Desperate for… Love

Desperate for… Love

During a recent exercise in finding writing topics, I was challenged to type “Desperate for…” into my Google browser. You want to know what I discovered? People are desperate for attention, approval, and affluence (usually they call that last one “money” or “a loan.”) Women are desperate for a miracle, a man, a baby, or…

Identity Crisis

Identity Crisis

In my daughter’s recent graduation photos, I see her pose with friends and classmates from around the world—a vast and fascinating variety of colors and cultures, ethnicities and languages. As a holder of triple citizenship, she barely notices but instead integrates the differences into her multiverse. Amazingly, she’s never seemed to suffer from an identity…

The Longing for Love

The Longing for Love

Part of the dynamics of a good story focuses on a desire. Sometimes it’s a physical plot goal, sometimes it’s more of an emotional yearning. The romance shelf, of course, features the longing for love. But the not-so-odd paradox remains that 99% of the books you read—whatever their genre: mystery, fantasy, thriller—have a love thread…

The Search for Substance

The Search for Substance

I am a realist. Though my mother might disagree (I suspect she equated my head in a book with my head in the clouds), on the bottom line I’m the ultimate pragmatist. I believe—and write—about life in all its humble glory, yet that’s a spiritual reality. I search for SUBSTANCE, the core value inside the…

He Was There All the Time

He Was There All the Time

Of course, you remember the classic meme where a woman reviews her life by means of a series of footprints on the beach. She wonders why God disappeared at the most difficult moments of her life, but it turns out He carried her then. He was there all the time. Recently a dear friend spoke…

7 Novel Ideas About Love

7 Novel Ideas About Love

Good sport that he is, my husband cheerfully endures watching the occasional chick flick or romantic comedy with me. But as Lord Byron said: “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ’Tis woman’s whole existence.” There’s a reason why love stories creep into (or take over) most of what I write–and why Romance continues…

The World’s Last Witch Trials

The World’s Last Witch Trials

“It’s just another old story,” Nicolás Serrano insists to Melissa Travis in my first book Destiny at Dolphin Bay, as they debate the existence of a legendary Chilean ghost ship. His grandmother would beg to differ—her grandparents were caught up in the chilling drama of probably the world’s last (and completely nonfictional) witch trials in…

This is Not the Real World

This is Not the Real World

While cynics and pragmatists are quick to carp that the Gospel and the Christian worldview don’t offer solutions to real-world problems—as if this punch delivered the ultimate technical knock-out—I’d like to suggest that this world we live in now is not the real world. Fiction writers, too, are frequently criticized for not focusing on real…

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

“Art takes nature as its model,” Aristotle said. In other words, art imitates life—and I believe that to a point, since much of my own writing reflects the settings and characters I interact with every day. While I’ve never suffered from a scarcity of story ideas, after experiencing the Chilean version of a “24” season…

New Legends of Chiloé

New Legends of Chiloé

“If you want to change the world, pick up a pen,” Martin Luther said—and did. Thirty-two years ago, as a young wife and mother in the (almost) godforsaken Islands of Chiloé, I decided I wanted to change the strangely delusional world I lived in. So I picked up a pen and began to write some…