Not All Who Wander Are Lost

We have a unique opportunity today . . . to hear from a character in the character's own words. Authors usually joke that we listen to the voices in our heads. Well, here's a chance to step into a writer's head and hear what goes on. I always tell people that my brain is a strange place to live. I'm happy I'm not the only one who seems to have these conversations with my characters. So, take a few moments to meet Eric Caron. He's a really interesting character and I, for one, am looking forward to hearing more from him, Character Interview - Upon Your Return by Heather C. I am here today with Erica Caron from the book Upon Your Return by Marie Lavender.  Yes, folks, that's right.  I'm doing a character interview.  This man is here in the flesh to give us a little taste of Upon Your Return . Heather:  I noticed you bowed to me when you came into the room, Eric.  You just don't see that very often these days.  Ladies, I do believe he'...

Write what you love Nancy Wood, author of Due Date One of my favorite things to do is get outside and explore. Go for a bike ride, take a walk, go out on a hike. I love to see what’s going on in the neighborhood: who’s remodeling or been doing someone landscaping. What flowers are blooming. But what I really like to do is just get out, and get away from everything. When I go camping now, I avoid campgrounds. My husband and I have a few favorite spots not far from home, out in a national forest. We’ll just throw our tarp on the ground, no tent, and sleep under the stars. For me, there’s something very freeing about just being outside. No computer. No phone. No lights (though I do have a flashlight so I can read!). Just last week, we were camped in a glorious field of purple lupine, pink clover, and enormous majestic black oaks. The only sounds were woodpeckers hammering, cows lowing, a few flies buzzing around, crows squawking. Bats come out with the dusk, darting like shadows as...

When I tell people that I'm a mom, a teacher and a writer who cooks at least five days a week, gardens, likes to bake, and still reads three books a week they generally look at me with veiled horror. Of course, it might be the fact that I teach 8th graders that elicits that gasp of horror and not everything else. I have one friend who tells me that I must carry around a couple extra hours in my pockets. When others look up and wonder where their time has gone, I've taken it and squirreled it away in my pockets. I wish it were that easy. Hmmm . . .maybe there's a story there. Of course, the last "short story" I tried to write has turned into a 60,000 word long novel. Honestly, when you think about it, time really doesn't exist. Beyond day and night and the seasons there are no natural definitions of time. Hours, minutes and seconds are all man made Methods of dividing our days and nights into manageable bits because that long unbroken sweep of time before us ...

Every author knows that it’s an uphill climb to find a publisher. Competition is fierce, and there’s always going to be the odd book that makes us scratch our heads and think, “That got published and I got rejected?!?!” The hill is steep, treacherous, full of pitfalls that make us feel like we’ve taken ten steps back instead of one forward. Then, it happens. You reach the top of the mountain. There, before you, can be an amazing view. But it’s one of your own choosing. Each of us has a different reason why we chose to put our creations out in the world. For some, we want fame, fortune, the chance to wine and dine with the elite at an after party after our book opens to packed theaters full of screaming fans. Others would be happy with enough in royalties to help make the rent, be able to afford a new car, or help finance a college education for their kids. And it’s your ultimate goal that dictates what you see at the top of the hill.This is where the Great Snowball Effect com...

Now, I'm a sucker for a post apocalyptic novel. I loved The Hunger Games , The Eleventh Plague and The Maze Runner . Those are all young adult novels, so I had hopes for After the Ending by Lindsey Farleigh and Lindsey Pogue--an adult post-apocalyptic book that didn't have Mad Max overtones? Well, some things worked for me and others just didn't. The book is told in epistle format--letters (emails, actually) back and forth mixed with first person narrative and follows Zoe on the East Coast and Dani on the West Coast. They're best friends from a coastal community called Boca Bay who are separated by work and time when The Ending shows up in the form of a virus that wipes out up to 80% of the population. We see Dani's roomate Callie succumb on the evening of Dani's birthday and shortly thereafter her boyfriend Cam dies. One of the interesting things I found in this book was the fact that it happens during and right after the end of the world. So many of these...

Join Kate Christenson as she   battles a past that was never   meant to be her own. Linked Through Time- Fifteen year old Kate Christenson is pretty sure she’s about to experience the worst possible summer at her grandparent’s farm in rural Baudette, Minnesota. Without cable, cell phones, or computers, Kate is headed for total isolation and six tedious weeks of boredom. Until the storm.             A freak lightning accident has Kate waking up in 1960. But she is not herself. She is the aunt she never met, but has eerily resembled her entire life. Thrust into living a dirt poor, rural farm life, Kate struggles to make sense of her situation- a boyfriend with a dark side, a “townie” who steals her heart, and the knowledge that 1960 is the very summer her aunt drowns in the local river.             Even with every precaution, Kate cannot stop fate...

How Do You Juggle Being A Writer?   Well, if it hasn’t been said a million times, I’ll say it again.   Life is hard.   Why did we become writers if we had to juggle so many things at once?   Bills, family, deadlines, side jobs if we have them.   It’s a load of fun, right?   Right.   I suppose we did it for the benefits, not the monetary ones, of course.   Many writers just do it for the love of writing, for the brush of your hand across the page as the pen flows (or in the digital age, I guess that would be your fingers on the keyboard click, click, clicking away).   Perhaps we do it to feel that sense of accomplishment, that after writing a scene or a chapter, we can sit back and say, “Wow, did I do that?”   So, yes, it’s satisfying on a lot of levels. But, then there are the disadvantages.   They didn’t tell us we’d have to go nuts because getting into the industry wasn’t a piece of cake.   They didn’t tell us we’d...

I used to go to writing panels at fantasy/sci fi conventions when I was in high school and in college (yes, I fully embrace my dorkiness) and inevitably someone in the audience would ask what to write? What should I write? Should I write what's hot? Should I write what I want to read? Someone would answer, "What what you know." Even at fifteen, sitting in the back of a room with a notebook on my knee, I didn't like that answer. A considerable number of years later and I know that answer is nonsense--particularly when it comes out of the the mouths of people who write the impossible. Write what you know . . . if we all wrote what we knew then the books would all be distressingly famaliar and genres like science fiction and fantasy wouldn't exist. I write about dragons, even though I don't know any--not for a lack of wishing on my part back when I was sixteen. Therefore, I would like to change that advice. Don't write what you know--write what you love. ...