This post has been brewing for a couple of weeks. There is so much to unpack, I’m a little jumbled. So I’ll begin there. As I’ve gone through the process of writing and editing my novel I keep thinking that if I call myself a writer, words should naturally flow onto the page. But I …
Believe it or not I’ve been thinking about my word for next year, and as I recall it was this time last year that I found my word for this year. That has me thinking that for me God wants my year to start in September. Who am I to argue? This year’s word has …
This weekend I attended the Realm Makers Conference and Expo in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This was my third time attending. Every year I feel the acceptance of this community of Christian writers, editors, and publishers of speculative fiction. And every year I come away recharged and excited to get back to writing. This year my …
I’ve just returned from my writers conference with mixed emotions. On one hand, I met some major goals and learned some usable information. On the other hand, I now have new information that I’ll need to put pen to paper, as the saying goes, and incorporate those lessons into my writing. It feels like I’ve …
Continue reading When You Think You’ve Climbed a Mountain When You’ve Only Crested a Hill
Have you ever had one of those days where you need to stop fretting and remind yourself of all the blessings you have? Or maybe it’s been more like a week, a season, or a year that has drawn you down into thoughts of how difficult your life is or how broken the world has …
I had to take a few days to recover from my trip to California. Between travel, the WCCW Conference, visiting relatives, and coming home only to jump back into other commitments, I’m ready to settle in and write. On the first day of the conference, I attended an intensive workshop on marketing with Marci Seither. …
I returned home from my first in-person writers conference (#RealmMakers2023) last night around 11:00 pm (with a 2 hour time difference my body said it was 1:00 am). I was so exhausted that when I slipped out of the truck my legs had the strangest sensation, like I had just gotten off of a boat …
At the beginning of the year I wrote about my word for the year, fresh, and my fears stemming from past experience. (Check it out here: Starting Fresh.) Despite my fears, I have taken the opportunities that God brings my way. One of those opportunities is coming up in a week and a half—the Realm …
I was reading last night, as I do every night, when I read a comment offered to Chloe, the heroine of the story, and it dawned on me that she was an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) like me. Here is the comment: “It will be your lifelong battle to act despite all those fears. But …
Continue reading Finding My Reflection in Fictional Characters
Lately I’ve been reading novels that are reworked from popular fairytales. What has struck me is how the protagonists are oblivious to the obvious. Like the common girl who meets a mysterious man in an enchanted woods who is obviously the crown prince. As the reader, I had it figured out in the first part …
The Far Reaches of Grace 