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Let the Art Breathe
Today I’m honored to be guest blogging over at Novel Rocket. Before Mother of My Son was published, I entered it Novel Rocket’s (then Novel Journey) contest for aspiring novelist and it won in the Contemporary Women’s category. Total morale boost for a wanna-be novelist. Thank you Novel Rocket for all of your encouragement! Once upon a time there was no such thing as Christian fiction. There were only novels. Some referred to God, some even mentioned Jesus, and some did not. Then one day a line was drawn. Christian fiction was demoted to an itty-bitty shelf in a mainstream bookstore, or ended up in its very own Christian bookstore……
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The Ground Beneath Us – trailer launch
Hey readers! Thanks for your continued support. I’m very excited to release the trailer for my next novel – “The Ground Beneath Us”. Check it out below. Head over to my Facebook Page to stay up to date on all the latest.
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The 12 Blogs of Christmas: #1 Yearning
When we long for something, when we hunger, we feel it in our gut. For kids, almost better than opening presents, is the anticipation of the presents. The yearning. The dreaming. Wondering. Hoping. Waiting, waiting, waiting… until…. finally. Finally! Before the finally, before Christmas day, I want to yearn. I want to be a star-gazer, a ragged shepherd turned herald, an innkeeper who has little to offer but offers it anyway. Before we celebrate, let’s forget. Forget we know what happens in the story. Pretend, just for a moment, we don’t know anything about the baby in the straw. Baby? Why would there be a baby in the straw? Strange.…
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Grace for Insomnia
Falling asleep sounds like it should be a piece of cake. But if you’ve ever struggled with insomnia you know that it can be anything but. The word Insomnia even sounds scary… like tsunami or insanity or zombie, which kinda makes sense because having insomnia makes you feel like an insane zombie. During the day, I can be quite focused (usually). Too focused, sometimes. Tunnel vision-ed, in other words. Not long ago, as I wheeled my cart out of the grocery store, I realized that I had not even made eye contact with my check out girl. Or was it a boy? Rachel, this isn’t good, said The Quiet Voice…
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Village People
I’ve always kind of bristled at the phrase It takes a village to (fill in the blank) . But sometimes, it does. Before my novel was published I heard so many authors say something like “much of the work happens after the book is published because then you have to market…” and I’d stand there and smile with the phrase to market to market to buy a fat pig, running through my brain because the word market didn’t have much meaning. Here’s how I define it, what I’ve whittled it down to, at least with books: There are lots of books out there and you want yours to stand out.…
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It’s a Mess and I Like it That Way
No, I’m not talking about my closet. I’m taking about my latest novel manuscript. I’m about 50k words into the first draft and I’ve created such a mess, I’m not sure how my characters are going to get out. Poor souls. This is a good thing. Good stories are always messy. And writing them is even messier, especially in the chaos of the first draft, which is not only messy but sloppy (yes, there’s a difference) and relatively crappy—the defining characteristic of first drafts. But hey, there’s nowhere to go but up. You can’t fix what you haven’t written. So. I’m smack dab in my self-inflicted fictional mess and I…
