The Power of Imagination

This is a guest post by author Jenelle Leanne Schmidt. When I was asked to write a post about something that inspires my writing, my mind went instantly blank. I struggled with jotting down one idea, then another, but none of it felt right. You see, I’m not entirely certain I can point to a [...]

What Inspires My Writing (Pt 2) – and Giveaway!

This is a guest post by author H.S.J. Williams. When I was a little girl, there was a book on the shelf that fascinated me. It portrayed a young native girl sitting on a grassy hill, a wolf lying by her side. Her pensive expression, the wind in her hair...it all evoked my imagination. I [...]

Fairy Tale Giveaway

FAIRY-TALE FORUM For those of you who haven't heard, author Shonna Slayton and I have started a shiny new group on Facebook called Fairy-Tale Forum. If you're not part of it yet, please come on over and join! We have lots of fun stuff planned, and hope to see some fun fairy-tale-ish things from the [...]

Books from the Emerald Isle

Two weeks ago, my mother and sister visited Ireland. Before they left, they asked what type of souvenirs I’d like them to bring back for me. I didn’t have to think about it long before I decided exactly what I wanted. I’m sure you may even be able to guess . . . I asked [...]

Book Blurb Blues

I've been in the process of writing and polishing the back cover description for my upcoming novella. And I'll tell you the truth - it's not fun at all. I keep wanting to shout, "But I'm a book writer, not a blurb writer! I'm good at unraveling my story over the long haul, not condensing [...]

Ramblings on Writing Spaces

Growing up, all my stories and poems and songs and plays - even my first couple of books - went into spiral notebooks. They were badly smudged, with that pesky left-hander pencil smear across most of the pages. I can still remember the smell of pencil shavings and the satisfying rustle of pages turning. I [...]

An Allegorical God

God in allegory. Even though I'm an allegorical writer myself, I often have issues with this one. Well, maybe not issues. Let's just say I approach it carefully. God is sovereign. God is almighty and all-knowing. His ways are not our ways. How, then, can any writer really do Him justice in an allegory? We seek [...]

Last Words

Characters die. Sometimes they're characters we don't like. But sometimes they're characters who mean so much to us that we mourn their deaths almost as a friend would do. I've never liked killing off my own characters - even the truly evil ones. Yet sometimes an author must. Recently I had to work on writing [...]

WANTED: Newsletter Signer-Uppers!

Yep, I finally got a newsletter. See the button for signup, over in my sidebar? Yeah, that's it! For those of you wondering: What's the difference between signing up for a newsletter and following a blog? Well, there are several things that set newsletters apart. My newsletters won't be as ... ahem, random ... as [...]

True Evil in Christian Fiction: Where Do You Stand?

Two things happened recently which made me want to explore this question, which is a rather broad one: Should there be evil … true evil … in Christian fiction? The first thing that made me begin thinking about it was a conversation I had with a family member. She told me that she couldn’t understand [...]