Monthly Archives: April 2016

The Hunt Is On

This is an excerpt from my novel Snow White and the Civil War, Part 1. California Gold Country, 1860 I was just standing up to stretch when I heard voices, and with a shock, I realized they weren’t dwarves. I

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The Magic of the Read-Aloud Pass–and the Following One

You’ve probably read this before, but let me chime in. Reading your work aloud is incredible. Writing that I would’ve sworn was as good as I could make it went through far more minor surgery than I would have ever

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Posted in Writing

Your Protagonist Must Act

You can’t afford a passive protagonist. Writing advice abounds out in the blogosphere—I’ve contributed some of it myself. You can find interesting and informative posts on characters, plot, dialogue, and even commas. But here is one mistake that is literally

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Anemone

The waves sparkled in the sunlight, mocking Jordan’s feeble attempts at swimming. An albatross circled overhead, remote and untouchable in the vast blue desert that was the sky. The rain had fallen in sheets, destroying visibility and making it impossible

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Going to the Movies

Tujunga Canyon, southern California, 1937 I’d just shut Tony’s car door when a back-burner question suddenly demanded front-and-center attention. The last time Greta and I had been to a movie, we’d hardly watched the thing, and that was when we

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Interview with Claire Banschbach

Today’s guest is the fabulous Claire Banschbach. She was born and raised in Midland, TX, the fourth of eight children. She was homeschooled through high school and is now a proud member of the Texas A&M University class of 2014.

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Posted in Author Interviews

Seymour and the Dishes

The teenage apprentice threw his pencil down in disgust. “This is stupid! Copying a whole page out of the dictionary just because one word in my cantrip was misspelled. What does it matter? I’m just going to speak the thing—it’s

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