My contribution this week to the Writers Vineyard, the blog where Champagne authors talk about the experience, joys, sorrows, fears, and endless new discoveries of writing. It starts with a fear – the fear that I’m really only writing one story, over and over again, just in different guises.

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Sometimes I worry that everything I write winds up circling the same basic theme.  “I should branch out,” I think. “I should try something different.” And I do. My first novel, due out next spring, is about stupid but brutal aliens, long-lost twins, a plot to destroy humanity, and a mini-Schnauzer who saves the world. I’ve had a short story published about an American living in eastern Europe, trying to deal with a strange Easter custom, and one about a taxi driver who takes a stand against a belligerent fare in a Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru. My second novel, the one that’s giving me serious fits as I try to ready it for submission right now, is about a woman’s power to write fables that come true and wreak havoc for herself, her friends, and her love life. The third novel, 2011’s NaNoWriMo yarn, puts an accidental murderess in the role of Death, and is named for a greyhound who was mistakenly made a saint by the Catholic church hundreds of years ago.

Click here to read the full post on the Writers Vineyard.