Acknowledgments

I owe a big debt of gratitude to all of the writers that openly shared their need, and often desperation for and resistance to, plot and structure and scene. I may never have self-published the original Blockbuster Plots if not for them, which would never have led to The Plot Whisper and best-selling author status. I know for a fact that A Spiritual Guide for Writers: Secrets of Personal Transformation would have remained hidden and unrealized.

I continue to give thanks to Teresa LeYung Ryan and Luisa Adams for their love, generosity, and belief in me. Added gratitude goes to Luisa for her gentle and nurturing nature and a shared belief in the healing power of spirit.

Thanks also to the following:

Melanie Rigney for being the first person to believe in my approach to teaching writers how to plot, and for believing in me. Thank you for your encouragement when I needed it most.

Phil Sexton for his patience and his offer to breathe freshness into the original Blockbuster Plots, which has sent me on a twelve-year journey into the heart of stories, writers, and me.

Rachel Randall for taming what often felt like chaos, editing with a brilliant eye for detail, and caring for and vastly improving Blockbuster Plots. Cris Freese for seamlessly stepping in with his support.

Writer’s Digest for their endorsement from the very beginning. Thank you for finding merit in my work as early as 2003.

There are many to thank in the intervening years between the first Blockbuster Plots and what Writing Blockbuster Plots is today, including the University of Santa Cruz Extension, the California Writers Club, Brian Parker, various writers’ groups, the San Francisco Writing Conference, Jill Corcoran, Adams Media, Peter Archer, Paula Munier, and Jordan Rosenfeld.

I am forever grateful to my husband, Bobby Ray Alderson, for his love and protection, for never letting up on me to finish as I labored to bring my original vision of Blockbuster Plots into form, and for his constant and passionate belief in me.