Having learned that Lynne Olson was coming to our community to talk about her then latest book, Citizens of London, I read it and found the book captivating. After her lecture, we had dinner and I asked her about her…
Blog Archives
A Valentine Story
As a junior in high school, without realizing it, my hormones were asserting themselves…peach fuzz on my chin and red blotches all over my fifteen year old face. I liked girls. I liked the way they looked, moved, talked, smelled…everything.…
Posted in Beginnings, Holidays
The Quivering Pen: My First Time with Michael Kenneth Smith
My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. Today’s guest is…
What if…?
Several posts ago, we discussed the most powerful question in developing a scene: What if …? A fiction writer has the most unbelievable tool in the world to work with and that is his/her imagination. Whatever a scene involves,…
Character Assassinations
Home Again is about two young boys who go off to war. The premise has been around a while, but these two, Luke and Zach, were very special young men who distinguished themselves during the course of the Civil War.…
Posted in Beginnings, Writing Life
How Writing Calmed My Bi-Polar Disorder
In an earlier post, I mentioned my life changed when I read the first 3000 words I’d written of my soon-to-be novel—though I didn’t realize quite how much. While I didn’t really notice it at the time, others saw clear changes…
Posted in Beginnings, Writing Life
Getting Comfortable with Conflict and Crawling
This writer had no idea about scene structure, conflict, dialogue or any of the other elements of writing a book. I thought I’d write a wonderful story in which the character(s) would go through experiences ranging from happy to harmonious. This was probably…
Turns Out You Can Go Home Again
Re-reading the three thousand words again, I wondered where it all came from. Years ago, I was an engineering student at Ohio University. The required courses did not include any electives, but for some reason I added a creative writing…
Left Brain Meet Right Brain
On a nice sunny morning about three years ago, my wife was about to leave the house to play golf. Just before she walked out the door, she asked me what I was going to do all day. Embarrassed to…
