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There is one day remaining to enter the drawing for a chance to win a free signed copy of Ransom of the Healer!
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Weekend Giveway

The giveaway has started! Enter for your chance to win one of three signed copies of Ransom of the Healer!
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You can leave a comment here telling me what you're currently reading. This gives you an extra entry through the giveaway.

Another Chance

I have the warmest writing team around. They are always there to listen as I think through plots and map out the direction of the story. They never disagree with me, and keep my feet nice and toasty as we sit together at my desk while we work. If I don't give them more credit in my next novel, Rise of the Seer, they have threatened to walk out on me. I call them on that bluff because they always come back as long as the food bowl is full. Zeke, Zoe, and I are friends for life.

 

The three of us are excited to offer you another chance to win one of three signed copies of Ransom of the Healer this weekend. I'll be hosting a giveaway that begins tomorrow and runs through the weekend. As Suzanne Collins has famously said, "May the odds be ever in your favor!"

 



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Tell-Tale Attic

There is something living in my attic. I’ve not personally met the squatter, but we’ve communicated through bumps, flutters, and (in my case) shrieks. The tale of the attic begins as a frustrating one. When our house was built seven years ago the team installing the AC/heating unit did a *less than stellar* job. The result is heat suddenly turning on in the middle of the night during the summer and heat refusing to stay on during the winter. We’ve had it looked at, but that’s another story altogether involving beards, wiring, and throwing coins into wishing wells. All of these things lead to having to go up into the attic to flip the switch in order for the heat to come back on.

Attics just teem with ideas of creatures lurking in the corners or other unwanted beings wandering around up there in the dead of night. They hold their own mystery and intrigue. When you couple those traditional, and completely warranted, ideals with a writer, you get a significantly more dramatic version. Logically I’m aware of the fact that Sasquatch doesn't live in my area. (The Chupacabra, on the other hand, are still out there.) Logically I know that the space is so small I would see if someone, say a wandering traveler with malice in his (or her) crazy, messed up heart, decided to camp out up there. They would fall through the ceiling…logically.  The thing about logic is that it tends to falter in the dark, or during extended times of solitude. What might be a trapped bird fluttering around up there while the family gathers around the fireplace with great American novels in their hands, becomes a demon spawn of the underworld as I sit down, alone, to write the next great American novel. Don’t even get me started on what it turns into during the night.

I’ll leave you with this final thought: someday, it’s going to happen. I’m going to pull those stairs down, make my way up there, and something is going to happen. I have a hundred ideas spinning around in my mind as to what it’s going to be, but until it happens, those stories will live and grow until I’m forced to put them into my computer where they will turn into an adventure for some unsuspecting character. I guess what it all comes down to is that every writer needs an attic.

 

Starting Somewhere

May 2010. That’s when this journey officially started. That’s the day I sat in my favorite reading chair with a spiral notebook and began to scratch out the rough idea of a story. I’d had a dream with an interesting scene and I needed to know what happened after waking. That was the beginning of my story.

I wrote during the preciously few moments of quiet in a house that’s full of life. I wrote before heading off to a job I was fortunate to have at a time when it was crucially needed. I wrote on the front porch when I needed to find solace in a busy routine that could steal my identity if I lingered there too long without a break.

 Interesting things started to happen when I forced myself to step away and work on something I enjoyed. I remembered that I had always loved writing and couldn’t figure out why I had walked away from it. Sure, I did a little journaling, but that’s different from sitting down to see how a story unfolds. I began to look forward to putting my words on a page to see how everything would come together. I began to enjoy the world I was creating. I began to feel balanced and active. It didn’t matter how many times I refilled a cup, or fed the dogs, or wandered through a week of a job that I wasn’t crazy about, or packed lunches, or a million other things that kept me busy. Knowing I could sit down and write helped to keep other things in perspective.

I hope that you, fellow reader, have something in your life that brings you a sense of satisfaction. What does that look like for you?

Will Write For Sequel

I confess, December swallowed me whole. It chewed me up and spat me out. I now find myself in January with nary a new paragraph in the sequel to Ransom of the Healer. I did hammer out 1,601 words on a random short story idea I had just to keep myself writing something. I tend to keep several ideas simmering and stir the pot every now and then to add some life to the story. I have aspirations. I have goals. I want to write a paragraph that people have to read twice because it’s beautiful or thought provoking. Thank you, Margaret Atwood, for your beautiful prose and the challenge it creates for me to become a better writer. In order to do that, I have to practice. Every errant sentence in all of my random musings will mean nothing to anyone else, but to me they are akin to the driving range and teeing up just to keep the motion of my swing familiar and deeply ingrained. (Sidenote: I (sadly) haven’t played golf in 14 years now. I don’t know that I even remember how to hold a club.)

I’m currently questioning the attainability of some goals and how much of a role persistence plays versus right time and place. It seems to me that you just have to keep up with the persistence in order to find the right time and place. Until I’ve met my goals, I’ll just keep plucking away at the keyboard and remind myself how much I love this craft and that there are a few folks out there who are just as curious as I am to see how this journey unfolds. So, fellow reader, look for Rise of the Seer later this year. And give your local independent authors a smile of encouragement every now and then. Who knows? You might just end up as a character in their next story.

 

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Mandy, Janet, and Megan, for winning the Goodreads giveaway for Ransom of the Healer! If you entered but weren't selected, the book is now available for purchase both in trade paperback and Kindle versions. In case you were curious, Ransom of the Healer fits perfectly in the average stocking, hung by the chimney with care. It's also highly compatible with wrapping paper, bows, and gift boxes.