In this post, I’m going to rate several time travel novels, using my own I-Wish-I’d-Written-It test. Time travel novels go in two directions. Either the plot is a thriller-style story and takes a scientific approach to time’s paradoxes, or it immerses the reader as a tourist in a past era. Most often, time travel books have a romance. I’m not fascinated by time machines or historical paradoxes, so my stories go the romance and adventure…
Why Did I Do It? Starting a new novel was a accident. Why did I begin to haul another book out of midair almost the minute I’d sent this one to be published? There was a whiteboard in my brain, erased and swoops like the water color clouds making upside down commas on the sky today. I was empty of story, the characters are gone to their own lives and readers minds. No longer my…
Who was Jane Austen? I want to write about Jane Austen to plumb the depths of the enigma. The famous author was full of contradictions. Supposedly, she was quiet and obedient, a devout lady of her time, but she longed for the adventure her brothers enjoyed. She was a sarcastic cynic about human relationships who penned romantic comedies that still make our hearts throb. Jane was forbidden as a woman to publish under her own…
The Appeal of Magic & Reading Recommendations The appeal of magical realism fiction — the extraordinary appearing within the everyday — let us escape the ordinary, feel powerful, and believe in dimensions beyond what we can see. Real life has its magical moments, but plunging into a magical novel can sustain heightened feelings. Reading magical realism fiction can allow you to feel love, do something brave, or be wildly generous. Be bigger than your ordinary…
As I work on another time travel story, I find myself thinking deeply about what it would mean for the present to change the past. This is the kind of thing I ponder in my best thinking places — where running water or wind is involved. That’s why I dictate more and more poetry and prose on my phone. I think well in the shower, washing dishes, or walking my dog. Today I found myself…
Writing Love Scenes Some of the most challenging writing is creating compelling love scenes. Originality and emotion are the keys to selling a love scene. Readers will instantly be put off by predictability and cliches. What position does the love story occupy in the overall story arc? In a romance, the love story is the big story. In other genres — women’s fiction, mystery, thriller — it may be a sub-plot. They’d be handled differently…
Is It Romance or Women’s Fiction? The overlap between romance and women’s fiction is a juicy territory. It’s where characters grow deeper, learn more about why love is important, and develop into better human beings. The story may show how they plunge off a looming cliff of disaster but grow wings as they fall. In the overlap between romance and women’s fiction, a story involves the main character’s growth as a person.
Book 3 in the Timegathering Series Is Out Undoing Time — my time travel novel of love and history — is out now! I’m thrilled to bring out a new book in my Timegathering Series. Each is a standalone, but each builds on the Timegathering world, where you can inherit the gene that enables you to move through time and history. Each book has a larger story than the time travel — for each protagonist,…
I have some special, time-limited deals to offer you! For your winter reading, the link below leads to novels featuring strong women. ALL FREE — when you sign up for the author’s newsletter. Offer deadline: December 31, 2021. For me, reading rekindles the fires of inspiration, love, and hope. I especially love reading in the winter months, when the fire of life turns inward, and we’re all bundled up. So many novels feature male characters.…
In my magical realism world, people are born with a gene that allows them to slip through time. Like all genes, the timegathering gene expresses itself differently in different people, and behaves differently because of environment and natural modifications. For example, the time traveling tour guide that threads all the Timegathering Series novels together, George St. James, has time agility and time flexibility. He can time travel quickly and to many different places in history,…