Welcome to Pairings

Let yourself become enveloped by the natural beauty in Big Bend National Park, Texas, in twelve photos.

Because there's so much to lose if walls are erected along the Rio Grande River as it trickles through Big Bend National Park, I wrote my elected officials asking them to adhere to our state's slogan, DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS. Yes, you can write to Abbott, Cruz, and Cornyn, and more...

Vacancy, Unveiled: A struggling single mother and a suspicious widow both have a habit of hiding from hard truths, until a brutal tragedy in an unforgiving Texas town forces them to face what they’re hiding, and fill the vacancy in their own hearts. New fiction in The Dust Series. Based on a true story.

My characters will always be with me, even after Vacancy is published, progressing through joy, pain, and growth, just like I do. So I wrote a letter to my characters.

There’s a saying in real estate, that it’s all about location. Location. Location. Location. It’s just as true in writing historical novels.

Every May, We Honor Texas Writers. Here Are Nine Compulsively Readable Books from Texas Authors, Including Thrillers, Historical Fiction, Memoir, Women's Fiction, and Historical Romance.

Is the Texas thistle the prettiest of the weeds masquerading as flower?

That depends. Are you superstitious? No matter, using the power of three in photography always makes a picture better. Call it impact, order, or balance, here's how images rely on what's pleasing to the eye.

Read why we Remember Pearl Harbor, which continues to as infamous as predicted, nearly 85 years later.

If our selfies are our way of putting our best selves out there, these staged pictures show us little of who we really are. Can't we tell worlds more about people by looking at the books on their shelves?

The Historical Novel Society Highlights Unspoken as an Editors' Choice selection: A book that “will stick around in your mind, because legacy isn’t just what’s passed down. It’s what you refuse to let slip away.”

A reviewer calls Unspoken "Both heart-wrenching and hopeful, shining with the grit of those who dare to redefine what 'home' truly means."

To ignore a creative funk is to imperil your creative stamina. Here's how to take a time out to tend to your creative soul.

Like superheroes with super powers, we creatives must use our gift with care — nourish it, tend to it, and practice it.

See 1945 through the eyes of someone who lived it, 80 years ago, when the headlines called it: PEACE on V/J Day. Victory Over Japan was declared and in Unspoken, Ruby Lee Becker recounts the day.

With new research showing the world's fresh water supply is quickly disappearing, it's not a leap for an author to plot a dystopian waterless future — and another novel in The Dust Series

On This Day: On July 19, 1937, the search for Amelia Earhart's plane ended. "She was in rebellion against a world that had been made, for women, too safe, too confining."

How did Ruby Lee Becker, the main character in Unspoken: A Dust Novel, become a heroine on the classic hero’s journey?

Distractions are what I'm facing hourly, as I prepare to launch my first published novel. So I wrote this advice to self to distract me from distractions.

How I wrote a historically accurate, wickedly fictional novel by gathering a dozen years of Texas research—on wheels, by click, and by page