The Awakening

Story Ties, Themes And Terrible Mothers

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What themes tie the stories you love together?
Most novelists have themes that turn up over and over in their fiction. It's part of why readers return to their books again and again. Stephen King often includes groups of outcast kids who must band together to fight evil, evil lurking beneath the surface of small-town life, and the role of faith in both evil and the fight against evil. And, as these examples make clear, good vs. evil overall. At first I didn’t recognize many common themes in my own novels. Common Themes, Very Different No...
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Prague And Krakow Spark Supernatural Ideas

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My recent travels to Prague and Krakow sparked all sorts of ideas for novels, including for a new supernatural thriller series. A Non-Supernatural Mystery In Prague First, though, private investigator Quille C. Davis will travel to Prague to question a psychic medium, who is also a murder suspect, in my Q.C. Davis mysteries. While the Q.C. Davis mystery series is not supernatural, Prague's long history of mysticism and alchemy make it an ideal home for the psychic medium character. And ...
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Values v. Religious Beliefs (a/k/a Why Readers Ask About Cyril)

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Last week in Questions, Abortion, and The Awakening Series I said that this week I'd write about why Cyril was my favorite character in The Awakening (after Tara, the protagonist). And I will talk about that, but first I want to say a few things about my mom and about religion, which will take us back to Cyril.  My mother was 42 years older than me. She grew up in a time when questioning church authorities simply wasn’t done. She and my dad memorized doctrine as children. They didn’t talk...
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Questions, Abortion, And The Awakening Supernatural Thriller Series

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One of the first book bloggers who reviewed The Awakening said she couldn't tell what my views as the author were on abortion, and she really liked that. The book begins with an unexpected and supernatural pregnancy. It also takes place in the modern day. At least at the moment, abortion is a legal option the protagonist would have. Because of that, I knew I needed to think about the topic of abortion. It’s Complicated The situation is particularly complicated for Tara, the main char...
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How To Peek At Other’s Bookshelves And Win Autographed Books

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If you love books the way I do, you probably have book titles that friends recommended to you typed into cryptic notes on your phone or written on scraps of paper you put in your pocket, forget about, and find again in shreds after doing the laundry. When I  make the effort track down a book, though, usually I love it, and I buy or borrow all the author's works. Then I wonder how many other great recommendations I've forgotten. Which is too bad because I depend on suggestions from others to sort...
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Five Wonderful Things About Millennials

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When I created the main character for my Awakening series, I wasn't thinking about generational issues. I wanted Tara Spencer to be young enough that it was believable she’d never had sex, I wanted her to have a strong reason other than a religious one for choosing to remain a virgin, and I wanted her to discover she was nonetheless pregnant when it would most disrupt her life. So I made her a pre-med student and the oldest of five children, so she understood exactly how much responsibility bein...
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Entrepreneur Or Ne’re Do Well?

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A boyfriend I had in my early twenties was a hard worker but did not like his job. He had no interest in going to college, and he was unimpressed by how long it took most people to build businesses from the ground up, so he looked into various get-rich quick-schemes. He purchased a series of books on how to buy a house with no money down, fix it up and rent it out, then use equity in the first house to help buy another, and so on. The idea was not to earn income through rentals but to sell after...
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Why Write a Thriller Series About A Potential Female Messiah?

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People often ask me why, as a non-believer, I'm writing a thriller series that revolves around religion-related concepts. (The Awakening series follows a young woman whose virgin pregnancy might bring the world a female messiah or trigger Armageddon.) First, completely aside from religion, I’ve always been intrigued by world changing or world ending stories. A great example of this type of story is my favorite movie, The Terminator.The Awakening (Book 1) and The Unbelievers (Book 2).Second, the ...
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6 Things I Learned In The Last Year About Writing And Business

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During much of the last fourteen years, I worked full-time--and then some--as a lawyer and wrote fiction on the side. Last year, I gradually shifted gears so that now more than half my professional life is devoted to writing and to the business side of writing. Below are a few things I've learned along the way.Get Out:  Getting outside once a day, no matter what the weather, boosts my mental health. Much as writing all day at an antique desk in my home office sounds appealing when it's ten ...
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What Books Are You Thankful You Read? (Favorite Books Post No. 4)

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This year has been a good year, and I have more to be thankful for than I could put into a hundred posts. So, being a writer, I figured I'd narrow it down to books. Which still could take more than a hundred posts, so I decided to write about three books: one from childhood, one from college, one from the last few years.The Lion, The Witch, and The WardrobeIn first grade, my teacher left school for several months to have a baby, and we had a wonderful substitute teacher. Every day she read to us...
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