I just finished writing a book!

Dec 222008
 
 December 22, 2008  N. J.'s Books 3 Responses »
I just finished writing a book!

I did it! Wrote a fantasy chapter book for my granddaughters in time for Christmas. Even managed three edits. This is the working cover I used on the Advance Reading Copy of the book. Of course, things did change a little bit along the way. The original goal was to come up with a story of about 10 or 12,000 words by Nov. 7th, 2008 – in time for a birthday. Maybe 12 chapters. But there's this law about things filling up all available  space.  And it must have seemed as though I had extra space available – though I [ Read more...]

The magic of Narnia

Dec 092008
 
 December 9, 2008  N. J.'s Books 5 Responses »

“I would read other books, of course,” wrote the novelist Neil Gaiman, “but in my heart I knew that I read them only because there wasn’t an infinite number of Narnia books.” My son sent me that quotation the other day. Partly because he knows I’m a big fan of the Narnia books, too, and  partly because he knows I’m in the middle of writing a children’s fantasy. I am not, however, going to claim that my book is even remotely like the Narnia ones. Why not? Because it’s been done so often, and usually it leaves a disgruntled reader [ Read more...]