A.J. Maguire at https://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
    Beverley Bateman at http://beverleybateman.blogspot.com/
    Diane Bator at http://dbator.blogspot.ca
    Fiona McGier at http://www.fionamcgier.com
    Rhobin Courtright at http://rhobinleecourtright.com

     

  • Letting the Internal Editor Bare its Teeth

    At the beginning of January I started editing my science fiction – Tapped. (Which is a working title, I think. Every time I read it I twitch a little.) I’m implementing developmental edits that my editor Gabriel Fitzpatrick suggested and I must say I’m having a blast.

    It’s interesting to me that the process I used to loathe (editing) is now one of my favorite parts of writing. It means I have something to work with, for one. And it means I get to let my internal editor bare her teeth.

    During the rough draft, the creation part of the book, I have to kind of muzzle her. She wouldn’t let me get anything done if I didn’t, you know?

    But right now, with Tapped, she has been set loose and is — yet again — ripping this book down to the genuine story underneath. She’s getting down to the story I meant to tell, and revealing the story I unconsciously told as well.

    Perhaps that sentence needs some clarification.

    The original purpose behind Tapped was to write a mother-son story. I was tired of mother-daughter/father-son stories. Being a single parent with a son it is important to me that this kind of relationship be exposed without the gross implications made in Oedipus.

    (Though I will say that I think Greece was pretty messed up when it came to mother’s and sons. Somewhere I read that the whole story of Perseus taking down Medusa was an analogy for Perseus needing to cut off the ties from his mother before he could face Andromeda as a man. )

    Anyway, I wanted to write a mother-son story. So I did.

    But my internal editor exposed that I was not only writing a mother-son story, I was writing a brothers-in-arms story that needed just as much attention. And in fact, in choosing which of the main characters was actually the main character, I discovered that the book is primarily this brothers-in-arms story.

    The mother-son story is a very, very close second. But in order to fully understand it, we have to understand the mother. And her life lives in the context of having been a soldier.

    Thank you, Internal Editor. I wouldn’t have caught that without you.

    One final note on the Internal Editor; her teeth are only as sharp as the books I read.

    Currently I am reading Dawn on a Distant Shore by Sara Donati.  Her writing is absolutely beautiful. I feel like I’m breathing in another time and place while I’m reading it.

    My internal editor is really sharpening her teeth on Donati’s work, bringing into focus word choices and characterization so that when I sit down to edit I can more clearly see and understand the craft of writing. It helps me pay attention to how I write.

    In short; writers are only as good as the books they read.

  • Sequels & Teasers

    I did not finish Usurper by the 2014 deadline. I felt a little bad about that, but then I looked at all I accomplished in 2013 and decided one miss wasn’t going to kill me.

    Besides, I was stuck in Usurper because I knew Trenna and company were going home to Kiavana and I needed to figure out what had changed while they’d been away.

    And boy, a lot has changed.

    When I wrote Saboteur and Nelek had his brief visit home I didn’t have much trouble because … well, because 20 years hadn’t passed and there wasn’t much different. But walking into Kiavana Fortress now has to be both familiar and foreign.

    This is the key to sequels, I think. This mesh of familiar and foreign, the appearance of beloved characters and the surprise of new situations … this is what can make or break a sequel. And it’s supremely hard to do.

    Honestly, I don’t think I quite managed it in Saboteur. In my defense, Nelek isn’t in Kiavana long enough for it to really matter. But in Usurper we get to spend quite a bit of time in the castle, and I am very excited by it.

    Fans of the books should be pleased by what they find. (At least I hope they are. I was.) And because I promised a bit of a teaser on my Facebook page, I’ll post a bit of what I wrote this week.

    —– NOTE: This is an unedited version ——

    Troy dismounted his horse and frowned at the ruins. They’d ridden most of the night, resting the horses just long enough to eat and this was what they were looking for?

    It might have been a manor once but age and weather had crumbled the walls to an almost unrecognizable state. The dilapidated building was situated on a small inlet with a wide, undisturbed lake surrounding it. The forest seemed to be doing its best to overtake the half-collapsed conical towers. Vines and weeds crawled over pale stone, and peppered throughout what he could only assume had once been the courtyard were small trees sprouting between bits of rock.

    He didn’t know whether to be sad that a manor could be reduced to such a state or amazed at the relentless growth slowing eating away at it.

    “What is this place?” Liana asked.

    Her voice was quiet, almost reverent, and when Troy looked at her he saw her shiver. She kept hold of her horse’s reigns but her blue gaze was fixed on the highest wall. She looked unsettled, maybe even frightened, and Troy frowned some more. He looked back at the ruins, trying to see what she saw, but could only find rough rock and greenery. He wondered if something in her Eldur blood was speaking to her but was afraid to ask. He found everything dealing with magic to be deeply troubling.

    “This was my mother’s home,” Nelek said.

    “Grandmother Auliere?” Kaden asked as he dismounted.

    Troy moved to tie his horse to the nearest tree. He felt painfully out of place and needed to do something so he busied himself with unloading his saddle bags. He knew Kaden would scoff at him for thinking it, but when it came to Dyngannon family history he knew he didn’t quite fit. He was human, the son of their mother’s rival, and while Trenna had always called him a sign of peace for the future, his love and involvement in their family could not blot out the past.

    He pulled his sword from the saddle and started strapping it on, barely listening to the conversation behind him.

