First, if you found my site through some strange combination of search terms… welcome! No matter how you got here, I’m glad to have you as a reader for as long as you stay. I haven’t paid much attention to my website stats as I’ve been working on this blogging thing. The stats tend to make me feel like the effort I put into the blog isn’t really worth it, that no one is reading after all. But sometimes I check out the stats, especially how people are finding my site, and there are some pretty funny search terms that […]
Blog
178 posts
This is a soundtrack / playlist that I’ve been listening to while I work on A Long Forgotten Song, my new Christian urban fantasy supernatural thriller series. Unfortunately I can’t figure out how to reorder the songs, so it’s not exactly the order I want, but oh well.
Val of Silk Screen Views was kind enough to interview me in conjunction with a review of The King’s Sword. His Royal Highness Hakan Ithel was also gracious enough to appear for an interview! Thank you, Val, for the review and interviews, and thank you to Silk Screen Views for hosting us.
One of the things I’ve realized about my writing is that it’s easy for me to write and edit and write and edit and write and edit some more and then rethink everything and lose confidence and…. never actually finish a piece. There are a few reasons for that: lack of planning (I tend toward pantsing, as in writing by the seat of my pants, even though planning would probably work better for me), lack of focused time to really dive into my work and figure out where I am and what needs to be done, and most of all, […]
One of the concepts I’ve found myself exploring through my writing is heroism. What makes a hero heroic? What makes a hero believable? What makes him (or her) interesting, charismatic, courageous, or just stubborn? I don’t mean just a protagonist in the literary sense. A protagonist can be a hero, an anti-hero, or anything in between. I enjoy reading about all kinds of characters, but I find myself drawn to the heroes… the ones who do something truly great, even when it costs them everything. So what makes a hero heroic? Courage? Love? Self-sacrifice? Physical Courage It’s hard to imagine […]
On the first anniversary of publishing my first book, The King’s Sword, I thought it would be appropriate to post some statistics. It’s a bit scary to share book stats like this, but here goes: Books Published: 2 – The King’s Sword and A Cold Wind Books in Progress: 4 – A Long-Forgotten Song (publication in March 2014 – preorder here!), the as-yet-untitled sequel to A Long-Forgotten Song (publication in April/May 2014), Book 3 in the Erdemen Honor series (also untitled, publication in March 2014?), and Book 4 in the Erdemen Honor series (publication TBD) Books Backburnered: 2 Short Stories […]
A Althea and Markon B Sir Percival Blakeney C the Marquis de Carabas Sidney Carton D Edmond Dantes (The Count of Monte Cristo) E F G Samwise Gamgee (Sam) H I J Jack K L M Althea and Markon N O P Puddleglum Q R Reepicheep Steve Rogers / Captain America S T U V Jean Valjean W Andrew “Ender” Wiggin X Y Z
Andrew “Ender” Wiggin. Since Orson Scott Card wrote Ender’s Game, thousands upon thousands of young people have read it and thought “I am Ender.” Brilliant (we’d all love to be as bright as Ender), picked on, manipulated, misunderstood, yet ultimately triumphant (sort of?)… it’s easy to identify with him. The series continues through a number of other books, but I think it’s best to read Ender’s Game as a standalone at first. The next few books pick up much later in Ender’s life, and are pretty different in environment and feel. They’re good, but they’re different… don’t dive right into […]
I just read this fantastic article by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on A Career vs. Publication. If you’re an author, a wanna be author, a just-for-fun writer, or have ever thought about writing, go read it. You might have noticed that the publishing world is changing pretty quickly these days. Among other upheavals, indie publishing has become not just an option, but a good option. As writing blogs, conventions, and advice proliferate, both online and in the real world, there is a lot of advice out there. Have you ever tried to parse through that advice to find what will work […]
Returning to my love of classics, The Count of Monte Cristo was one of my earliest favorites. Like Jean Valjean, protagonist Edmond Dantès was imprisoned. Unlike Valjean, he had not committed a crime at all (as opposed to Valjean’s technically criminal but completely sympathetic theft of a loaf of bread) – Dantès is the innocent victim of another men’s greed, jealousy, and cowardice. Dantès and Valjean diverge even more in their reactions to imprisonment. After six years in solitary confinement, Dantès despairs, attempting to starve himself to death. However, he eventually is able to covertly communicate with a prisoner in a neighboring cell, Abbé Faria (“The […]