Have you ever read a book that you couldn’t put down because you were so caught up in the story and its world? That is what reading Skandar and the Unicorn Thief was like for me. Everything else going on in my life faded in importance to what was happening in this book. It was written for those eight to twelve years old, but the story grabbed hold of my imagination and refused to let go.
Murder by a devious killer, one determined detective, and a girl who awakens from a coma and can only speak in song titles come together in this captivating mystery.
I write mysteries because it’s the genre I most enjoy reading even though I have a fair share of biographies, historical fiction, and sports-related books in my personal library. But if I’m settling down to read for pure enjoyment, you can bet it’s a mystery or a thriller in my hands.
Sara’s mom and dad are dismayed when they receive a letter informing them that it is their turn to look after Sara’s cousins. But they’ll only be staying for a month. What could go wrong? More importantly, why could anything go wrong?
When I first read the description of INFECtIOUS, I knew I had to read it. Did the author manage to write an unputdownable Christian zombie book? The answer to that question is a definite yes.
I recently released my first fantasy novel, 𝘌𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘴, and I would love to share how this book came to be. It has been a long journey for this first novel in the Awakening series, but so many aspects of my culture, my personal life, and my journey as a writer have come into play so that 𝘌𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘴 really feels like an appendage of myself.
The captain and crew of the 𝐵𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑑, caught in a storm on the raging Northern Sea, fight for their survival. The storm quiets all at once, and they find themselves shipwrecked on an island full of jagged, broken slopes of shining crystal. And somewhere out beyond all the crystal, a beast howls.
After many months of mistakes and banging my head against the wall, I came up with a few principles related to creating fictional worlds. I’ve never written them down before and they’re by no means perfect, but they may help you craft your own world or at least generate some thoughts on how you would approach it.
𝐷𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐵𝑎𝑐𝑘 opens with a woman being kidnapped during the night. “Thunder sounded, but there wasn’t a storm, and no rain fell on the tin roof. The old woman squinted into the dark room and heard shuffling—like mice—across the pine floor.”
In the brutal bone-freezing cold of the Arctic Circle on a remote island off Greenland, a young girl has thawed from the ice, and she is alive. A miracle? Yes, but no one can understand what she is trying to say, and she acts scared of everyone. Val, a trained linguist, is one of the few who understand the dead Nordic languages. So she is contacted by the researchers already there to come and work with this girl.
