“Oh, the places you’ll go.” Dr. Seuss might have been giving a pep talk to people about to start new phases of their lives, but it would be just as easy to say this about a person entering a bookstore or a library ready to embark on a reading adventure. Today on my Facebook author’s page I shared a picture …
I’ve been giving you a behind the scenes look at how I go about beginning a new book. First I let you peek at a character sketch for my new character in Murder Is No Accident, Maggie Greene. Sunday I told you about how an old house in my town was the spark for the new mystery idea. Then a …
Often when I’m doing an interview, one of the most popular questions will be how or where do I get my ideas for stories. Sometimes the interviewer is more specific and asks where I got the idea for a particular story. That can be a hard question to answer clearly. That’s because ideas bombard an author from every direction. The …
My Hidden Springs Mystery book giveaway here on One Writer’s Journal is ongoing as an early celebration of the coming release of Hidden Springs 3, Murder Is No Accident (coming in March). That’s why I decided to take you behind the scenes and let you get a glimpse of how I get to know my characters. My grandgirl here could …
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1 (New Kings James Version) I guess when you decide to write a post about the first lines of books, you can’t go completely wrong with the first line of the Bible. That line opens the door to everything that follows. God in the beginning and then wow. No …
A cat will do what it wants when it wants, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. ~Frank Perkins Are you a cat lover? If you follow my blog or join the conversation on my Facebook page, you know that I’m a dog person. That doesn’t mean I don’t like cats. It just means that dogs trump …
Have you been to my little town of Hidden Springs where Deputy Sheriff Michael Keane tries to keep the peace? It’s a sleepy little town that might remind you of other small towns you’ve known. The kind of place where everybody knows everybody and people sit around on front porches and share stories. Sometimes about themselves or their families and …
One of the questions I am asked when I give a talk about writing stories set in my fictional Shaker village of Harmony Hill is whether there are any Shakers today. When I would say three, somebody in the group would usually speak up to say no wonder since they were celibate. While that does cut out the chance of …
January 1, 1967 Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill on New Year’s Day. Can you believe it’s 1967? Sixty-seven!! I’m fifteen. Grown. Old enough to behave myself, Aunt Love says. Old enough to fall in love, Leigh says. Old enough to take a trip to Jupiter, Wes says. Old enough to understand a few things about life, Dad says. Tabitha …
Each New Year’s Day is like starting a treasure hunt again from scratch, with a slightly altered map. ~Terri Guillemets Happy New Year! Can you believe it’s 2017? Some of you may be like me and remember thinking of how old you’d be at the turn of the century when you were a kid. It seemed a terribly old age …