I've moved

Just a quick note to let you know I've moved this blog over to my new website. Catch up with me there, and drop me a line to let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you!

SuperGuestStar

Drop by writer Ian Healy's blog for my guest post on showing v. telling. Can you find my typo? (unless he's fixed it for me by now) :).

What Next?

My novel CHILDREN OF LIGHT has received a lot of positive feedback and placed well in Amazon.com's international competition earlier this year, but the truth is that I haven't found a place for it in today's market.

Medieval novels are hard to place--especially in the Christian market, which CHILDREN is well-suited for. So I'm wondering what to do next.

Keep plugging along with it?

Shelve it until a more opportune time?

Serialize it on it's own blog, and let people read it for free, building a fan base?

I don't know, but in the meantime, I keep working on the next novel. I mean, it's only one story, right? I have dozens to tell.

Why I Wrote CHILDREN OF LIGHT

(Click on the title of this post to link to a free downloadable excerpt of CHILDREN OF LIGHT)

Several years ago I read an intriguing novel about the crusades which sent me to the encyclopedia in search of more information on the topic. At the end of the World Book article, I came across a few lines about a children's crusade that ended in tragedy, most of the participants either dying prematurely in the Alps or being betrayed and sold into slavery in Africa.

I actually gasped and re-read the paragraph three or four times. What in the world would possess children to set off on such a misadventure or their parents to allow it?

Sometime later when I had the tools and time to research the subject properly, I discovered that at the forefront of the so-called children's crusade was a charismatic and egotistical young commoner named Nicholas, that most of the "crusaders" were young adults, and that parents were generally terrified of the movement, seeking to protect their children from a disastrous end.

I couldn't let the story go. Why would unarmed, untrained, unfinanced peasants think they could accomplish what professional armies had not? How desperate or deluded must an individual be to join such an ill-fated mission? And what about all those young people sold into slavery? How did they live with the consequences of their mistakes?

I began to envision a young woman who would do anything to win freedom from her past. A young man who dreams of rising above his lowly status to change the world. A would-be warrior looking for a fight, and perhaps a bit of fortune.

And so began my exploration into the lives of three young commoners who thought they had nothing left to lose.