According to Kindle Author, Craig Stone was a promising young novelist who, at 23, had some book deals and appeared to be on the brink of becoming the next big writer when, for whatever reason, the book deals fell through. Facing financial difficulty, he took up a job at a well-known company and lived the office life until one day he snapped. He writes,  I … more »

Several weeks ago, I was reading something that caused me to worry. A line in a scriptural narrative biography tells how his father taught him in all the ways of right. As a father, I thought about what I had taught my children, and it wasn’t much. They weren’t going to become Enochs from anything I showed them. Football on Sundays, basketball during the week, … more »

Today is the start of both NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month, whereas the goal of NaBloPoMo is to post every day for a month. NaBloPoMo started after NaNoWriMo, so NaNoWriMo has more of a defined purpose: National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach … more »

Great Books by Writers Who Aren’t Dead Yet My friend Josh just started this site. He’s an English professor at BYU Idaho. It’s an online book club involving discussion of excellent literary authors still alive.

On my father’s recent visit from Florida, he brought me a stack of books, one of them James Hall’s collection of essays, Hot Damn! James Hall is a poet and crime novelist, but he once wrote essays for a newspaper for several years. This book is a collection of those essays. The topics of Hall’s essays range widely — from adventures in Florida to experiences … more »

Last night, unable to sleep at about 4 a.m., either because I went to bed early or because I simply couldn’t sleep, I grabbed my BlackBerry, on its usual place on my nightstand, and began to read through my email and feeds, as I am accustomed to do, lying half-conscious on my pillow, when I saw this intriguing question from Harold Motley about whether the … more »