MY BLOG POSTS
And the Winner Is…
The winner of the iPad mini contest is….
Too important to just type! So I posted it on YouTube – thanks to my cameraman, Thomas (age 10)!
So click here to find out if you won AND to hear another exciting announcement đÂ
And if you haven’t read Anomaly, yet, click here to read the first five chapters for free.
THANK YOU for entering, for reading, for liking and for Tweeting! More goodies are on the way, so stay tuned đ
Logophile
I am a logophile: A word lover. (from the Greek âlogoâ meaning âwordâ and the Latin âphileâ meaning âlover of.â 
 )
I love writing words, reading them, speaking them, singing them, listening to them. I love learning new words and uncovering old ones. I even like reading the history of words.
Back in March, I took my AP Language class to the University of South Florida library so we could peruse the Oxford English Dictionary â a whole, beautiful, dusty row of books filled with words and their meanings throughout the centuries. We learned so much! Did you know, for example, the word âawfulâ used to mean the same thing as âawesomeâ? Or that âniceâ used to mean âstupidâ? But âmeanâ has meant the same thing for almost a millennium?
These are facts I find fascinating. I like learning the history of cliches, too. For example, the phrase âKeeping up with the Jonesesâ (meaning wanting to have everything your neighbors have) originated in a 1920s comic strip. Interesting, huh? William Shakespeare, though, is the king of cliches. He is believed to have invented over 130 phrases that have become a regular part of our vernacular. Things like âA sorry sight,â âItâs Greek to me,â âI havenât slept a wink,â âWear my heart on my sleeve.â And he invented well over one thousand words! Invented them â meaning these words did not exist in the English language until Shakespeare penned them! Just look at a few of these: bedroom, discontent, critic, gossip, laughable, rant, premeditated, eyeball, lonely, hint, generousâŠ
Do you see why I love words? Every word has a story, and I will never even come close to knowing them all.
And this is just the English language. Every language has its own unique sets of words with their unique histories, invented by their own âShakespeares.â
The Bible tells us God reveals himself through nature â when we see a sunset or explore a mountain, we recognize that only an incredibly creative, powerful God could have created such beauty. But I believe words do the same thing. I see God in words â in the variety, the complexity, the beauty of a well-turned phrase. It is through words that we learn about God and it is through The Word that the world was created (through, by the way, âThe Word made fleshâ).
Words are more than just tools, more than rhetoric. They are a gift.
So let me leave you with this gift from The Word: âLet the words of my mouth and the meditatation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.â ~Ps. 19:14
It’s Not Fair!
I might be approaching middle age, but I am not beyond the desire that things work out my way. That life goes according to my plans. That people agree with me and like me. That life should be fair.
But here is a truth that I too often forget:
God is God, and I am not.
Who am I to question Him? To think that I, in my finite mind and limited perspective, know better then Him how things should go?
But I do. I do question him. I may not say âYouâre unfair,â but my actions say it. They say it when, instead of being grateful for the AMAZING gifts he has given me, I complain about the things I donât have. They say it when I throw my powder down in disgust because it canât cover the blemishes that I â long past my teen years â still have. They show it when I whine about not getting those cute new pumps I saw at DSW while sitting in front of my cable TV and surfing my high-speed internet.
I am so thankful for Godâs word that pierces through the lies my heart tries to feed my mind. Godâs word tells me that He has great plans for me; that the trials that come strengthen me; that the longing I have for more is a longing for Him, not for “stuff.” God’s word tells me that I have everything I need.
When I remember that â and live that â I go from cranky, âwhy canât IÂ get what I want?â to joyful. Â Because joy doesnât come from getting everything you want. It comes from knowing you have everything you need.
Congratulations….It’s a Book!
Writing a book really is like having baby. And raising that baby to adulthood.
There’s so much more involved in writing a book than just writing a book. Since I am knee deep in “raising” the Anomaly trilogy – with each of the three books in a different “stage” – I’ll talk you through the process. Other writers, please feel free to correct, enhance or commiserate…:)
Stage 1: Pregnancy
In book writing, this is the “idea” stage. For Anomaly, this started in a meeting with the Thomas Nelson Fiction team, throwing around ideas for a YA Christian dystopian series. Some ideas were accepted, some rejected, some noted for further research later. It was fun! Then I went home and tried to bring all those ideas together, craft a plot and develop characters, create a world. Also quite fun. After that, my agent and I worked to put together a proposal to send to the publisher, and then, after some tweaks and discussion, the publisher accepted it, and I signed a contract.
(Okay, so this is actually me signing the contract for my first series; but second contracts – like second children – don’t have quite as many photos!)
Stage 2: Delivery
This is the toughest, but most rewarding part of the writing journey – for me, anyway. This is when all the books you’ve read, seminars you’ve attended, all the advice you’ve noted and plans you’ve made actually come to life. This is when you write. Red Smith said, “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” And, yeah, it’s kind of like that. You, the writer, are in your story, in your characters. It is painful, cathartic, scary, and exhilerating all at the same time. I literally – thirty minutes ago – “delivered” the third book in the Anomaly trilogy. I am still recovering. I am sad that that part of the journey is over, proud of the product, and terrified of what lies ahead. Just like childbirth, the timeline for delivering a book is different for every writer. I “deliver” in a few months. Some people take years others, days. No matter what, though, there is pain involved.
This is me the day after delivering my second child, Eliana (2001)
Stage 3: Infancy
The book is “born” – then what? Think you’re done? Ha! If you’re like me, that “baby” is a hot mess, with all kinds of caretakers needed to jump in and lend a hand to get it fed and clothed and changed. When I finish a book, I send it on to my editors. They go through it and look for areas that aren’t quite right, plot lines that don’t connect, characters that aren’t as developed as they should be, holes that need to be filled. Then they send me their notes, and I get back to work, fixing those problems. Some books require more attention than others. But all of them need help. They aren’t ready to go out into that big bad world right away.
Stage 4: Childhood
Once I turn in the first set of edits, the editors go through and look for the smaller mistakes – words I use too much (“look” is always a problem), errors in mechanics, discrepencies in the timeline, things like that. So I go back to the manuscript, and I work on those issues.
Stage 5: Adolescence
This is where I am with the second book in the Anomaly trilogy, Luminary. It is almost ready to be on its own. It has been written, gone through both sets of edits, it is even typeset. But it still needs me. It needs a cover – though that is created by someone else (otherwise, you’d be looking a stick figure), I get a voice in the process. It also needs to be proofread. There will still be a few mistakes in there. Nothing major: a missing comma here, a misspelled word there. So I get a copy of it, and I go through that copy to try and catch those errors. Thankfully, I am not the only one who checks that – I am SO not a detail person!
Stage 6: Adulthood
Finally, the book is ready to be released to the world. And, believe me, that is almost as tough as delivering it. This is my baby! And now people are going to read it, criticize it, discard it, sell it on eBay for far less than it is worth. Oh, the horror. But some will appreciate it, some will say it has helped them, challenged them, encouraged them. Some will love it. Not all. But enough. And, though I write about it and have contests for it, though it sits on my shelf, it is no longer really mine. It belongs to the readers. Sigh. My baby is all grown up.
