If you’re a newsletter friend or regularly visit my website or follow me on social media, you know that The Husband built me … er, us a stone circle. Every year on the summer solstice we go out and watch the sunrise. The temperature is cool, so The Husband builds a roaring fire (actually, he… Read More

The best writing advice I give is very succinct. Put your butt into the chair and write. There’s no substitute for experience. But since I’m seldom without something to say (ask my husband), I wrote up a random series of: CHRISTINA DODD’S WRITING TIPS About Characters: Plot is important. Characters are more important. Readers must… Read More

We talk to our computers, our dogs, our cats and our fictional characters. We’re not so good with real people.  The opportunity to use funny-sounding words thrills us. Words like akimbo, catawampus, gobsmacked. When someone says something witty or wise, we remember and someday it will reappear in a manuscript. Authors collect names: people names,… Read More

I was once asked to write a chapter for HOW TO WRITE A ROMANCE, the book Romance Writers of America published in conjunction with Writer’s Digest. As a subject for me, they suggested Selling A Book Can Change Your Life. I burst into laughter. I called my published friends. I read them the subject. Each… Read More

  ON THE OTHER HAND … Every writer faces a moment in her career when she realizes that a good part of success has nothing to do with writing skill or career planning, and everything to do with pure, dumb luck. For me, that moment arrived at a conference in St. Louis in 1993 when… Read More

Writers and readers often ask me my method of writing a book. And I always say with great assurance, “It depends.” You’d think I know the best way to write. I’ve completed sixty-three full-length books — that includes the two that I wrote that weren’t published,  my newest suspense thriller, EVERY SINGLE SECRET and the next… Read More

C’mon, you know you’ve done it. You wake up with PMS and figure you’ll make an emergency run to the grocery store for chocolate, even though you look like hell — but who cares, you never see anyone there who knows you? And you meet your minister, your fifth grade teacher, the guy you’re secretly… Read More