I have come upon a terrible truth.
A great parent trains their children to leave them.
I’m not sure why this didn’t click with me before. I mean since birth, hello, my kids have been leaving me.
I tried – oh,
How Do You Get Started?
Megan H. asked me: “I’ve been thinking about becoming a writer when I finish school, and I was wondering how you got started, the only thing is that I have also looked for independent schools in London because I don’t know if I should expand my schooling.”
Snapshots & Evergreen
Our family is loud. We easily take over a Kobe japanese restaurant, the football stands, and even our campfires in our backyard seem to echo into the night. Rambunctious, funny, dramatic…we don’t run out of words.
However, as the kids have grown up,
Characters Worth Rooting For
You know what’s NOT a great idea? Putting dinosaurs in a Transformer movie. But why, you ask, do dinosaurs show up in a Transformer’s move? Probably because someone was sitting in a meeting, looking at the script and said…”I dunno, something is missing…”
It’s not the dinosaurs. It’s the fact that yes,
Common Writing Mistakes I See
I thought it might help aspiring writers to see a quick summary of the common mistakes I’m seeing as I look at entries and talk to authors looking to get published. So here they are, in no particular order.
Don;t forget that you can call the office for advise any time,
What is Voice and How Do You Find Yours?
Outside, the wind howled, the thermometer dropping to a bracing negative nine degrees as I waited for Sally to arrive for our Monday Morning conversation. I had hoped she’d found a story question as she thought about the themes of her story. Ironically, I’d been thinking about printing services orange county and my new book,
Conversations with an Aspiring Novelist
I agreed to meet Sally at the local coffee shop on a Monday morning, and I told her to bring a notebook. I’d seen her at church a few times with her four children hanging off her like she might be monkey bars. She ran the children’s program and had even pulled off the church Christmas musical with twenty haloed children in under a month,
A Christy Awards Interview
Thank you again, dear readers, for supporting my books and my writing! Without your support, I would not be the author I am today, and my book Take a Chance on Me would not have received a Christy Award. Check out this interview I did after this year’s Christy Awards ceremonies:
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Winner Announced from My 'When I Fall in Love' KitchenAid Mixer Contest
Congratulations to the winner of my When I Fall in Love KitchenAid giveaway and Hawaiian chef showdown, Megan Besing! Megan, you’ve won a KitchenAid mixer, books 1–3 of the Christiansen Family series, Melissa Ringstaff’s Kitchen Planner, and Jackie Brown’s Freezer Inventory sheet! Please email your mailing address to my assistant,
Enter to Win a KitchenAid Mixer in My Hawaiian Chef Showdown
It’s 7:00 pm. I’m holed up in my office, tapping away at the computer, wrestling out a new scene. In this one, my hero and heroine are preparing dinner. Pad Thai. With noodles and shrimp, bean sprouts and eggs. I can nearly taste it.
Except, I can’t really because no one is in the kitchen at my house,