Photo credit: lalalime.blogspot.com I asked God to make me a prayer warrior, and I realized I was missing out on the chance to pray for all of you, my online friends! So how can I pray for you, especially during this busy, stressful, lonely, joyful, heartwarming Christmas season? Prayer requests can sometimes be private things, so to keep your privacy, I’ve made a form you can fill out that will keep your requests just between you and me. Also please be sure to fill out the form again to update me if you sent me a prayer request in the past. I’d love to hear how you’re doing. Loading...

I was over at ChristiansRead blog talking a bit about Christmas in the Regency time period but also a personal challenge I have for myself for this Christmas season. Regency Christmases are not well documented, since it was not as huge a celebration as it would be in the later 1800s during Queen Victoria’s reign, but the things I have been able to dig up all have a common theme. Christmas is all about large gatherings, usually with family, often including friends and neighbors. Click here to read more I forgot to mention it in the blog post, but I have a nice Snapdragon scene in The Spinster's Christmas . :) It's probably what sparked my slightly unhinged interested in the game.

I’m over at the Clean Romance Reads Cafe blog today talking about some of my Christmas traditions, which admittedly aren’t “traditional” but are fun. :) What are some of your Christmas traditions? I was thinking today about Christmas traditions. I had always thought of “Christmas traditions” as things like antique tree ornaments, or certain family games, or special Christmas dinner plates—stuff that’s been passed down for generations. … But I realized that “Christmas traditions” aren’t necessarily things that we own, or things that you’d usually think of as a “tradition.” Click here to read more.

I've just released my Story Sensei Deep Point of View worksheet on ebook! $2.99 on Kindle , iBooks , Nook , Kobo , Smashwords . As a writer, you can provide a richer emotional experience for your reader by utilizing a deeper point of view. Deep point of view draws the reader into the characters’ heads and can elicit a stronger emotional reader response to the characters’ struggles, decisions, and reactions to external conflict. Readers who have read a passage in deep point of view often talk about how the characters seemed more vivid, how the story and prose riveted them to the page. It is very easy for a writer to learn ways to draw the reader into the mind, body, and soul of your characters through deep point of view techniques. By the end of the worksheet you’ll have: 1) A basic understanding of different points of view so you can decide if deep or shallow point of view is best for your story 2) Ways to strengthen the emotional writing and draw the reader deeper ...

A Taste of Traditional Regency Romances FREE ebook Get it on Get it on Kindle , iBooks , Nook , Kobo , Smashwords I and my friends from the Bluestocking League have put out a sampler ebook with extended excerpts from five Regency romances! Each of the books in this sampler is the first book in a series, and all the books are clean, wholesome romances. From some of the most beloved authors of Regency romance come stories to delight. These excerpts, set in the time of Jane Austen, will give you a sip of sweet romance and will leave you eager for more. From Gail Eastwood , The Captain's Dilemma : Escaped French war prisoner Alexandre Valmont has risked life and honor in a desperate bid to return home and clear his name. Merissa Pritchard risks charges of treason and her family's safety to help the wounded fugitive. But will they risk their hearts in a most dangerous game of love? From Camille Elliot , The Spinster’s Christmas : Spinster Miranda Belmoore and naval Captain G...

I’ve had a horrible past week, and I blogged about it at ChristiansRead blog . But amazingly, some really great things came out of it: I have just come out of possibly the worst 10 days of my life. I had some pretty bad menstrual cramping for a couple days, but one of the generic acetaminophen tablets I took for the pain ended up giving me horrible food poisoning symptoms (I have a feeling it was some type of impurity or chemical contamination in the tablet). So after dry heaving almost hourly for 24 hours, I was in terrible shape. Click here to read more

Since I'm writing a near-future/sort-of-dystopian story, I watched this movie (thanks to Netflix DVD). It wasn't quite as bad as I expected it to be, but it had its problems. Here’s the blurb from Netflix: In a futuristic world where Earth is divided into four warring "Corporations," a frightening new breed of NecroMutant threatens to destroy the global population unless the leader of an old monastic order can destroy the beasts and save the planet. Camy: The story premise is that after the ice age, an alien machine came to earth to create those NecroMutants from human beings it captured, although the story never explains why that was the machine’s mission. Mankind warred against the machine up until an alternate reality Middle Ages, which was when the machine was buried. The movie is set in an alternate reality future (the year 2707). The thought of four corporations ruing the world was credible to me since history had been changed after the machine touched d...