Erin Lewis's Blog

Do you ever imagine how scenes from a book would play out in movie form?

I sometimes have a certain impression in my mind of how a scene would appear, and in particular, the music that would be used as a backdrop. Some of my own novels have extensive playlists, usually created organically and with little effort to me—the songs simply present themselves at the right time, or they come into my mind as I am rereading and revising the scenes in my manuscripts.

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This week, we finish up Firetender in our online book club journey. Any readers who haven’t officially joined the book club but have read the book and want to join in for our online discussion, please reply and let me know, and I can send you a link in the next few days. We’ll be discussion what forgiveness means for the Christian as well as human dignity and how it relates to incarceration (the death penalty in particular).

And I am SO EXCITED to get into Book Two starting next week! Confession:...

I am gearing up for the second Chalice Series Book Club live video chat! For those of you signed up for the book club, you won’t want to miss the conclusion of Firetender and our discussions and behind-the-scenes insight including:

*what the Church says about forgiveness and mercy
*a closer look at death row and capital punishment
*details of the real-life location that inspired the second half of Firetender’s setting
*Q&A and discussion of overall themes

I’m gathering my pictures and research now in...

Hi everyone! An update and glimpse into what I’ve been doing this summer since returning from our cross-country road trip…

I got back into writing my first draft of my current work-in-progress, A Desert of Angels. I started it in May after getting home from the CWG live conference in Chicago. I realized a couple days ago that I initially emailed myself an idea for one scene in July 2024, so the book has been simmering in my mind since then. I am about 75% of the way done and getting ...

Hello to my subscribers and especially my book club members! If you haven’t seen my kickoff Live from Elko video, you can find it here.

If you’ve been reading Firetender along with us, you have probably picked up on the type of background the characters have experienced: fatherless homes, impoverished neighborhood, small town. For more insight into the childhoods of Dallas and Channing and to see the town they chose to leave, I want to share these photos and vi...

Haven’t signed up for the Chalice Series online book club yet? There’s still time!

Join the Chalice Series Book Club!

We kick off with Firetender on Wednesday, July 2nd! I will be LIVE from the protagonist and sidekick characters’ hometown: Elko, Nevada! The cool thing about this—I have never been to Northern Nevada before, and it just so happens that we will be passing through with an overnight stay here on our drive back home from a cross-country National Parks road trip!

My plan is to do most of...

A few months ago, there was this trend going around among writers on Instagram that was called “where my lore began.” While I didn’t understand the phrase itself (maybe I’m too old, haha), I figured out pretty quickly that it meant the books, movies, and other media that inspired you or made a strong impact on you during your childhood/teenage years.

I recently rewatched one of my all-time favorite movies, A Perfect World, with my husband and older kids. You may not have heard of this 1993 film, ...

Anemoia is defined as nostalgia for a time or a place one has never known. At the Catholic Writers Guild live conference, I was talking to a few other writers, and this word came up. I’d not heard it before, but it made me think of Firetender, my first novel that is set between 1997-2000. One recurring piece of feedback I’ve received from readers is “I loved the 90s references!” and “I remembered [fill in the blank] from when I was in high school when I read x scene in Firetender!”

While I was at the catholic Writers Guild conference in Chicago a month ago, a few of us went on a little field trip to the Wade Center, which is housed on Wheaton’s college campus. The Wade Center contains a huge collection of books from the personal libraries of seven authors: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams.

There were many displays of artifacts that bel...