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TechnoratiPOST PUBLISHED INSeptember, 2011
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Accomplishment!
September 30th, 201112:41 AM ETToday I needed to do some cleaning. As I gathered the tools I would need, I went to the closet to get out the vacuum. As I lifted it out of the closet, something fell and hit my foot. I looked down to see the plug laying beside my foot. Now, I'd realized for some time that it was getting loose, but I figured as long as it worked why mess with it... -
Secret Fears Moms Face [blog #5]: What If My Child Makes the Same Mistakes I Did?
September 30th, 201112:33 AM ETAt thirteen years old, Dana was hospitalized for alcoholism. At sixteen she had an abortion. "I have a lot to be sorry for," she says sadly. "Even though I'm now thirty, married, and have three children, I still think every day about the child I aborted. I've needed God's mercy just to cope with my past. But what happened to me makes me even more d... -
A Dying World without Children: A Review of The Children of Men
September 29th, 201112:43 AM ETThe year is 2021 and the setting is England. No children have been born since 1995, for man has become infertile. P.D. James' novel, The Children of Men, is divided into two parts: Omega and Alpha, the End and the Beginning. We move from a slow, distanced narrative deadened with despair to a vibrant style alive with hope. The unsympathetic... -
Secret Fears Moms Face [blog #4]: What If My Child Isn’t What I Expected?
September 29th, 201112:42 AM ET"I expected Kaitlyn to be like me," Marielle told me. "Someone who likes to cook and sew. But Kaitlyn would rather play football with the neighbor boys. Some days I wonder if we'll ever have anything in common." Lorien agreed with that sentiment. Her son, Nathan, now four, still likes to play with dolls (which horrifies his construction-worker fath... -
Enticed by Culpa: A review of the brilliant former CIA analyst Morgan Jones’s novel
September 28th, 201112:17 AM ETI, just this minute, finished reading Culpa. My eyes haven't cleared yet, so please forgive any typos. This was s-o good. I wasn't sure at the beginning how I would receive Mr. Jones's offering. It's a hefty 519 pages, but the climax is well worth the journey. My first concern was that Mr. Jones penned his tome in the third-person omniscient voic... -
Secret Fears Moms Face [blog #3]: What If My Child Doesn’t Have Any Friends?
September 28th, 201112:12 AM ETCorey winces when she talks about her growing-up days in Cincinnati. "I was a fat kid. Blimpy, Chub-a-lub, and Pork Belly were just a few of the choice names my classmates called me to my face." Corey admits her own insecurities come up when she thinks about her daughter, who's now eight. "Because of my size, no one wanted to hang out with me. So I... -
Pets, Grief, and the Secrets of the Seven Thunders
September 27th, 201112:31 AM ETIs there another nation of people more fond of animals than those of us in the USA? Anything about animals elicits a collective "Awwwww." It's front-page stuff: a full media event. I'm one of the many afflicted with this peculiar trait. Mine is a special love for cats. They have been my loving companions as far as far back as I can remember. My no... -
Secret Fears Moms Face [blog #2]: What If My Child Isn’t “Normal”?
September 27th, 201112:13 AM ETKris was forty when she met the “man of her dreams” via the internet. After emailing for several years, these people who lived an ocean apart finally met—and fell in love. They married a year later. Both Kris and Dan longed for children, but they wondered if they should risk trying to conceive because of Kris’s handicaps. As they weighed th... -
Get Inspired!?
September 26th, 201112:46 AM ETJust how do you get "good inspiration" for writing? If you want to be inspired, then write. That's it. Inspiration is enveloped in the process or writing. I see writing as cathartic. You fill up your brain with good things and out comes great writing. This means you can't write well unless you are steeped in good stuff. Your mind needs to be f... -
Secret Fears Moms Face [blog #1]: Am I Normal, or Paranoid?
