We’re at the end of this series by Haley Horton of Teacher Vision. Because there are so many questions, I’ve divided them into parts. For a review, here they are:

• Part One – personal life questions
• Part Two – writing inspiration questions
• Part Three – writing method questions
• Part Four – school and learning questions
• Final – last questions

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Final questions

Is there anything else you’d like to add that I haven’t included?

I think one of the things that writers often worry about is whether or not they should get an MFA. I have one! It’s an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. I knew for a long time I always wanted to go to graduate school for writing, but I wanted to pick a program that focused on commercial genres (mine being fantasy and horror), the publishing business, and most importantly, prepare students to teach.

Seton Hill fulfilled all of those requirements for me. I especially appreciated the teaching component, because the whole reason why I wanted the degree was so I could teach students at the college level. For most schools, you need at least a Master’s to do this. My MFA is considered a Master’s, but it is in fact a terminal degree–the highest level of education available in a specific field of study or professional discipline, indicating the maximum level of academic expertise.

I wouldn’t have been able to adjunct at North Central State College or Zane State College without my MFA. I also think it played a role in me securing my placement on the JET Program, although you do not need a graduate degree to apply (only a Bachelor’s). So, to me, my MFA has been invaluable.

It also taught me about writing fiction, which I really hadn’t seriously attempted before. My graduate thesis was my first novel, and I was completely clueless for a huge chunk of my time in graduate school. I learned from the bottom up. This is another invaluable piece of my education.

The only downside: I’m in an incredible amount of debt. SHU’s WPF program is expensive, and while I got the scholar’s discount, I didn’t get financial aid beyond student loans. Because I was poor (still am) I had to borrow more than the cost of tuition so I could afford to travel to Pennsylvania, stay in a hotel, feed myself, etc., for every residency–which happened each January and June. My degree cost me about $100,000, and while I didn’t think I could pay it back with book sales, I thought for certain teaching college would allow me to pay it back reasonably over time.

The problem my school didn’t teach me–adjuncting doesn’t really cover cost of living very well. My classmates insist that my professors clearly said that adjuncting wasn’t sustainable, but honestly, I don’t remember hearing that from them, or else I would have reconsidered. Also, nobody ever mentioned the actual pay or broke down contact hours vs. hours actually worked.

For example, I thought that $33/hour meant 20 hours a week at that rate ($660/week or $2640/month) because adjuncting is part time. I have never seen that kind of money before, and I thought it was livable for someone like me. It turns out, you only get paid per contact hour per class. If I teach one class, that means it’s $33 x 3 hours = 99, which means $396 a month. See how you can’t survive on that? Right now, I’m only able to teach two courses, and if the pay is like this, you can see why I still have to live at home and borrow the family car for work. I can’t afford to live on my own or buy a new (or used) car.

So…that’s the risk with getting an MFA. The real reason you should get it is if you want to teach college, as it is a requirement, but you also have to cope with the reality of the pay–it’s getting harder to find full-time or tenured work as a professor, so adjuncting is likely where you’ll end up. And now you know how it pays.

The bigger question writers have is do I need to get an MFA to be a better writer? And my answer to that is, no. While it did help me become a better writer and learn how to write fiction, there are a myriad of ways to educate yourself and improve on your own.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

How can readers discover more about you and your work?

On social media, I used Instagram, Threads, and Facebook the most. While I have the most followers on X (Twitter), I hardly post there anymore…it’s been months. I think that site has become a cesspool and the only reason why I haven’t deleted my account is because I’m trying to protect my name and make sure nobody impersonates me.

The primary way to find out about me is either through this website OR, even better, my monthly-ish newsletter. I really do try to stick to once-a-month postings, but if there’s a contest or cover reveal or some sort of special publishing news, I’ll throw in an extra newsletter. I stay pretty consistent and newsletter readers always find out things first–even before this website or my social media.

Can you share any upcoming projects or plans for future books?

After “The Darkening Gate” trilogy is completed, I do want to write more, but my brain is currently low on ideas. Although I did come up with the idea of a royal family who drinks blood to stay immortal, but it’s inspired by the Gourmets from Tokyo Ghoul, in that the blood comes from rare delicacies beyond human consumption. I want to put it back in the realm of fairy tales, but that’s about as much of that as I’ve imagined. I hope more will become clearer to me as I near the end of The Fear and the Flame, the last book in my trilogy.

How do you hope your work will impact your readers?

I think the most important thing for me is for readers to see aspects of themselves in my work–for their thoughts and feelings to feel validated in some way, and for them not to be alone.

On a more personal note, I’ve had a lot of terrible experiences with dating and the low self-esteem that can grow with that, and in every book of mine I want to include at least one relationship worthy of modeling…

In Son of the Siren, it’s Kitra being a role model for readers in the way that she treats her lover, Lirien. In The Name and the Key, with some exceptions because Andresh is human and flawed, he treats Lily well. If I get to writing that vampire/fairy tale story I hinted at above, there will also be a “good relationship” in the book.

The takeaway from the inclusion of model relationships is that I want readers to understand what is acceptable and a bare minimum requirement in a good relationship, and things should not be transactional, abusive, etc. Because I had issues loving myself, I accepted less than the minimum in my relationships, and made excuses to stay longer than I should have because I was afraid of being lonely. Well…there will always be at least one pairing in my books that demonstrate what I have learned in hindsight, and show what a healthy relationship looks like, even when it isn’t perfect.

What is the best advice you have received as a writer?

Ha! I wrote about this in a separate blog entry: The Best Writing Advice I’ve Ever Gotten. Because I want you to go and read it, I won’t blab the advice here, but it came from one of my SHU mentors, Tim Waggoner, and enormously prolific horror author.