Category: Bringing Stella Home

“Who would have thought…”

I would like to address this post to my fellow Mormon readers. A couple of days ago, I got a discouraging message from some old mission friends of mine.  It said, more or less: “who would have thought that the missionary that taught us the gospel would write such a lurid book?” They were referring… Continue reading “Who would have thought…”

The interior designer’s approach to story

I recently read a fascinating post on John Brown’s blog with an interesting exercise for analyzing the kinds of stories you most like to read.  By finding out what really turns you on in a story, you can have a much better idea what to write, and how to make your own stories better. He… Continue reading The interior designer’s approach to story

Q3 Report, 2011

Before I move on to other, more interesting subjects, I want to take a little bit of time to review how my writing went in the past three months.  For those of you who may be new, this is something I like to do at the start of each new quarter.  Keeps me honest, I… Continue reading Q3 Report, 2011

Star Wanderers 0.2 is finished!

That’s right; I just finished the second draft of the beginning of Star Wanderers, the novel that came out of nowhere like a surprise baby.  I’m sending it out to my alpha readers now, so I can get some feedback before submitting it to Writers of the Future.  If I know you in real life… Continue reading Star Wanderers 0.2 is finished!

Part I of Star Wanderers is finished!

That’s right–I was up until about 2 am last night finishing it.  Man, time goes by fast sometimes.  This is probably just the first part of a much longer novel, but I hit a good stopping point so I’ll probably put it on the back burner for now while I finish Edenfall and do a… Continue reading Part I of Star Wanderers is finished!

Just following my bliss

They say the way you know you’re a writer is if you can’t not write.  Well, last week I had the gratification of experiencing that again firsthand. For all of August, I was more or less betwen projects and not writing a lot of new material. I’d just epublished Bringing Stella Home and was busy getting… Continue reading Just following my bliss

Plans for Edenfall

I’m trying something a little different with Edenfall: I’m writing the first draft entirely in longhand. I first got the idea a couple of years ago, when I was camping in Moab.  The beautiful landscape of southern Utah made me realize that I wanted to write Edenfall while experiencing that sort of connection with nature, and pen and paper seemed to… Continue reading Plans for Edenfall

Writer’s angst & post-convention ennui

In spite of the title of this post, I’ll try not to get too emo.  Not sure how well I’ll succeed, but at least I’ll try. Worldcon was great, but it put me into something of a writing slump and I’m not sure where to go next.  I was planning on writing the as-yet untitled… Continue reading Writer’s angst & post-convention ennui

Sholpan 2.0 is finished!

Today I finished the second draft of the novella Sholpan, only two days after the deadline I set for myself.  Here are the stats: ms pages: 173 words: 37,466 file size: 94 KB parts: 5 start date: 1 Aug 2011 end date: 15 Aug 2011 I decided to divide it into parts because I read… Continue reading Sholpan 2.0 is finished!