26. April 2017

Have you ever seen that show Unlikely Animal Friendships? Dogs will be friends with lions and bears will be friends with giraffes. It's pretty fascinating, precisely because it is so unnatural. I've always enjoyed stories with unlikely friendships, but I hadn't played around much with writing my own until pretty recently while writing the sequel to The Closing Prophecy. I realized that these relationships are not only way more interesting than the expected friendships, but they're way more fun...

19. April 2017

This is one of those prompts where the first line is already done for you. Start with a character (or yourself) and the line "You aren't supposed to be here." Is this something spoken, or is it written by the narrator? What comes next? Is here "earth," and your character unexpectedly survived something horrific? Did your character get rejected from Yale, but he shows up to the classroom anyway? Is your character not supposed to be in the football player's locker room because she's an...

12. April 2017

Have you ever had a dream that stayed with you and you weren't sure why? What about a false memory or a moment of recognition that you know didn't actually take place? We've all been mistaken before-- your best friend's boyfriend wasn't really flirting with that other girl. That memory of your cousin stealing from the neighbor was actually a dream. The violent fight between your parents that you witnessed as a kid hadn't really gone down like that-- your imagination made up the part with the...

09. April 2017

Yesterday, I attended A Rally of Writers at LCC's West Campus in Lansing. Considering I live so close, I can't believe I haven't gone before, but I'm so glad I did! There's something therapeutic about being around other people who love writing more than anything and just want to make something happen. The keynote speaker, Lori Nelson Spielman, was excellent and got things off to a great start. Picking and choosing what seminars to attend was rough, but I took something away from each, and I...

05. April 2017

When we think about what lead to a character's development or even our own development, I'm not sure if "sibling relationship" always appears on the list. But don't our brothers and sisters have a huge impact on how we see ourselves and the world? I remember reading somewhere that the biggest influence on who we become is not our parents or our friends, but our siblings, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. I have three sisters and a brother who passed away when I was two. If one of them...