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Hi all! I’ve been asked by the AML board to take over coordination of the AML blog. I’m posting to ask for suggestion and throw out some ideas for how we — that’s us here at AML, but also hopefully includes some of you reading — can help improve the blog so it will better serve the community of Mormon letters.

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As the founder and president of LDStorymakers (pronounced LDS Storymakers), I’ve had many questions about the group and decided that here would be the perfect place to outline our founding, our purpose, and who can join.

In October 2002, the Pleasant Grove library held an author book signing event, where I met Josi Kilpack and Julie Wright. We had a good discussion about the LDS market and publishing. They’d learned a lot while publishing their novels, but like most newer authors (and even more established ones) they had a lot of questions. I asked them if they’d be interested in joining an online LDS author group where we could all share our experiences and help each other. They said yes. The next day I started a Yahoo group, then called LDSSmallPressWriters, and sent Josi, Julie, and other authors I knew invitations to join.
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Note: My new novel Imprints had barely reached store shelves a couple weeks ago when a customer, upon reading the description in the catalog, e-mailed Deseret Book asking them to remove my novel from Deseret Book stores since it was a novel dealing with an "imaginative" or "psychic" element, which in her opinion, though she planned on reading the novel, should not be carried at Deseret Book. This objection prompted me to write an open letter to such readers explaining why everyone who enjoys contemporary sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal, or anyone who believes all genres have value, should not only buy Imprints (shameless plug), but should contact Deseret Book's publishing division, thank them for publishing a novel in this genre for adults, and urge them to publish and carry more.

Dear Reader:

Thank you for reading my books and for being a supportive reader throughout the years. LDS authors cannot continue to do the work we love without support from readers. I've been told of your objection to Deseret Book carrying Imprints, and though I'm surprised at the objection, particularly by the fact that it was made without first reading the novel, More...

There's a musical playing right now at BYU that I'm not going to see.  Casey at the Bat it's called, and already I'm cranky.  I'm on the committee that decides these things--I've read the script.  That's why I'm boycotting it.  It's not just a bad book for a mediocre musical.  Lots of musicals have bad books--'book' means 'script' in musicalese--including some really popular ones.  My favorite is the Elton John Aida.  Okay, at the end of the musical, Radames, the Egyptian prince, and Aida, the Nubian princess/slave he's fallen in love with are running from the cops/Egyptian army.  There's this bridge.  If they cross the bridge, they're safe.  If they don't cross the bridge, they'll be captured and tortured to death.  They stand on the bridge.  They sing a very long love duet, which goes on long enough for the cops/Egyptian army to catch up with them.  Honestly, I'm not kidding, that's what happens. They sing and sing and sing and get their silly butts caught. Apparently, it never occurs to them to sing once they're across the bridge; nope, that song's gotta get sung right that very second.  I laughed out loud in the theater, earning the eternal enmity of many many weeping coeds.  When they die together--tragically, so tragically--I kept thinking about the Darwin awards, how killing these two dunces just improved the gene pool something considerable.  I mean, that's bad writing. Right?  Well, Casey at the Bat is worse than that. More...