My Muse's Musings

When I first started writing to be published, I studied my craft for many years. I practiced my craft too though nothing I wrote at that time was ever published. My writing wasn't ready then.  I have 9 manuscripts under my bed that will never see the light of day. And each one has a spark of possibility but the skill is missing. So they will never be published.  During my learning period  I purchased a book titled,   The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes and Heroines, Sixteen Master Archetypes written by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever and Sue Viders.  I read it a few days later. Rather I consumed it. It gave me an insight into building characters that I hadn’t experienced before. For weeks afterward, I found myself analyzing every character in every book I read and every movie I watched. And it was fun to figure them out. It also gave me food for thought when I created my own characters. I attempted to keep my characters evolving from one archetype to anoth...

Steampunk is a genre inspired by a mixture of the real industrialization of Victorian and Edwardian England and the science fiction literature penned during the period. Authors such as Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are all considered influences of the genre. Ask anyone who has written a Steampunk story and they'll admit to having read some or all of these authors. I have. AN AUTOMATED DEATH The term Steampunk came about in the 1980's Until that time, the genre was called cyberpunk or just Victorian Fantasy. Writer K.W. Jeter was given credit for the Steampunk moniker. It was an apt description because of the steam powered engines developed during the Victorian Era and the manipulation that writers of the 1980's through today use to hype the history to include more and more fanciful inventions that pushed the genre. Because the stories written during the real Era were so imaginative and built around that grain of ...

I believe animals have souls. I’ve had too many pets who have loved me, and whom I have loved, not to believe that there’s a special bond forged between humans and animals when you take them into your home. Scientists say that animals are incapable of emotion, or that they aren’t intelligent enough to love.   But all pet owners who have experienced that special kind of bond know that’s a bunch of horse hockey. One of our pets whose love had to be earned more than most was Gray Dog. When my children started calling him Gray Dog he wasn’t our dog. He was owned by a man who lived in a trailer down the hill from our house. For 4 years I snuck down and gave him food, water, dog biscuits and even bones while the owner was gone. During those 4 years I never once saw the man or his wife and son offer a loving pat or a kind word to the dog. He was invisible to them. They’d get out of their car and walk right past him, ignoring his tentative wagging tail, and walk into...

Sabrina York has a new historical romance just released September 1st!!!  Hannah and the Highlander by Sabrina York First in a brand-new series about the bold, brawny men of the Scottish Highlands--and the lovely lasses who bring them to their knees… Coming September 1st Highlanders are her weakness. Hannah Dounreay has no time for suitors who only seem interested in her family's land, which she manages as well as any man. If she marries, she wants to be loved for the educated, independent woman she is. But when a strong, silent--and spectacularly handsome--Highlander saves her from a violent attack, her heart is stirred. Who is this man? And if he asks for Hannah's hand, will she be able to resist him? Love is the most powerful weapon of all. Alexander Lochlannach, Laird of Dunnet, has no time to lose. The Highlands are in an uproar as clans battle for land--without mercy--and Alexander can't afford to fall for the wildly attractive, strong-wi...