I’ve always been a big non-fiction reader—historical non-fiction. While most such books are not nail-biters, I finished the book with a certain amount of knowledge I didn’t have before. It was that left brain thing again: trying to put two…
Yearly Archives: 2016
What if…?
Several posts ago, we discussed the most powerful question in developing a scene: What if …? A fiction writer has the most unbelievable tool in the world to work with and that is his/her imagination. Whatever a scene involves,…
SCARRED: A Civil War Novel of Redemption
Excerpted from SCARRED: A Civil War Novel of Redemption. Available on Amazon. Virginia, 1863 The grey early morning light seeped through the tall sycamores next to the river bank. The hollow sound of a distant hungry woodpecker broke the silence.…
Character Assassinations
Home Again is about two young boys who go off to war. The premise has been around a while, but these two, Luke and Zach, were very special young men who distinguished themselves during the course of the Civil War.…
Posted in Beginnings, Writing Life
How Writing Calmed My Bi-Polar Disorder
In an earlier post, I mentioned my life changed when I read the first 3000 words I’d written of my soon-to-be novel—though I didn’t realize quite how much. While I didn’t really notice it at the time, others saw clear changes…
Posted in Beginnings, Writing Life
Getting Comfortable with Conflict and Crawling
This writer had no idea about scene structure, conflict, dialogue or any of the other elements of writing a book. I thought I’d write a wonderful story in which the character(s) would go through experiences ranging from happy to harmonious. This was probably…
Turns Out You Can Go Home Again
Re-reading the three thousand words again, I wondered where it all came from. Years ago, I was an engineering student at Ohio University. The required courses did not include any electives, but for some reason I added a creative writing…
Left Brain Meet Right Brain
On a nice sunny morning about three years ago, my wife was about to leave the house to play golf. Just before she walked out the door, she asked me what I was going to do all day. Embarrassed to…
Bonus: Exclusive excerpt from Home Again
Chapter 1 Eastern Tennessee, September 1859 A large sycamore tree projected out of a riverbank ten feet above the water’s edge. Zach and his father were perched on the outcropping, Zach fishing downstream and his dad fishing upstream. Between them,…
Posted in Excerpts, Home Again Tagged with: american civil war, general sherman, north and south, orvis, spencer
