Denae Christine's Blog

To my surprise, after teaching math for 4 years, I was asked if I would join the English department at my high school. My principal and team leader were impressed that I had published books and wanted me to bring my expertise in writing to my teaching.

Yikes.

I enjoy teaching English far more than I expected. My feedback can be more personal. Class writing warm ups can be about their weekends. I can let students write about zombies and lava monsters and ghosts and kidnappings. I can talk abou...

If you are hardworking and fortunate enough to be a writer, congratulations!  I have a warning for you.

I’m serious.  They may look cute, and they may purr and tell you what an amazing human you are.  Do not be fooled!  Felines are liars.  They worm their way into your life and suck away all productivity.

Consider the example cat in the picture on the left.  You can tell this cat is trying to smother me in my sleep.  I am unable to reach any of the nearby books nor my compu...

This post is inspired by the website Noblebright and by the post  Noblebright vs Grimdark (and by Is Noblebright a new fantasy sub-genre? and Geeking out over Noblebright and a kboards discussion on the topic).

Have you heard of noblebright yet?

I love the idea of having an alternative to grimdark, having a genre full of hope and heroic characters who are willing to die for what’s right.  Most of this is because my mood is so affected by what I read.  When I’m reading gritty tales about assas...

Some characters live.  Some characters die.  It is up to the author to choose which.  Or is it?

If a book is done right, it is up to the story itself whether a character should live or not.  Readers may disagree, but there are some characters who just needed to die.  There are others who shouldn’t have.

One of the Writing Excuses podcasts discusses killing off characters and how to keep from foreshadowing it.

Die

Mentors and parents.  Mentors often have to die (E #1), as do parents (FP #1),...

First, books 1 and 2 are on sale through Monday!  Pick up the kindle books here.

Next, what we’ve all been waiting for . . . .

Rebel Deception is now available on Amazon!  It is the third book in the blade shifter trilogy, and I’m quite impressed at how well it turned out.  (580 pages, oh my!)

I had more editors and advanced readers for this book than I have for the other three.  They were too many to list in the acknowledgements, but I couldn’t have pulled the end of the trilogy together wi...

Now that you’ve been awed by my word-crafting abilities (or not), I wanted to share my foray into drawing my characters with sharpies.  On cardboard.  This is my attempt at designing book covers.  (Notice that my book 2 cover idea influenced the actual book 2 cover, ha!)

The drawing was for fun, but this post was also inspired by wattpad (I’m trying something new).

  This is my book 1 idea, and it came after the book 1 cover was finished.  I liked the gold-bonds-on-wrists and dark-figure-in-g...

Am I a reader who likes to write, or am I a writer who likes to read?

I certainly read a lot.  An author recently wrote that 12 books was plenty to read in one year.  I just can’t fathom so few.  If you know much about Goodreads, you probably know about the reading challenges people set for themselves each year.  On my profile, it shows I’ve read about 100 books each of the last five years.  That may not seem like too much (only 2 per week), until you remember that this is only counting books...

This may seem like a strange concept, but math and creative writing are similar in my mind. When I was at CSU and told people I was getting a double major in Math and Creative Writing, the other students thought I was crazy.

Math abstractions and retellings

Math helps students learn to think abstractly. You’re not just learning how to add three cats plus two cats is five cats, you’re learning how to addany three plus two item. Algebra extends this abstraction from any item toany number. X pl...

Names are tough. They can be the second-hardest part about writing a book.

Author names:

As an author, myname is a pseudonym. That’s not even the whole story. My first name is correct, but my last name is more complicated to pronounce/spell than Christine. It’s important to pick an easily pronounceable name, else readers won’t be able to recommend you to friends.

As a reader, I remember talking with a friend about Tamora Pierce. You’d think a name like that would be easy to pronounce, but it...

I have many ideas in my story that readers do not see . . . at least not the first time they read the books. Have I been too subtle? Wouldn’t it save pages leaving those out if no one sees them anyway? How subtle istoo subtle?

First, I had a couple subtle themes in my first book that I had to make more obvious. It was important for readers to pick up on why Symon was acting this way and what he wanted. Readers said the book meandered and didn’t have a point until halfway through. Part of that...