The literary incarnation of the vampire has changed significantly over the last few years. Gone is the eerie, long shadow casting creeping of Max Scheck’s portrayal of Nosferatu, lost is the sophisticated charm and bloodlust evoked by greats such as Bela Lagosi and Christopher Lee to such great effect. It seems the current public image…
Are you a SLIder? Do you have H.V.S.? In my Sci-Fi series, The Eve Project, Ben Harris is and does. He destroys any unshielded electronics, sets fire to ATMs, coffee machines, and unwittingly sends devastating arcs of electricity to anything metal. He suffers from B.C.E.D. He has spent his entire life trying to hide his…
When you think of religious fiction, what authors come to mind? The obvious, of course, are the most famous: Dan Brown. Lynn Austin. Ted Dekker. Anne Rice has even delved into the subject. Over the past decade, religious fiction has become more popular and has steered the literary world into a territory that was seldom…
Several afternoons a week, I sit at our local coffee shop, sipping a chai, writing, knitting, and watching customers come and go. Though I’m not a stalker or psycho (okay, shut up), I can’t help but eavesdrop on other customers’ conversations if they are close enough and loud enough, because hey, they’re close enough and…
The great thing about fairy tales? Anyone can connect with them. They’re highly accessible. The only price of admission is being human. There’s a reason we give fairy tales to children. It’s about all they can connect with. They haven’t yet been told how to “get” Sartre, or Barthes, or any other tricky-to-pronounce French author.…
Envisage is a story about learning to deal with your own insecurities and fears. For years, I battled nightmares, but I didn’t understand how to get rid of them. We didn’t have the Internet when I was a child, so I didn’t know that what I had been dealing with had a name, several in…
When you read, the words should magically teleport you to another land, time, or universe filled with other people, animals, or creatures. You lose yourself in a fantasy world and live vicariously through someone, maybe even something, else. The enchanting art of teleportation needs to be used as you write. Put yourself in the place…
I never thought of myself as a writer. I never thought I would enjoy it the way that I do today. Like that little boy, Mikey, in the old cereal commercials, I tried it, and as soon as the flavor hit me, I started gobbling it down. Note: This giest post was originally published on…
I didn’t set out to become a poet nor did I sit down one day thinking I would try to write a poem. For me it began more circuitously. It began with a foreign tongue. For me, reading and more importantly translating is the way I first discovered the stirrings of my own voice within.…
In kindergarten, I was the only kid still crying when my mum dropped me off—a month into the year. Result: the other kids laughed at me, or worse, asked me what was wrong, and I just wailed, “I want my mummy!” That meant I hardly ever got invited out to play. And the odd time…
