When I’m not sure what to do with a certain section of my novel, I frequently reach for my copy of the Newbery honor book, The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope.  I’ve done this with first chapters, last chapters,…

I’m happy to report that things have settled down in my sister’s Cairo suburb.  The people of Maadi have essentially taken their neighborhoods back with a little assistance from the Egyptian army.  Undoubtedly, sentiments about Westerners vary widely throughout Egypt, but one stranger…

I tend to stick to thoughts about writing on this blog.  But when I had a request for a school visit this morning, I couldn’t help thinking about the ones that I did in Egypt a couple of years ago…

In the latest round of revisions, I’ve been dealing with issues of story logic.  Why this? Why that?  Sometimes people agree that there’s a problem, but I’ve noticed that different people are often stumbling over different things.  Stephen King once wrote:…

Author and writing teacher Darcy Pattison has observed that writers have two stories when they finish a manuscript: the one on the page and the one in their heads.  The challenge is bringing the two into alignment.  (That’s not quite…

Transitions.  How do I hate thee?  Let me count the ways.  The first would be that I’ve just spent a half an hour struggling with a chapter opening and still haven’t found anything that works to my satisfaction.  Ordinarily, this is…