Day: March 10, 2020

Hi, friends. I’m super excited! Instead of sharing a book review today, I’m sharing news of my own release! I had originally intended to do a cover reveal before publishing In Search of McDoogal, but then decided to go all in.

If you’re a regular follower of my blog, you already know McDoogal is a different type of story for me. Not only can you read it in ninety minutes or less, but it’s light-hearted in tone. No creatures or beasties, no dark or brooding mystery to solve. Just two guys on a day trip, trying to recover a…well…I’ll let the excerpt explain.

In the excerpt below, Brady Conrad has just arrived at the house of his friend, Declan Fitzgerald. These two have known each other since high school and are colleagues at an institute dedicated to marine and environmental research. After dragging Declan from bed with a rude…

A few weeks ago, I had a blog-conversation with Jacqui Murray of Worddreams about editing out gerunds (those “ing” words). I’ve heard many times that these words should be avoided when writing fiction but never understood why. While some writing no-nos stab me in the eye every time I read them (such as filter words), gerunds never really bothered me.

So, a little research later, here’s the scoop:

Gerunds do three things:

They express ongoing action when combined with auxiliary (helping) verbs:
She was washing her hands.
The snow will be piling up all night.

They act as nouns:
Vacuuming kept the dog hair to a minimum.
Walking helps me stay healthy.

They act as adjectives:
The falling apple bonked her on the head.
A failing grade won’t get me into college.

Opportunity #1

Present, future, and past progressive verb combinations

When combined with little “helping” verbs such as