“Write what you know,” the voice said. Writer Bob Mueller is still trying to figure out where the voice came from.
When you get right down to it, Bob tells stories about emotions. He finds them in his own experiences as a divorced father and family member of a sex abuse survivor, and from the people he meets. He puts himself in someone else’s shoes, and teases out their feelings. Then he blends that with bits and pieces of history and experience he’s absorbed in life, and crafts a story that might have been inspired by a song, or a news article. But it’s about emotions in the end.
Born in north Texas and raised in southeastern Ohio, Bob has always been interested in the story. He was drawn more by the individual tales of terror and bravery in historical war accounts than the strategy that brought opposing forces together.
After a variety of jobs in Central Ohio that never seemed to satisfy the itch he didn’t understand, Bob, his wife, and their seven kids traveled the United States for seven months in an RV, an adventure that led them on a rambling path from central Ohio to Green Country, Oklahoma.
Now Bob scratches that itch by writing the stories he finds in songs, or by reading a news story and wondering, “What if it happened this way instead?” He’s a member of Tulsa NightWriters and Oklahoma Writer’s Federation, a father of eight, and a pastor’s husband. His books are available at your favorite online retailer.
Keep in touch with him on Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. He’s everywhere!
Guest Blog Guidelines
Thinking about sharing a post here? Great! I’d love to hear from you! Guest posts are good for both of us. Your readers come here and see my other posts. My readers get to hear from someone else. We both win!
First time guest blogging? Not sure what to do? Rachel Thompson has a great piece on writing guest posts.
- Longer posts are encouraged – at least 1,200 words. I prefer original/unpublished content.
- Topics are varied, hence the blog title of Writer | Unfocused. What am I looking for? If you’ve got an idea that doesn’t fit into one of these categories, contact me via my Contact page and we’ll figure it out.
- Human trafficking/slavery.
- Wrongful convictions and cold cases.
- Police & prosecutorial misconduct.
- Your author journey. Where are you in your journey? How did you get there? What’s your voice?
- A counter-point to or further discussion of anything I’ve talked about on the blog.
- Any content submitted for guest posts must be substantially author-created. No posts created purely via AI language models will be accepted.
- Images are encouraged, but you are responsible for making sure that all images must be properly attributed and credited. If you use an AI image generator, you must indicate that. Please keep images to no more than 600 pixels on the long side.
- Please include a short bio (75-ish words), and a headshot if you have one. Make sure your bio links back to your own website!
- Write your optimized headline using CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer.
- Send it all to me at least a week out from the date you want it to run. I prefer the blog post in Word .docx format, but I can read most common file formats. If you don’t have a date in mind, I’ll look at my schedule and pick a date.
- Once we have the schedule set, we’ll both post it to our social media streams. We’ll both watch the post throughout the day and respond to comments as we can.
If that sounds interesting, hit me up from my Contact page, and tell me what you’re thinking about.
Generative AI
I will clearly label any content created with the use of generative AI. That use is currently limited to article titles. Any images created with generative AI will be labeled as such in the caption and ALT text. As a rule, the images you’ll see in posts are my own work or are downloaded from sites like Pixabay. I will not knowingly publish any guest posts created with the use of generative AI.
FTC Disclosure
The Federal Trade Commission requires that I disclose any relationship I have between a product manufacturer or service provider when I write about a product or service. I receive a small commission for purchases made via affiliate links on this site such as Amazon. The above does not affect my opinion of those products and services. I am committed to providing helpful and entertaining articles to my readers and only share products I think you will enjoy.