"This is the house that the Hinkle sisters lived in, and that's the muddy river where Thomas and Jackie fished together." Joyce Hostetter pointed out the car window as we drove around around her hometown, Hickory, NC--the setting for her Bakers Mountain Series. "See that old building? That's the hosiery factory where Junior worked for a few days. Over there… Continue reading STORIES IN JOYCE'S BACKYARD: A "PICK-YOUR-OWN" GIVEAWAY!
Congratulations to Joan Edwards who won RESTART from last week's giveaway. Thanks to almost five hundred people who read my second blog in this mini-series of posts about my WIP. That's a new record for a blog post about Half-Truths! In this post, Julian Daventry (the ring leader for these posts) challenged me and my fellow… Continue reading Shared WIP Tag III- The Story World
Congratulations to Connie Saunders who won Blood Brothers from my last blog. ******* Thanks to all of you for leaving comments two weeks ago on Part I. In Part II, I answer several thought-provoking questions about the Half-Truths cast. At the end you'll find a list of my blogging colleague's posts. Check them out--these are… Continue reading Shared WIP Tag- Part II: Meet My Cast of Characters
Yesterday Joyce Hostetter and I brainstormed our upcoming workshop for the Write2Ignite conference. We have presented “Using Life Experiences to Inform Your Writing” at other venues, but we like to tweak it each time to make it fresh. We introduce ourselves by each reading a passage that springboards from our own life experiences. Previously, I have… Continue reading Wild Onions, Orange Popsicles, and Truth
You may associate the title of this blog with the popular Dr. Seuss book of that name. But in this case, I’m referring to the places that an author such as myself goes to in order to research historical fiction. On Tuesday, that meant going to the celebration of the United House of Prayer’s 84th… Continue reading Oh the Places You'll Go!
About five miles from where I live is the lovely historical neighborhood of Myers Park. That doesn't exactly qualify as my "backyard" does it? But when my friend and fellow author, Joyce Moyer Hostetter, relayed that her editor, Carolyn Yoder, encourages writers to dig for stories that are figuratively in their own backyards, I decided… Continue reading The Story in Your Own Backyard