“Writing Group”

Every Wednesday night, or at least as many as I can manage, I meet with three friends for what we call “Writing Group.”

Most of the time, we meet at an independent coffee shop in Historic Ellicott City, Maryland. The funniest part about it is that sometimes we don’t get much writing done (we went to a baseball game a few weeks ago). In fact, only three of us are actually writers! But what’s important is that it’s a great time to be social with some of my favorite people. They’ve been incredibly supportive of my fledgling writing career, so I wanted to thank them publicly.

I’ve known David since I was in college (though we did not attend school together), and he’s been a good friend for a long time. He’s also the Dungeon Master of my Friday night gaming group. Recently, he has branched out from gaming into making some awesome first attempts at his own original fiction. I’ve mentioned it here before, but you should all go check out his gaming blog, Tower of the Archmage, for cool gaming-related content. As incentive, he’s currently running a giveaway for a signed copy of Steel Magic!

Sarah has been my friend for the shortest amount of time. I met her through the local write-ins for NaNoWriMo in 2014 and remained in contact after the fact. She doesn’t write “professionally,” but I’m in awe of the fact that she has won NaNo four times so far!! If you’re looking for another way to snag a free copy of Steel Magic, she regularly does book giveaways of all sorts on the /r/Wishlist subreddit page, and I hear my newest book is coming up soon!

And finally, Julia! I poached met her a few years ago after being introduced by some mutual friends and we’ve been besties ever since. We’re both huge Supernatural fans, and she is definitely the Dean to my Sam. We could even cosplay that pretty effectively… She’s the one who posted the first bit of Steel Empires fan art, and she texted me a picture of more today!

If this doesn’t make you want to immediately go out and buy my books, I don’t know what will!

To make a long story short, writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Every successful writer I know is helped along by their friends, and I’m lucky to have mine.