Characters all need a hometown plus a life history, and it can become challenging to give them each a unique place to come from. An author needs to have some basic knowledge of that setting, so I mostly write about places I know. In Tackling the Fields, I went back to my mother’s roots to […]
What About Setting? #Giveaway
I write in layers. That means, my first draft is mainly dialogue, character thought, and emotion. Once I complete the book, I go back in and add setting, description, movement, body language, and timeline. I used to weave my setting and timeline in as I wrote the first draft. Until my editor asked if I […]
Playing it (Not So) Cool & #Giveaway
Hello, new friends! To say I am excited to share my very first post as an Inspy Romance author is a huge understatement. In fact, when I received the invitation to join the incredible community of IR bloggers, I most definitely did not play it cool. I happened to be visiting my parents for my […]
When Characters Travel: Central America #giveaway
When Characters Travel: Central America When I started writing Leaving Oxford, a character in the story wanted to start a medical clinic in Honduras. Then, in Going Up South, a group of characters travel there for a mission trip. Tackling the Fields begins immediately afterward. I interviewed so many people about their trips to the […]
A New Leaf #Giveaway
So I got a new desk. I didn’t mean to. It was supposed to be for my husband. I do most of my furniture shopping on Facebook Marketplace and flea markets. I’d found a white desk just like it a few months ago, but it was three hours away. So when I found this one […]
The Responsibility of Writing Christian Romance
I often think of what a privilege it is to be able to create stories for a living. The word fiction, according to Merriam Webster, means “something invented by the imagination”. So, as an author, I literally make money by making stuff up. Sounds cool, right? LOL. It is cool! Writing is a huge blessing […]
One More Question
Dating can be stressful. I’m so glad I’m no longer in the dating game. If first dates are awkward, blind dates are on par with prying broken sticks beneath my fingernails. First dates could end in a number of ways. She liked him, but he wasn’t interested. He liked her, but she put him in […]
My Regards to Elvis
My Regards to Elvis Sometimes an author will add an element to book one in a series and then decide to carry the theme through to the end of the series. For example, Vivian Emerson in Irresistibly Yours liked to collect seashells and make stuff with them which she sold in The Clever Mermaid. Both […]
Revisiting Characters
A Texas Bond, book three in my Texas Hill Country series, officially released last week. It was inspired partly by my husband and I dabbling in flea marketing after shopping them for years. The picture I included is the booth we had full of items we created or repurposed. It was fun fitting our […]
A Horse, Of Course
As a child, I was a horse-crazy girl. My Aunt Nancy was an artist who earned points in my young mind when she changed the spelling of her name to the very artsy “Nan-c.” One summer, she sat me down and taught me how to draw a horse’s face and body so it actually resembled […]