Writing

2025 has been an interesting year. It was definitely a big year for my writing. It started off this past January when I finished my final draft of Silver Crescent. By April, I had completed the paper work for the copyright and was all set to self publish in early May. Silver Rose and Silver Crescent both saw a bump in sales when Silver Crescent came out.

I also started writing Silver Storm, the third and last book of my trilogy. I’ve had a few false starts, but that’s normal for me. I’m constantly rewriting the beginning when I start a new book. I hope to get more writing down in the coming year.

Thank you to all my readers for your kind words on my books. It really means a lot to me.

People have asked me what my writing process is. Do I sit and plan everything out ahead of time, like an architect writer, or do I just start writing, like a discovery writer? The answer is that I’m a bit of both, but I lean more to being a discovery writer.

You see, when I start a rough draft, I just write. I usually have no idea where the plot is going at first. I write whatever crazy idea comes into my head. As a discovery writer, I enjoy letting my characters drive the story. It doesn’t make any sense at first, but nobody ever sees it but me, so it doesn’t matter how bad it is to begin with.

I don’t become an architect writer until the editing process. An architect writer plans everything out carefully before they even start writing, but by this point, I would already have a completed rough draft. Once I have a good sense of where I’m going, then I can plan. This is the part where I add in foreshadowing, because I already know what’s coming next.

Whether I’m discovering the plot with my characters or carefully planning how best to improve my story with editing, I can say with confidence that I love being an author and all that comes with it.

Happy Halloween from Elizabeth and Jenny!

I live in the desert. As a result, I don’t see much rain. That was not the case this past Saturday, September 27th. I was at work at my day job around 5:00pm. The sky was looking a bit dark, but I didn’t think too much of it, until the sky opened up in a massive amount of rain. The parking lot outside was drenched. People coming into the store were running to escape the worse of it. The lights were flickering and I was worried they might turn off altogether. Luckily, the lights stayed on.

The biggest surprise of the day was the thunder. I could hear it, but I didn’t take much notice of it, until a thunderous boom sounded outside. Everyone looked up at that. Someone who had just walked outside immediately ran back in, saying, “Nope. Nope. Nope.”

All in all, I would say that the rain only lasted about twenty minutes. It stayed dark for a while, but I didn’t notice any more rain. The joys of rain in the desert. I wish it would rain here more often.

Recently, someone gave me the challenge to write about the “information community” I belong to. I could be as creative as I wanted, so I wrote a short story about the “author information community.” Enjoy.

“Wow, that was a great movie, wasn’t it, Elizabeth?” My friend turned to me and smiled.

“Yeah, it was okay,” I said, shrugging. “The story was a bit predictable, but other than that, it was fine.”

My friend tilted her head in confusion. “Predictable? Elizabeth, there were so many twists and turns, how can you call it predictable? I was on the edge of my seat the entire time!”

“Well, the screenwriters definitely did their jobs right, if you liked it. It’s just… for me, I figured out who the murderer was in the first ten minutes.”

“How?”

“I’m an author,” I said simply.

“That’s not an answer and you know it!”

I sighed. “All right. Authors, especially good authors, are trained to recognize the core concepts of stories: plot, character, setting, and of course, conflict. To have an effective story, everything you write must serve the story. You don’t want scenes or characters to go nowhere.”

“But you’re a fantasy author,” my friend said. “You wrote Silver Rose and Silver Crescent. We were watching a mystery.”

“It doesn’t matter. An author’s an author. I can spot the core concepts of a story a mile away. Your plot has to be engaging enough to draw the audience in. Your characters need to be complex and interesting and there needs to be room for them to grow. I don’t focus on setting as much as I probably should, but if done right, it can take on a life of its own and can almost be a character itself.”

“What about conflict?” my friend said. “When people talk about stories, they usually only mention plot, character, and setting.”

I smiled. “Conflict, in my opinion, is what makes or breaks a story. You could have the best plot ever, characters who leap off the page, and a rich and detailed setting, but it’s all for nothing if there is no conflict. If there’s no conflict, why is there even a story in the first place?”

