Written by Terri Fivash This, the second installment of the Dahveed series, continues the successes of the first. The characters and the emotions remain strong. Michal shows glimpses both of the woman who saved David’s life and the woman who despised him. David and Jonathan’s relationship deepens and shifts with David’s inexorable path to the…
Category: Literature
Review: Dahveed: Yahweh’s Chosen
Written by Terri Fivash There are few figures in the Bible so riveting as David. From his anointing in 1 Samuel 16 to his death in 1 Kings 2, he remains center stage. Then the Chronicles give an abbreviated account of him – 18 chapters long. There are few stories in the Old Testament so…
Book Review: Mozart’s Sister
Written by Nancy Moser Mozart’s Sister is a historical novel based on the life of Nannerl Mozart. The oft-forgotten sister of Wolfgang Mozart, she was also highly talented. In their childhoods they toured Europe together, the Wunderkinder (Wonder Children). Nannerl was older by five years and, in the early years, often received top billing over…
Review: The Cyberiad
Written by Stanislaw Lem Translated by Michael Kandel The Cyberiad is a collection of short stories, “fables for the cybernetic age”. Appropriately, then, they star cybernetic beings. One of the peculiarities of the book is that the characters are robots – a fact never forgotten, and often used, by the author. (In one story the…
Tips for Being a Successful Villain
Keep It Simple: If you get your hands on a hero, don’t go for some elaborate form of execution. If you maroon them on a cannibal-infested island, they will get off (and possibly make friends with the natives). If you lock them up with a vicious animal, they will kill it. If you leave them…
And the Moral of the Story …
Christian fiction is often designed to teach some sort of moral. There is some debate among Christian readers and writers as to which is better – writing a story to teach a lesson or writing a story with no particular point to make. I have done both. My Christian Holmes series – all short stories…
Story Length
Whenever I complete another ten pages of my novel (as the pages are in my computer file), I run a word count to see how much I have written. I began the counts because I read that the average length of a novel was 70K-90K words, and I was eager to meet that benchmark. I…
Naming Characters
Over the course of writing The Last Heir, I acquired several methods of naming characters. One was to establish naming patterns – Greek and biblical were my origins of choice, and Gaelic was a resort after that. Lists of Greek names could be found on baby-name sites that sorted by origin. Biblical (or “Hebrew”) names…
Sci-fi/Fantasy, Sci-fi vs. Fantasy
Science fiction and fantasy tend to be grouped together. Whether listed as “sci-fi/fantasy” by sellers or called “speculative fiction” by enthusiasts, the assumption is that they are the same kind of story. And, in a significant way, they are. Both bring us to worlds other than our own, filled with strange creatures and things that…
Update: The Other View
Entry 3 has been added to The Other View, starring Colten Shevyn. Enjoy!