    “Brenson and I used to spend hours swimming in the lake,” Nelek said. “There’s a river that runs just past Kiavana fortress and ends right here. One of my earliest memories of your mother is in that river. Our camp was overrun and we had to flee.”

    “I didn’t take mother for the running sort,” Liana said.

    “I’m sure your mother would have loved to stay and fight,” Nelek said. “But she was my bodyguard at the time. Her first duty was my safety. So we ran.”

  • Books that Help

    There are many things that have affected my writing over the years. The Army taught me how to capture snippets of scenes on 3×5 cards so as not to lose them. It also gave me my primary character pool — soldiers. (I do so love soldiers. The sense of duty, honor, and respect that goes with them is hard to understand outside of a uniform.)

    I’ve read countless books on how to be a better writer too. My two favorites are Fiction First Aid by Raymond Obstfeld and Fiction Writer’s Brainstormer by James V. Smith Jr. Neither are very well known but both have impacted my writing career in big ways.

    I’ll go ahead and give you a rundown on the three main things I garnered from these books. If you’re an author and you haven’t read them, I encourage you to give them a try. But if you don’t have either the money or the time for another writing craft book then let me give you these three things.

    1) They taught me to view my writing as a craft. 

    “Craft” is a verb. It’s an action, and like any martial arts move you see flaunted on the movie screen it has to be honed in order to be any good. That means practice, and lots of it.

    2) Character boxes

    I adapted this one from Fiction First Aid. On my first pass through the editing process I highlight little boxes around each major and minor character when they show up in the text. Anything that has to do with physical description in particular needs to be drawn out so that I can compare and make certain I haven’t altered anything later in the text.

    I don’t normally have this problem with the main characters, but the people who intersect the story at various points sometimes get lost. These boxes help me find them again and keep them straight.

    3) The Brain Stretch

    This one I adapted from Fiction Writer’s Brainstormer. Near the end of the book Smith gives this worksheet to use to help bring fresh content into your writing. I call it “the brain stretch” and I try to use it once or twice a year.

    It’s a challenge. You find a certain number of expressions, puns, emotional moments, and what have you. I took some of his suggestions out and put my own in so I’ll give you a sample from the one I am working on this month;

    – List 10 characters in 100 words or less.

    – Write the “nugget” for your current work in progress. (The “nugget” is the main thrust of your story in 100 words or less.)

    – List 10 expressions you’ve either heard or read and how you might use them in fiction. (Normally I just write the character most likely to use said expression off to the side.)

    That’s just a sampling of what I’ve adapted this “brain stretch” into. Sometimes I use what I’ve found but often it’s just a way to reset my mind. By the time I’m done with it I feel more capable of doing the work in front of me.

    So! If you haven’t read either of those two books I highly recommend them. But I also have to give the disclaimer that what worked for me won’t necessarily work for you. There’s a reason why the examples I gave above are adaptations of what I read; I’m different from those two authors and had to tweak those exercises to fit me.

    Which, I think, brings me to a fourth lesson they taught me …

    4) Don’t be afraid to adapt teachings into something you can work with.

    In the end, it’s your craft. Other people might write, but only I can write like A.J. Maguire.

  • A Look At 2014

    Woot! It’s time to make my list of things for next year!

    Really, I love this post. It gets me all excited for what I’m about to work on. I did spend a lot of time playing with this new computer and its handy little calendar, so I have a lot of big ideas to put up here.

    So, without further ado, here is my list for 2014.

    #1) Graduate. (That’s right, people. In May 2014 I will officially graduate from Northwest Nazarene University with my Bachelor of Arts.)

    #2) Submit Persona to the ABNA contest in January. (That’s the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. It’s worth a shot, you know?)

    #3) Implement edits from developmental editor (Yay, Gabriel Fitzpatrick!) on Tapped. (Yes, that book I finished last year that went out to Alpha/Beta readers and a supremely wonderful editor will be edited during the first 5 months of 2014. It wouldn’t normally take that long to do edits but … you know … I’ll still be in school around that time.)

    #4) Finish Residual Haunting. (Yep, that’s the novel I started for NaNoWriMo this year.)

    #5) Revamp the synopsis and query letters for the revised Tapped novel. And then Send. Out. Those. Queries. (Non-negotiable there.)

    #6) (Starting in September) Revise Persona and start formatting it for publication.

    #7) Participate in NaNoWriMo again. (Hopefully I’ll win, too. I won’t be in school anymore so I won’t have that excuse if I lose.)

    #8) On December 2, 2014 Persona will be released as my first self-published novel. (This would be my big, scary, impossible goal for the year. I’ve never released something on my own and it’s going to be a challenge.)

    #9) I would really, really, really like it if I could climb a mountain. (Let’s hope that I get a car that works and the state of Idaho doesn’t catch fire again.)

    #10) If I can swing it, I would love to be a Secret Santa for someone next year. I’ve had one this year and it has been wonderful fun.

    … And there you have it. My goals for 2014.

    There are a lot more on there than last year, and most of them have to do with writing. Yes, that is deliberate. After graduating I intend to make a big professional push in that direction. That’ll mean marketing and all that jazz as well — which I admit I have no idea how to do.

    But I figure I went to school so I could do what I love. And what I love is telling stories that examine who we are as people, that expose both the ugly parts of us and the beauty we are capable of. The degree that I’ll have is really just another tool to help me tell those stories.

    So here I am rolling up my sleeves, getting ready for one awesome 2014. I hope everyone is as excited as I am for the future.