Growing up, there were a few key phrases that my mom used to teach us lessons. I don’t know if she thought it was easier to hear lessons in the form of idioms that made them easier to remember or learn, but whatever the reason, she had a lot of them.

“Don’t shit where you eat.”

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

The one that stuck with me the most throughout life and is something I use in my business is “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

The premise of most of these lessons is pretty sound…

Each person reacts differently when they realize they want to write a book. It’s the easiest part of the process for some, whereas it may be the hardest for others. It could be as simple as “I have this idea, I’m going to write about it!” or it could feel like a mountainous task. So, how do you start writing?

When I decided I was going to write a book, I had more of the second reaction. I knew that I wanted it to be something serious, not to approach it as a hobbyist, but to create a successful career…

Much like moving to a stage and standing behind a podium to deliver a message, your author platform is where you share your thoughts and ideas. Loosely defined, it comprises all the places where you communicate, such as your social media posts, podcasts, author website, YouTube videos, newsletters, TikTok, and more. It is anything that you use to reach the world. So if you’re prone to sending tiny pieces of rolled-up missives by carrier pigeons, then that’s part of your platform.

Having an effective author platform serves many purposes. It can help curb the cost of paid marketing, turn followers…

One of the most important things is having a job. We work to pay the bills, and let’s face it, job security is almost nonexistent as we come into the new year. In the last year millions of people in the U.S. have lost their jobs.

If you are one of the people lucky enough to hold on to your job through 2020, the last thing you’re thinking about is leaving your job, right? Wrong.

There are plenty of reasons to leave a job when the economy is good, and the world isn’t struggling with a pandemic. But many of…

Wherever you look these days, you come across toxic people. We have all seen them on social media and met them in real life. Unluckily, some of us have even dated them. We have even been them.

They are an epidemic plaguing the world around them, feeding on attention, likes, and social validation. At times it feels as if they are multiplying, like some sort of nightmare episode of Black Mirror, inflicting us with their narcissistic tendencies. They infest our Facebook feeds, YouTube comment sections, and our dating app DMs.

But how do you know when their profile picture looks…

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. — Maya Angelou

It sounds like an exaggeration to say that I could have lost my life recently, but it doesn’t feel that way. According to the Washington Post, 30,000 women lost their lives as a result of domestic violence in 2018. That’s 137 women worldwide each and every day. I don’t think it’s that big of a leap to believe that some of these events started out small but quickly turned deadly.

Over the holidays, when tensions were high due to the pandemic, political unrest, and pressures…

Have you ever had a story that you just couldn’t bring yourself to write? Maybe you’re afraid to face it, or you think you’ll be judged. You can’t bring yourself to put the words down on the page, and it probably has a lot to do with fear.

I tend to stray away from writing the things that make me feel ashamed. The situations that I got myself into by making the wrong choice, the relationships my friends have told me to leave many times, when I let people hurt me instead of leaving.

Those are the hardest stories for…

Every year during the month of November, thousands of people commit to writing a novel. NaNoWriMo or Nation Novel Writing Month puts the word count limit of fifty thousand words on the event. If you write every day, that comes out to only writing one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven words each day.

The last time I took part in NaNoWriMo was in 2018. I was pregnant with my second child. That pregnancy was hard on my body, and at the beginning of October, I was placed on bed rest. My son was in preschool and was gone four days…