Egypt has over 5000 years of recorded history.  Often, people concentrate on the days of the pharoahs from Menes (Narmer) to the suicide of Cleopatra VII.  But Egypt continued to play its part in world history even though it wound up…

Abusir is not one of the classic, must-see sights of Egypt. As one of my characters observes,  “No one says ‘I want to see Abusir before I die.”  The pyramids there are 100 years younger than those in Giza, but…

In every other project that I’ve done up until MARK OF THE SCARAB, I experienced things before I created characters.  In fact, on my website, there’s an article about how I wasn’t able to write about Merano, Italy until I got…

I was mowing my lawn one day when I found myself thinking about how I might be able to deduct a visit to see my sister on my taxes.  At the moment, I was thinking more in terms of trying…

Last week, I put the finishing touches on a middle grade novel and sent it off to my agent.   It had undergone one major revision and any number of minor ones.  Once I fixed various problems with setting, logic, characterization,…

Why on earth would I place lessons learned on the writing craft under the researching category instead of the section on writing?  For me, studying the writing process really is separate from actually sitting down and doing it.  Naturally, there…

Last weekend, I attended a SCBWI Missouri retreat with editor Cheryl Klein. I might come to think of it as the “Toads and Diamonds” retreat. Word gems dropped from Cheryl’s mouth almost every time she opened it during her critiques…