“You’ve lost me there, Elizabeth.”

“Let me give you my favorite example. Mary walked to the store, bought some milk, and walked back home. That’s the story. It had a plot, a character, and a setting. Now, was it in any way interesting?”

“Not really.”

“That’s right. It was boring. Now, let’s try this. Mary walked to the store, bought some milk, and started to walk back home, when she was abducted by aliens.”

My friend leaned forward, engrossed. “Really? What happened?”

“You see?” I said triumphantly. “That’s my point. You weren’t interested until I added some conflict. Let’s say that the aliens were going to take Mary back to their home planet, but she escaped when she discovered that their weakness was milk. She splashed it on them, distracting them long enough to get away.”

My friend shook her head. “I don’t know how you come up with this stuff, Elizabeth.”

“Story ideas are always running through my head.”

“What about the mystery we were watching? How did you figure out the murderer’s identity so quickly?”

“Well, the countess was murdered in her country mansion, right?”

My friend nodded. “Yes, but there were three suspects: the nephew, the cook, and the gardener.”

“If you look at the foreshadowing, you can figure it out.”

“Umm…”

“All three had motive. The nephew thought he would be disinherited. The cook wanted revenge because the countess swindled her father out of his fortune. Neither one did it.”

“That’s why the gardener doing it was such a good twist!” my friend argued. “It took so long to reveal his motive that I discounted him as the murderer.”

“Ah, but the foreshadowing led me straight to him.”

“How?”

“The gardener’s motive was that he was the countess’s long lost son. He wanted revenge for her abandoning him.”

“But we didn’t even know she had a son until the end.”

“Again, the foreshadowing. Weren’t you curious as to why everyone kept saying that the countess had no children? As far as the audience knew, she wasn’t even married. So, why keep bringing it up? Authors only do this when they want to highlight important plot points. If there wasn’t a long lost child somewhere in the story, then the detail of her having no children is pointless.”

“So,” my friend said slowly, “the author only mentions details when it’s important?”

“Exactly. The countess’s son killing her out of revenge is the conflict, but we want the details, the clues, to prove it. Good authors strive to do just that. Especially in a mystery, which are so reliant on clues, the author needs to sprinkle these details in. They hint at the bigger story going on in the background.”

“Do all authors think like this?”

“It’s hard not to, when you spend so much of your time writing. You become adapt at noticing story details.”

“What about if you’re not an author?”

“Anyone can do it. Authors have an advantage, but anyone who is good at observing minute, almost undetectable details can do it. Now, come on. I’ll choose the next movie. Let’s see if you can think like an author.”

I am a big fan of fantasy. I’ve loved it since I was a little kid. One thing that’s always confused me, though, is that when some people refer to fantasy, they seem to get it mixed up with Sci Fi. Recently, I heard two people describe “fantasy.” One person thought a story about aliens attacking a futuristic city was fantasy. Another person referenced a story of aliens attacking a western saloon. Those aren’t fantasy. Those are science fiction.

Fantasy is all about magic, swords, knights, princesses, and anything else medieval. Sci Fi is about space and futuristic technology. I’m sure you’re sitting there, wondering what the big deal is, since both fantasy and science fiction aren’t real, it’s fiction. To me, there is a difference. And that difference is that Sci Fi books rarely hold my attention. I tried to read one Sci Fi book, but the author dropped me off in the middle of the action, described everything in advanced technological terms I didn’t understand, and expected me to care that these two characters I knew nothing about just got engaged. I was completely lost. And unfortunately, it happens all the time when I pick up a Sci Fi book.

It’s much easier for me to understand fantasy. It doesn’t matter if it’s high fantasy, set solely in a fantasy world, or urban fantasy, where we see elements of the real world. They’re usually straight forward plots, where the hero gains magical powers and must save the day from the villain. It’s a cliche at this point, but I don’t care. I love getting to meet the main characters and finding out how their magic system works and seeing their journey to defeat the bad guy.

Fantasy and Science Fiction are always grouped together, but they are as different as night from day. It is possible to combine the two genres, but mostly it seems like authors stick to one over the other. I know which one I prefer.