September 26th, 201112:45 AM ETWhat crossed your mind the first time you saw your child's face? Tender love? A fierce protectiveness? The phrase, Wow, I'm really a parent? Then within the next few minutes, you got a little scared. What if I mess up this kid? Can I be the kind of parent she needs? If your parental fears started the first few moments of parenthood, join the club... -
Waning Summer
September 23rd, 201112:10 AM ETSeptember is here! It has been an unusually hot summer and the heat wearies me. I've never been one to enjoy sweating, and this year I seem to have done more than my share. But here in Virginia I've noticed that summer takes a decided turn, and I'm thankful that the intensity of it has passed. But now, as the days grow shorter, the skies less b... -
Wounds of War Remembered in a Paris Church
September 22nd, 201112:50 PM ETIt had been a year and two months since the bombing of the World Trade Center. I was in Paris and it was Armistice Day, a day of renewed significance for this American tourist. I decided to attend a Sunday concert held in honor of the end of the two World Wars – and all wars – in the beloved church of Mary Magdalene on the Rue Royale. While ... -
A Walk in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson
September 19th, 201103:05 AM ETI don't think there is a place as quiet as the Sonoran desert in summer's noon. The temperature is an impossible 119-degree inferno – all the creatures have burrowed to coolness so many feet underground. Most are sleeping and will do their foraging by moonlight. The silence is all encompassing – nothing stirs, not even the tips of trees. It i... -
Redemption Comes in Many Guises: Review of Den of Lions, by Alison Winfree Pickrell
September 16th, 201112:25 AM ETTo librarian Timothy Wrenn, the main character in Den of Lions, redemption would be release from his painful and pain-filled life to the mansion he knows God has prepared for him. Timothy believes all the things he has loved in his life will be there with him. Yet Timothy has seldom interacted with people in the world—he has either been a piece o... -
Chained by Debt: National Makeover Needed
September 15th, 201112:08 AM ETDebt has become a national epidemic. We, individuals, are slaves to the myth of universal home ownership, and the debt that comes with it. You don't own your house. Only a part of it. And if you've paid it off, the community still owns it. Don't believe me? Quit paying your property tax (a form of rent). The very term real estate comes from th... -
A Foreign Service Officer’s Perspective of 9/11: Living Serendipitously In Harm’s Way
September 14th, 201101:00 AM ETOur ambassador at the U.S. embassy in Tunis, Tunisia, summoned the American staff on August 7, 1998, to tell us that terrorists had bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa. Over 200 Kenyans, Tanzanians, and Americans were killed that day and thousands injured in attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. As we sat, stunned, we had no ... -
Resilience
September 13th, 201112:07 AM ETIt rained last night. It rained hard. It drew me to the open windows and I breathed deeply of the moist freshness that greeted me there. All was silent outside except for the sound of the rain as it pounded the pavement and beat onto the grass. I wondered at my fragile flowers. How would they survive? Would they be pulverized? Pounded into the dirt... -
9/11—Why They Hate Us…and What We Could Do About It
September 11th, 201112:55 AM ETLike most Americans on September 11, 2001, I watched the television, horrified, as the twin towers toppled in New York City. But unlike most Americans, I watched the unfolding scene from one of our U.S. consulates in Saudi Arabia, where I worked for the U.S. government. Though we did not know at the time that most of the hijackers were from that c... -
How I Start a Novel (Part 10): Inspiration and Ideas
September 10th, 201112:30 AM ETThis 10-part series on How I Start a Novel is by no means complete. But, in summary, the four basic rules I employ when writing: 1. Don't confuse your readers. 2. Entertain your readers. 3. Ground your readers in the writing. 4. Don't show (or tell) everything. The last rule has a double implication—it implies "Show, don't tell." This is, of cour... -
How I Start a Novel (Part 9): Building Excitement
September 09th, 201112:44 AM ETA scene must center around some event that is exciting. Excitement is how you entertain and hold your reader's attention. To build a scene that is exciting, you must imagine your characters involved in some event that drives the storyline, plot, and theme. The scenes cannot be out of place to the storyline, plot, or theme, and they must fit your... -
Is God Asleep?
