CaitlinDBurnside

My pen names are "Caitlin D Burnside" and "Aspen Winters". I am a Storyteller. That is the title I claim, the mantle I wear with more pride than any other. “Novelist” feels too formal, too bound by the rules of a craft that, in my view, has forgotten its first and most sacred purpose: to tell a good tale. My process is simple. A subject finds me — a whisper of a theme, a ghost of an idea. It might be the weight of a forgotten oath or the chill of a shadow in a stone corridor. Then, I decide for whom I shall spin this yarn. The audience shapes the voice, you see. A story for the weary soul requires a different cadence than one for the curious mind. My “Creative Writing” education was not found in modern manuals that dissect plot structure like a surgeon. It was learned in the telling itself. It was in the patient drawing of a character, in tracing the intricate web of how they love, betray, and endure one another. The style? It was the rhythm of the paragraph, the de...