Last month I had the chance to speak to an English 195 class at BYU, which is a class made up of mostly freshman. I took that class before most of those students were even born, in a building that's no longer used for Humanities, and I spoke in a building that didn't exist then (talk about a time warp).

My job was to show how, as a former BYU English major (who graduated cum laude *cough, cough*) had gone on to use her major. It was a great experience being able to encourage the students, especially since I knew full well that they'd been the butt of the same jokes I have been ("What are you going to do with your major when you graduate? Ask, "Do you want fries with that?" Hahahaha!!!!) More...

Two and a half months. That's all the time left for readers to send in Whitney Award nominations.

A big announcement regarding the awards recently came out, but before I get there, here's a quick refresher on what they are and how they work. More...

I've come to realize that I'm a sadist, but in the best way, if that's possible.

Some time ago, I received two e-mails from readers about a day apart. They were of the variety that make you think, "Yes, I can write! I'm not completely delusional!"

Writers can go from thinking one second that every word they write is magical to falling into despair the next moment, huddled in a fetal position and rocking back and forth, positive that they can't write a coherent word and that they're morons for thinking they can. More...

I'm a firm believer that to be a good writer, you must read, and read a lot. I don't read nearly as fast as many people do, but I manage to get in 60 - 70 books a year. 

Sometimes people ask what I read. Other times they assume what I read. Whenever I answer either side of the question, the person on the other side seems surprised. 

Some people assume I read only LDS fiction. That one surprises me. Why would I read only this market? Sure, there's a lot of great stuff in it, and a variety of genres, but I'm not sure why they think I don't read other things just because I publish in this market. More...

Recently my good friend Heather (H. B.) Moore received a rather scathing review of one of her books. Apparently the reviewer had bought the audio version  and had it playing in the car during a family trip. She was horrified at the content, which she found offensive, and turned it off because her small children were in the car and shouldn't have been exposed to something that deserved a PG-13 rating. (And what, pray tell, she demanded, was such a thing doing on the shelves of an LDS bookstore?)

This from a book published by pretty darn conservative Covenant Communications. More...

I know a lot of aspiring and published writers alike who think about pen names. Will they ever use one? If so, why? (And many of us have one already picked out.) 

Because of that, I thought it might be fun to talk about a few pen names in the LDS market and the reasons behind them (I'm lucky enough to be friends with all these people, so they've shared their stories with me). More...

Several years ago, I was a member of a pretty remarkable ward book club. We read a variety of titles, not limiting ourselves to just national titles, just genre fiction, just LDS fiction, or even to just fiction. We had some great discussions (and great treats). We read classics and new releases, self-help books and everything in between.

But we had one member who struggled. It seemed that no matter what book we picked to read, she didn't have much to offer by way of discussion. The more emotionally intense a book was, the less she liked it. During the meeting after reading Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, she revealed what was bothering her: she didn't like to read anything that discussed issues that were upsetting. Kidd's book was about one of her two hardest topics. At the top of her list: Civil Rights and the Holocaust. More...

Last week a Deseret News reporters interviewed me about Band of Sisters and the Flat Daddy Project. I've done several interviews recently, but this particular reporter asked something no one had yet.

I’m a novelist. Fiction is what I have loved to write since about second grade. My first publications were with magazine and newspaper articles, and I still freelance on the side. I’ve added blogging to my list of types of writing I do. Now I’m on Facebook and Twitter, which have their own styles—learning to put a thought into a succinct 140 characters is skill all its own.

Last fall, Marion Jensen asked for volunteers for different kind of writing project, and I signed up. It’s not a paying gig, but it’s new, it’s exciting, and totally different from anything I’ve ever done before: I got to play Heber C. Kimball on Twitter. More...

In my last post, I ranted (who, me? rant?) about writers who put a message before the story, how messages in books will come across more powerfully if they aren’t put there intentionally. How I hated people asking what message I put in Tower of Strength. (I didn't! Yes, there are messages and themes, but they developed on their own.)

Then I got an interview form for my upcoming Band of Sisters, which will be featured in Covenant's Book Worms newsletter. One question made me take a step back and rethink the whole message thing—had I done exactly what I professed to hate?

The question was something like: What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

That's almost a backhanded way of asking what message you put into it, and I was scared, because I had an answer.

But then I realized that in a sense, it's a different question altogether, because after a book is written, you can look back and see things differently than you did while writing it.

I realize that some people will still read Band of Sisters and assume I wrote it to "teach" readers what deployment is like. And then some readers might well think, "But she says she doesn't write with a message in mind. Yeah, right." I get that. But that's not how the book came about, and it's not why I wrote it. More...