History, Real Life, and Faith
I’m asked occasionally about the writing life and editors. Today I’m interviewing a friend from both worlds: Becky Miller. Becky Miller and I met ten years ago at Mount Hermon Christian Writer’s Conference when we were in the same critique group (facilitated by the wonderful Gayle Roper). Our eight-member critique group spent four days together discussing each others’ manuscripts–an exhilarating…
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One of my spiritual mentors died on June 15, 2015: Elisabeth Elliot. I first “met” her through books years ago when I was a young wife and before children were added to the chaotic mix of my life. Another Navy wife friend introduced us and I read everything she wrote. She spoke in pragmatic terms through her books, calling me…
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Do society a favor and hire a young person. Look around you. Do you have work that needs doing? Listen to me. Hire a young person to do it. I don’t usually order people around on my blog, but I’m stepping out of my normal to tell the world–young people need jobs and we all need to be looking for…
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While writing my recently released novella, The Sunbonnet Bride, I needed a devastating natural event to occur and so I researched grasshopper plagues, tornadoes and other acts of God. The Sunbonnet Bride is a sequel to my The Yuletide Bride, set in southeastern Nebraska in 1874. The following summer was a grasshopper plague summer and it seemed a perfect catastrophe…
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I did not plan to write a sequel for my Christmas novella, The Yuletide Bride, but when the opportunity arose, I figured out how to write one. Before The 12 Brides of Christmas e-books were released last fall, Barbour Publishing gave the writers an opportunity to write sequels. We had several days to come up with a synopsis. Our editor liked the dozen…
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What’s a novella? As an author with five published novellas to my credit, I’ve pondered their allure, especially at Christmas time. Why do people like to read them? Novellas are shorter works of fiction, usually ranging between 15,000 and 30,000 words– or about 60 to 120 “standard sized” pages. While short stories, on the other hand, have ranged as high as…
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