I'm dedicating this article to Robin Barnes, who I only met twice in my life and seemed like a lovely person. She did, however, traumatize me as a fifteen year old when she asked what my book was about, and I, standing directly in the middle of my Christian homeschool co-op, panicked and blurted, "A [...]
Lately I've been knee-deep in editing my book and wondering if everything would be easier if I just gave it up and became a cheese specialist in some remote country. My motto for most aspects of life is “Just wing it and pretend you're right!” which as it turns out, is not a very good [...]
Hello, my friends! My presence hasn't cursed your Thursday in several weeks! The reason for this absence is fairly simple: I've been slowly crushed beneath the inexorable weight of the universe and the relentless pressure of deadlines busy. Apart from taking on some new projects and plowing through the old ones, my library job invaded [...]
We Barans have a problem with road trips. Not that we don't like them -- the opposite, really -- but whenever we set off on a journey of significant length, a world-threatening disaster somehow befalls us. To be fair, my sister was the cause of 83% of these disasters. You don't want to know the [...]
As a general rule, homeschoolers are good kids. (I say this with trepidation, waiting for the comments telling me I'm wrong because their brother's best friend's cousin's homeschooled neighbor became a serial killer.) But as a general rule, homeschoolers don't leave a path of destruction in their wake. They're more prone to correcting your Silmarillion [...]
Good morning, minions! Featured on today's smorgasbord of randomness is an assorted selection of PRETTY WORDS!!! Hannah Gaudette extended an invitation to participate in the single-line story challenge, which is, in essence, a glorified flash fiction dump. Flash fiction is fun. Thus, here I am. The idea is to choose 5 out of 13 genres [...]
I've written a terrible blog post. I would badger you with excuses about how I didn't mean to write a terrible blog post, but the truth is, that's exactly what I meant to do. You know how The Incredibles starts with Bob Parr driving to his wedding? His wedding, which is at night? And he's [...]
I have a personal grudge against the romance genre. To be fair, the romance genre never did anything to me, besides being a constant disappointment and a blight against humanity. I promised myself long ago that I would never, under any circumstance, stoop to the level of reading romance. Any other genre, sure, I'll try [...]
I wrote a book about caribou and death. (Literally.) I wanted it to be a fun, romping story about a Christmas world. Somewhere along the line those intentions went horribly awry, and became what I have now: 90,000 words of heavy prose and sad characters. Periodically I’ll hear things like “Your blog is hilarious, so [...]
Well friends, I did a thing. Back in January, Story Embers opened applications for a staff writer internship -- AKA killing brain cells and writing articles on a monthly basis. I saw the announcement email, thought, “hey, that's cool!” and promptly forgot about it. An hour later, one of my friends on the writing team [...]
The Sarcastic Elf 