So much for fall like weather. It's edging toward 100 again today. But that's okay. Summer's grip is waning. I'm SO ready for fall. My friend, historical author Laura Frantz (The Frontiersman's Daughter, Courting Morrow Little), is hosting debut historical author...

Over at Novel Matters there's a discussion going about encouragement, and the question was posed who is that person, or persons, who stand out in our memories as those who encouraged us as writers. I was immediately reminded of the first time someone (unsolicited and...

I expect there are going to be many more "firsts" in my near future than I've experienced in a long while. Some of them honestly I'm trying not to think too much about yet, but yesterday I took care of a fun first: the need to have a few head shots taken for... well,...

In the months since April 2009, when I attended the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference (blogged about here), my historical novel, Kindred, has been sitting on several agents' desks. I've spent most of the past year waiting to see if one of these agents who...

Last post I wrote a bit about my struggle to write again after chemotherapy, and how different my process was compared to how I wrote before chemo. Now that I'm on my second novel since that period, I'm noticing my writing process edging back toward the old pattern. I...

I don't think I've posted this before. It's the bibliography of my research for Kindred. Each of these books I've read in full (in a few cases, in part). I'm sure I forgot to log a few along the way, and this doesn't account for the hours spent on internet sites, or...

Today would have been my Hiero's fourteenth birthday. He died last summer of cancer. I still have an ache, even though we've adopted crazy two-year-old Dargo to fill that place in our hearts and home. Rest in peace, buddy, up in your favorite huckleberry patch. We...

I've done here what I'm told one should never do in a novel, led off with backstory. I'll do my best to keep it brief. By 1999 I’d written several novels targeted for the Christian (CBA) market. I’d come close to being published a time or two, met some wonderful...

So let it be done! It's taken three years and seven months, but at last (at last!) it is finished. The first draft of my historical novel, KINDRED (working title), begun in April 2004, sits cooling its heels on my hard drive (and my jump drive, and various piles of...