September 08th, 201112:30 AM ETStanding outside the doctor's office door, my heart tore to pieces as the screams of my then two-month-old daughter filled the hallway. Unable to stand it any longer I rushed into the small office. There she was on her daddy's lap. My husband had the tough job of holding her while a nurse gave one shot after another. For the first time in her life ... -
How I Start a Novel (Part 8): Don’t Show (or Tell) Everything
September 08th, 201112:24 AM ETI gave three of my dictums yesterday in one post: 1. Don't confuse your readers. 2. Entertain your readers. 3. Ground your readers in the writing. Today, I want to give you another one: don't show your readers everything. People ask me all the time from my books, "What really happened to X?" or "Did X do this to y?" I try to not let my readers... -
FRESH FICTION: We Want to Know What You Think! About This Short Story: “The Winner Takes All”
September 07th, 201112:43 AM ET"Looks like rain," Cornelia said and stared out the window from the passenger side, watching the other cars on Lincoln Expressway streak by, silver and maroon, and disappear into the muddy yellow clouds to the east. "Just like '32." Glenna laughed. "Remember when it started raining and Gramps was sitting in the back seat of the Model A and the win... -
How I Start a Novel (Part 7): Sequence of…and in Scenes
September 07th, 201112:26 AM ETSequence is the time-based formation of the action and of the scenes. This applies to time within the context of the novel as well as your writing. Let's take them separately. First, time sequence in and of scenes. You could experiment with non-sequential based time flow in a scene, but I don't do that. I do like to use scenes in some novels to go ... -
Sometimes Love Hurts
September 06th, 201112:22 AM ETOur house seems very quiet this evening—more so than usual. My husband, Rick, sits in his favorite chair reading a book. A neighbor just finished mowing his lawn, and now the stillness is deafening. As daylight wanes and the birds sing their lusty evening songs, I heave another sigh. I'm so very blessed, yet I'm feeling so very bereft at the mome... -
How I Start a Novel (Part 6): Outlining in Scenes
September 06th, 201112:15 AM ETI use scenes to outline the development of each chapter. I also focus a chapter on a scene or scenes. I unimaginatively write in chapters and aim for 20 pages or about 5000 to 6000 words per chapter. This may not be the best way to write a novel, but it works for me. I don't necessarily recommend using my technique of using a chapter length as a go... -
Laboring and Passionate—or Just Busy?
September 05th, 201112:49 AM ETLabor Day—the last long weekend of summer. The weekend when friends and families gather, clogging the highways, picnic grounds, parks, and neighborhood backyards with barbecues, Frisbees, squirt guns, and laughter. But that's not the way Labor Day started. Over a hundred and ten years ago it was conceived by America's labor unions as a testament... -
How I Start a Novel (Part V): Scene Building
September 05th, 201112:41 AM ETI like to drive a scene through conversation. You can see in yesterday's example, I used a snippet of conversation between Byron and an anonymous girl to introduce Dana (Diana). This is the power of conversation. You can express many, many ideas without a single word of narrative or description. For example, instead of telling us, she is crying, yo... -
How I Start a Novel (Part IV): Building the Why and the What
September 04th, 201101:17 AM ETWhy and what: you need to begin scene writing with the input and a "what." The "what" is something that will be entertaining to your readers. Let's continue with the example of Dana-ana. The main character has been accused of stealing lunches in school and is about to be beaten for it. The tension in the scene is obvious. The excitement in the scen... -
How I Start a Novel (Part 3): Writing a Scene
September 03rd, 201112:32 AM ETIt would be impossible for me to tell you everything you need to know to write a scene. There is already a lot of great writing on this specific subject. What I will try to do is tell you how I write a scene. First, I need an input and an output. The scene has to have something that is the cause of it—that's the input. It has to have an end with ... -
I’m Waiting
September 02nd, 201112:51 AM ETThere was a time in the Bible when the apostles couldn't cast out a mute spirit from a guy's son. When Jesus appeared, the man explained what had been happening to his son since childhood—some pretty horrible things. The man ended with saying to Jesus, "But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." Jesus said to him, "If you ca... -
How I Start a Novel (Part 2): From Scenes Grow a 100,000-word Book!
September 02nd, 201112:47 AM ETI write in scenes. This is why all my novels are centered on a scene and a theme question that then develops into the overall plot and storyline. The scene in my latest novel Dana-ana http://www.Dana-anal.com/ (working title Diana—I'm still searching for a title) that started everything is the first one. In it, Dana is being "beat up" b... -
Smilin’—It’s Contagious!
September 01st, 201112:16 AM ETIf you think flu is contagious, have you ever really noticed how quickly a smile is passed around? Today as I was running errands and re-stocking a bit after being out of state for a while, I was feeling hot. It was hot out, the car was even hotter, and I hate sweating! I just wanted to be completely out of the heat and did NOT want to be walking a... -
How I Start a Novel (Part 1): Pick a Theme
September 01st, 201112:10 AM ETI wish I could spend every moment writing novels. My passion is to write real novels (often with a flair of sci-fi and fantasy) that reach not only those in the Christian world but those who wouldn't open a novel if they knew it was "Christian." The problem is that I can't physically or mentally spend every moment writing. I begin to write a novel ...
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