November 2, 2011 · 5:00 am

Hard to Find Happy Endings

Kim Kardashian is getting divorced after 72 days of marriage.

I know, I know. Let me give you a moment to weep. (Sarcasm…)

Who didn’t see this coming? I mean, really?

I won’t get off on a tangent about the Kardashians and how I think they contribute to the degradation of society, and that those who watch/emulate/admire said persons and those like them are complete and utter morons. No, I won’t go there.

Instead, I’ll point out that once again, the sanctity of marriage has been spat upon.

Happily ever after is subject to “happily until I’m not happy anymore.” Vows mean nothing. Vows are a joke.

And let’s just be honest–irreconcilable differences is a phrase used for those who don’t want to be honest about why they’re really getting divorced.

So, some questions for you.

Share with me: 

1. Should it be more difficult to get married? Meaning, should we impose requirements, like pre-marital counseling for all couples? Should getting a marriage license be more difficult?
2. Should divorce laws be stricter? If so, how can we make them stricter?
3. Should “irreconcilable differences” be removed from reasons for divorce?

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October 31, 2011 · 5:00 am

The Hallow of Halloween– Should Christians Be Involved?

Of all the holidays, Halloween definitely provides the most instigation for controversy among the Christian community. 

In some circles, it’s the “no-no” holiday.

Should it be celebrated by Christians?
Should Christians hand out candy?
Should churches condone the idea of children dressing in costume?
Are Christians going to hell for celebrating on “the devil’s day”?

My sons both go to church-affiliated Christian schools. My oldest son is in an elementary school, my youngest in a pre-school.

My youngest son had a class Halloween party complete with treats and all of the kids in their costumes. My oldest son’s class did nothing–the school does not acknowledge the holiday.

Very different views from the same community of believers.

I want to make it very clear that I am deeply rooted in the “It’s Okay for Christians to Celebrate Halloween” camp. But with the emphasis on the fun of it–the happy character costumes, the fun of going door-to-door to get candy, and the excitement a kid has at this time of year.

Halloween is not evil unless you choose for it to be so.

When speaking to Believers who do not celebrate Halloween, the number one reason given is: “Christian’s shouldn’t celebrate Halloween because it’s pagan.”

Not really. As a historian and born again believer, I’m ready to de-bunk the myths of the “pagan” Americanized Halloween.

Many of the American Halloween traditions are relatively new. In the grand scheme of history, dressing in costume and going door-to-door asking for candy have only become popular in the last century.

Before that, Halloween was an unorganized compilation of various religious beliefs and traditions from many European cultures. 

And many of these religious beliefs and traditions were started by the Church. (Big “C” church refers to the Roman Catholic Church–the earliest form of organized Christianity.)

Back in the day, the Celtic people of Europe (the UK and northern France) had beliefs tied to this time of year. They celebrated a holiday called Samhain (sow-in) that recognized the changes in the seasons–from light to dark, warm to cold, and from life to death. October 31 began the new year, and they believed that at Samhain, the land of the living and the land of the dead could overlap.

From these ancient traditions, the Catholic church attempted to reach converts. To take the emphasis off of the paganism of Samhain, the Catholic church made November 1 All Saints Day, or the day to remember and honor the saints. They then added November 2 as All Souls Day, or the day to remember and honor all of the dead who had gone on before.

These two “holy days” fell into the Catholic church’s method of conversion for pagans in the early church days--Keep doing what you’re doing, just do it in the name of Jesus. Remember that in those days, it wasn’t about converting hearts as much as it was about numbers.  So the idea of the living and dead overlapping fell under these days–Church sanctioned days of commemoration for the dead.

The night before All Saints Day became known as All Hallow’s Eve, and then was shortened to Hallowe’en.

One of the traditions during All Souls Day was for children or youngsters to go house to house asking for small cakes. In return, they would offer prayers for the family members who had died. Some believe that our tradition of trick-or-treating might have come from this early practice.

The idea of wearing costumes has no real “pagan” tie. In general, it can be traced back to the idea that many who instigated “trickery” or pranks during this time of year really wanted to mask their identities.

