One of the questions all writer’s undoubtedly receive is “where do you get your inspiration?” Sometimes there is a great lightbulb moment—a tragedy, a blessing, a unique childhood—that breathes life into an idea. For Rebel Song, I attribute it to a childhood obsession with tragic love stories, with fantasy tales of kings and queens, with…
I was sitting at a light in the passenger seat of my boyfriend’s Xterra in Chandler, Arizona. We were driving around looking for garage sales, a huge addiction of mine that Dave, my beau, enables with his own lighter interest. He lived in Arizona, I lived in Michigan. We were enjoying just being together as…
Writing is something I always knew I could do. When I was at school, some of my friends could sing, some could draw… I could write. I was the editor in chief of the school paper so I edited and wrote news articles, I wrote many of the school plays I performed in, I entered…
It started with a dream. That sounds so trite but it’s true. Six years ago, I dreamed of a red haired girl trudging through the snow. She walked with a group of friends while a boy only she could see and hear made snarky comments to her. I don’t know why it resonated with me,…
The Schooled in Magic series draws on so many different inspirations that it’s hard to say just when and where it jelled into its current shape. It started as a combination of a desire to do a ‘wizard school’ story and a ‘time-traveling expert’ story – the latter generally covering a person being thrown back…
I tell closeted fellow writers that everyone feels like a fraud—it’s not just them. All you have to do is print yourself a business card and put “writer” on it. When you claim the title you are one. Becoming an author is a different story. If my long and detoured road to publication taught me…
I began my journey as an author in childhood, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I’d always been an avid reader, especially of fantasy, and I wrote stories constantly, jotting them down in notebooks, journals, and even using my grandmother’s old typewriter. But I never finished anything I wrote. Looking back, I…
What was the inspiration for this story? What a great question! The short answer is that this story came from my habit of asking, What if…? and dreaming up answers. What if there was a land where… What if there was a young trickster who… And what if his lover… Stephen King talks about stories…
Growing up, I was the oldest of three kids. My brothers and I made up stories all the time. Our ideas were all over the place. Most of them barely made sense, but they had one common thread- action. We were always running, always fighting the bad guys. Someone always needed to be rescued. Hiding…
I believe the best stories result from characters who come to me when I’m not looking for them. That was the case with Hunter Carlisle and Between These Walls. In 2011, a novel concept came to mind: a Christian middle-school student who harbored an attraction to the same gender. Facets of his struggle tugged at…
The Story Behind the Book 