By Carol Buchanan, PhD In 1962, the first graduate school class at the University of Kansas required of English majors was called “Bibliography and Methods of Literary Research.” Literary research in that class meant historical research. The professor gave each of us a name from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries and told us to compile a bibliography of everything we …
Christmas Stories
By Lisa Loraine Baker It’s December, which reminds me how much I love Christmas stories, both reading and writing them. All our favorite seasonal books have been brought up from storage and I placed them on a shelf above the one holding our manger scene. One by one I hope to pour through them and re-live the wonder of each …
What About Those Innkeepers?
By Donna Wichelman Most of us have heard the Christmas story. Even if you don’t subscribe to the whole message of a Christ child who was born to redeem and save a lost world, you most likely have some knowledge of the characters in the story—shepherds abiding in the fields, angel choirs in the heavens singing glory to God, a …
How Culture, Heritage, and Geographic Region Influence Our Stories
By Cynthia Herron Rich in heritage and unique in culture, The Ozarks region is a place like no other. Amidst a lush backdrop of rolling hills and hidden hollows, stories abound. Some remain elusive while others beg to be shared. In Her Faith Restored, book three of the Welcome to Ruby series, Mel’s and Matt’s story takes center stage as they attempt to …
Lessons Along the Road to Publication
By: JPC Allen Thirty-two years. That’s how long it’s taken me to see my first novel in print. Thirty-two years since I was a freshman in college and recovering from an emergency appendectomy over Christmas break. To ward off boredom, I began writing. I’d written in bits and pieces, fits and starts, since second grade. But, for the first time, …
Mother and the Chair
By Nancy Ellen Hird Writing a novel is daunting. Not the beginning. That’s all flash and magic and excitement. It’s the middles and the middles and the endings and the endings and THE endings. It’s the hundred thousand times you quit—had enough—it’s a disaster—I’m taking up kayaking. Then God breathes on you, whispers to your heart or pokes you with …
What Makes a Mystery a Cozy?
By JPC Allen Mystery or crime fiction covers many subgenres, cozy mysteries being a very popular one. What makes a mystery a cozy? Below are the four most prominent features of cozy mysteries, ones that I incorporated into my YA mystery, A Shadow on the Snow. COZY MYSTERIES ALWAYS HAVE AMATEUR SLEUTHS. One reason I think cozy mysteries are so popular …
In Praise of the Writing Pack Rat
By Glynn Young I admit it. When it comes to writing, I’m a pack rat. I keep everything: blog posts that never saw the light of day, book reviews I wrote 13 years ago, ideas that I excitedly wrote down and then rejected later, emails I’ve sent to readers explaining something that might have been confusing, whole manuscripts, partial manuscripts, …
The Power of Body Language
By Tara Johnson One of my favorite shows is The Behavior Panel on Youtube. Four body language experts who are psychologists, served in law enforcement, or worked in the military analyze the body language of celebrities, politicians, and criminals. Some of their notable observations revolve around people like Scott Peterson, Meghan Markle, Michael Jackson, Amanda Knox and more. What I …
Step One to Publication: Overcome Your Fear
By Janette Melson Step one of publishing a novel might seem like a “duh”—write a novel first! You can’t publish something which doesn’t exist. However, you can garner the interest of agents and editors without a completed manuscript, as I did. So, what do I think the first step is? Overcome your fear of failure (or even success). As Wayne …