Larceny and violence in the writer's soul.

I'd forgotten how long it had been since I posted, until I got an email from Peggy from high school saying she'd been reading this blog. I figured I'd better get on with it so there's something new here to read.

April was an amazing, filled-full month, complete with a writers conference up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I was part of an intermediate fiction mentoring group, and they were very helpful with their critique of my first 20 pages. That's all they got to see. They missed the good parts with the body in the warehouse, another body in the heroine's car (unless I change that), and blood dripping from the ceiling. Fun, huh?

Actually, going to the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference is always wonderful. Lots of big trees, woodpeckers, squirrels, mountain air--and Christians, which I like. But because I'm not writing for Christians, there were times when I felt like a back slider. People talked about their projects, such as devotionals, Christian novels, etc. Then they'd ask, "What do YOU write."

"Right now, a murder mystery for the secular market. The heroine is a recovering alcoholic attorney whose clients keep getting killed off." But the folks at my tables during meals had lots of great encouragement for me. We quiet Christians--we understand larceny and violence. The sin nature is a great source for novels.

There are deep pools of hatred and murder, envy and irritability, and tons of sloth in me. Lots of good material to work with.