In the early 20th century, communities looked for a way to stop the pranks and keep kids safe on Halloween. They decided to organize community wide parties and parades for kids to show off their costumes, and later on the idea of subduing “tricksters” by offering them sweets turned into modern day trick-or-treating.

The Jack-O-lantern might be the most “evil” of all Halloween traditions. According to old Irish folklore, a man named Jack O’Lantern was so bad that he was kicked out of hell with only a burning ember to light his way. He wanders the earth at night with his ember in a hollowed out turnip. When the legend came to America, children began hollowing out pumpkins to create their own “Jack O’Lanterns.”

Many of the traditions of Halloween can become about evil and death–but only if you let them.

We know what the Bible says about evil. We know what it says about what happens to a soul at death & where it goes. There’s no need to argue whether or not some people emphasize the negatives of the holiday–they do. It’s the non-Christians who’ve darkened the holiday; for well over a thousand years, Christendom has attempted to refocus it.

And if one still wants to cling to the pagan argument, then we must also point out all of the pagan influences in other parts of Christianity. Celebrating Christmas on December 25th, for example. That was not Jesus’ actual birthday. No, no. It was a Roman pagan holiday that the Church usurped, once again taking emphasis off the pagan rituals and putting them on Christianity.

So unless you are out reenacting a Samhain ritual, the paganism of Halloween is all but lost.

If you and your family choose not to celebrate Halloween, there is nothing wrong with that. I respect your decision completely.

Evil has no power over us when we are indwelled with the Holy Spirit. We have no reason to fear the “evil” of Halloween if we take the power away from the “evil one” and place our focus on Christ, as we should do daily, not just one day a year.

We can make Halloween fun, non-pagan, and completely in line with what the Bible teaches. We can allow our kids to dress up as happy characters–story book characters, superheroes, etc, and take them door-to-door and allow them the joy of racking up on a potential sugar-buzz.

Everyday is hallowed when we walk in the light of the Lord. Nothing can change that. Glorify the Lord in all you do, even on Halloween.

For more info, check out this video from The History Channel.

Share with me: What do you think about Halloween? Is okay for Christians to celebrate it? Why or why not?

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October 28, 2011 · 5:00 am

Writing Ain’t Just Writing Anymore

I’ve been asked many times, “when do you have time to write?”

I appreciate that question because it means that the person asking acknowledges that writing is a long-term process that requires a block of time to accomplish.

But this post is not for those people. This post is for the non-writers. For those who enjoy reading a good book, but don’t exactly know what goes into creating that book. For those who might wonder, “what do you do all day?”

This post is about a day in the life of a full-time writer.

I don’t know much about accounting. I don’t know much about being a stock broker. I don’t know much outside of the areas in which I’ve been educated.  That being said, I don’t think the majority of people know much about what a writer does.

It seems simple–writers write. Yeah, if only.

Writing as a career (that is, actively pursuing and publishing multiple novels as I am), is a full time job.

The vast majority of writers already have a full time job doing something else, so writing is a full time job that has to be fit into another full time job.

In my case, I am a full time wife and mother, and I have to fit my writing career into that. That is much easier said than done.

I have responsibilities to my family, to my church, to my community, to my friends, and to myself (gotta keep healthy!). I have a full-time life. And I had one well before I decided to pursue writing. So making time for writing has become the challenge that I overcome on a regular basis.

In my life I’ve found time to write in the afternoons when my boys are either napping or having “quiet time.” I normally can carve out a couple of hours on a good day, and zero hours on a bad day. Occasionally, if I have the energy, I’ll write at night after my boys are in bed. But seeing as how my alarm goes off very early in the morning, this is a rarity. Sometimes, on occasion, I’m able to carve out time on a day when someone has offered to help me with childcare. On those special days, I can devote more hours to my passion. My husband is very supportive of my writing, but even with his help, I don’t often have time to write everyday.

Crafting a story isn’t all that easy.

It’s often said to me, “I could never do that. I don’t have any ideas for a story.”

Well, that’s part of my passion. I have a very, very, very, very, very long list of ideas. I’m constantly coming up with new ones.

But committing those ideas to paper is a process.

A good writer researches their story to make sure details are accurate.

For my current WIP (work-in-progress as it’s known in the writer-world) I’ve been researching Cambodia, even though Cambodia is only a very small portion of the book. For historicals, I have to delve into my history knowledge and make sure that my details and events are accurate. Just the research portion of the creative process can take a l-o-n-g time.

Another step in the process is plotting.

In the world of plotting there are two groups: the Plotters and the Pantsters. I am a Pantster.

I’m not a good plotter. I’m just not. I can’t sit down and create an outline of my story in detail before I’ve written it, but I do have a general idea of where the story is going, and what scenes I want to include (flying by the seat of my pants). So, I do make a list just to keep myself on topic. Some writers are very detailed plotters and have an outline that almost looks like a completed novel. God bless ’em.

And then there’s the actual writing.

Some days, when time permits, I can hack out several thousand words. This is a very, very good day. Other days, either time is an issue or I’m still thinking through elements of the story and I might stare at the blinking cursor for a while and be happy to produce a couple hundred words.


And when my manuscript is done, a first draft complete, then comes the editing process.

This involves hours of carefully combing through the story and editing the big elements–plot, conflict, character motivation, etc, and the little details like tags, beats, word choice, spelling, and all the nitty-gritty details. This is a long, continuous process. Every time I read my stories I can find something to edit. I’m an obsessive editor, so I actually enjoy the editing process more than the first-draft writing process. The more I learn about writing and story crafting, the more I want to edit. Once the backbone of the story is there, it’s the details that I like to tweak.

When I feel like the story is fit for human consumption, I have some readers get involved. 

Beta readers–those who normally like books in my genre and will read it and give feedback. My critique partner, my agent, and writer friends who will read with a critical eye and help me fix any gaps, holes, or problems. And my mom. Because she loves my work but will always give me her honest opinion.

And when I’ve gotten feedback from those people, it’s more editing.

Then it’s time to send it off to publishers via my agent. To do this an author must create what’s known as a packet that includes not only a short blurb about the book, but a 3-5 page synopsis (that is a bad word in the writing community. Do you know how hard it is to crunch an entire book into 3 pages??), market comparisons, marketing strategies and all sorts of other things.

And some of those publishers, believe it or not, want you to do more editing before they’ll even consider publishing your book.

And the publication process is a whole ‘nother animal that many other writers have been wonderful about sharing. Suffice it to say, it’s editing on steroids. And book promotion. Massive work on book promotion. And marketing. And a whole host of other things that can be, even to the seasoned writer, overwhelming at times.  

So, I’ve finished a story. What now? Start another one? 

Sure, but in between ALL of the steps in this process, there’s the important goal of creating a reader fan-base or following.

How does an author do this? Via the web of course. Hence the blog, Facebook and Twitter followings that are very important.

It is the goal of any author to connect with their readership. And believe it or not, publishers actually consider how many followers an author has on various social media networks when they are looking at their work for publication. 

I’m not just blogging for the fun of it. It’s part of my job–part of my career as a writer.
I’m not just on Twitter for fun (yes, honey, I actually am cultivating my career although you think I spend entirely too much time on Twitter!).
I’m not posting things on Facebook just for the heck of it.

This is all part of the bigger picture–my career as a writer. 

We writers of the world would really appreciate your support in the following ways:

Follow us on Twitter. Like or Friend us on Facebook. Follow our blogs and share our posts with your friends–and please please PLEASE leave comments on our posts.

The point of blogging is to instigate conversation, so we want to hear from you. Please don’t be shy. Please contribute your opinion. It’s what we want–it’s what we need. It’s how you can help support us.

Oh, and read our books, of course. 🙂 And if you read a good book, pass the word along to as many of your friends as possible so that you are promoting that author. This is the best thing you can do for any writer.

**And I haven’t even mentioned the process of a writer finding an agent. Blessedly, I already have an agent, so that is not a process I have to undertake anymore. Praise the Lord! But it is a major step for many writers still.

Also, we find time to support our fellow authors by following & commenting on their social media contributions and by reading and talking up their published works.

The moral of the story is that writing isn’t just writing. It’s a full time job.

Thanks for your help and support. You guys are the best!


Share with me: What part of a writer’s life most surprises you?  Writer-friends– what part of your career as a writer do you find most challenging; most enjoyable?

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