Since I roughly have a book for every year I’ve been writing, I now have a few “characters” to play around with. The cast of books isn’t complete, of course, and I have many more books planned. Every good story told is essentially the same one over and over. It has the exact same arcs, types of situations, strong areas, weak areas, weird areas, things that need to be brought out more, parts that are misunderstood and can help explore someone’s psychology, etc.

Although I don’t have all the “characters” yet, I have 9 by now, with each book being like a character in a larger story. I actually expect people to be interested in just one or two, because that’s how they respond to characters. (That puts my mind at ease about genre writing, which like many authors I’d viewed as a sort of necessity. But writing genre would have every book be the same, which would be like showing the exact same character over and over and over and over.)

Here’s a list of them:

• The Birthday Present (with Prince’s Ball teaser) The teaser has been updated as I’ve changed the setting of the Prince’s Ball to The Birthday Present world. It was easy to do this. More on that later.
• Facets of Fantasy
• A Year with the Harrisons (republished 2018)
• Facets of Fantasy extras (I did another version of the book and a couple of story singles)
• Ryan and Essie
• City of the Invaders
• Victoria: A Tale of Spain
• The Test of Devotion
• Bellevere House
• Consuela (the old ebook was barely read at all and the rewrite this year is so total that it’s a new book, so I’ll put it here)​

And there will be more updates. 

I’ve found that when I use the words “mystery” or “detectives” or hint at discussing a plot that might be concealed or characters who might be connected to crime, the post gets a LOT more views. So I’ll be talking about that starting next week. But for now, I’ll just review the books I have and what I’ve done with them.

• Facets of Fantasy was an early story collection that went through 2 phases. Like many people’s early writing, it was imitative, didn’t have much of a voice, and held nothing really special. It was easy for people to feel this collection should define me, since it was often the first book of mine they read. That’s nonsense and it was just beginner work.
• Ryan and Essie is going to get a new cover and has been emerging over time. It took a long time to be completed, an unusually long time for me to publish it once it was done, and I’m comfortable with continuing to let it grow quietly.
• Bellevere House remains in the twilight zone for the time being. I’ll post about it now and then, but it no longer has an individual page or category.
• The Chronicles of Palladia is only partially done. Palladia overall is an important part of my work and really showcases the subtle murkiness of “YA” fiction as there’s a tone in it that makes it “YA” and not for kids even though parts of the story feel so young.
• Everwood is kind of a funny blip. It’s an odd story—sort of funny, but about this complete idiot. She really is the stupidest girl in history and I’m not completely sure why I thought of this story. But it’s sort of entertaining and I packaged it with one of the Facets stories (the one that went best with it) to make a book long enough to print.
• A Year with the Harrisons is poking along gently. It’s a delightful, very sweet story. It meanders along peacefully, part The Andy Griffith Show and part Little Women. In spite of most characters being adults, I actually feel it’s very much appealing to kids too, which startles me when I consider how it was initially marketed in the past.
• The Test of Devotion was needed at the time it was published. There were a lot of things going on in my family life at home and the symbolism of westerns helped me to manage this difficult time. Although it’s actually one of my best-written stories, it’s not the best-written books that stay with us—it’s the ones that we need.
• Victoria: A Tale of Spain is evolving a tiny bit. The idea has changed from something dramatic and historical into more of a crime-mystery story and I’d like to add a touch of Christian content to Victoria’s personality as well. Most of the books I’m keeping are Christian (rather than the vaguer “clean”) and reaching out to God through her adventures is probably something Victoria should be doing.

 
And there will be more updates. 

I won’t make this a heroine spotlight and I’m not quite sure why not. Betty occupies half of A Year with the Harrisons and her plot is at least equal to the other one. But still, it’s officially a “subplot” and so she isn’t a “heroine” in my mind even though the story is mostly about her and not about the Harrison girls.

Maybe she’s too old to be a heroine. “Heroine” sounds like a young adult, but Betty is a mother in her thirties who acts and feels even older than her age. Life has always been a little rough around the edges for her and she definitely has a tired tone to her sometimes. (When she’s not being sarcastic that is, which is one of her best qualities. Betty’s sarcasm is usually intentional, sometimes not.) Perhaps she’s too much of a real person to be a heroine too. Even if they’re faulty, heroines are idealized in so many ways for the reader.

Heroine or not, Betty gets a lot of screen time on the pages of A Year with the Harrisons. And her practical outlook on life contrasts in a really funny (and sometimes a little bittersweet) way with the living-in-a-bubble outlook her mother and sisters have.
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And there will be more updates.

This book has taken a long time to make it into my collection, but it’s a really fun read, so I’m glad I moved it on into a more permanent position. I started writing it over 10 years ago, and about 8 years ago added the subplot of Betty Hilligan and her family to the initial idea of the Harrisons, 3 girls who had been educated at home and were now moving into the world. Betty added a lot of comedy to keep the story from getting too dull (social issues about homeschoolers is a topic that easily becomes tedious.) Her mother’s plot with Mr. Shotgun, which was created literally on the spur of the moment as I was writing rapidly, made me able to tie me in some of Letty’s adventures so all the storylines came full circle and interlocked together.
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There’s a ton of local flavor and hints of daily life based on where I lived these earlier years of my own life in Texas. Small towns, country fields of corn and wheat, churches—even the college buildings are based on real places I went to constantly. I think the authentic hum of daily life is what really stands out about this book. While the characters are invented and not based—for the most part—on anyone I’ve ever known, the setting is real. It’s a place you can really sink into and live because it’s based on the places I knew.

What I hope would be a lasting impression from the book is the theme of being genuine and honest. It’s a story with real, ordinary situations, even if some of them are exaggerated for fictional effect, and I would like to think I talked honestly about those situations. What it’s actually like to go through them. Even if it’s topics that don’t come up in most people’s lives, like church politics, TV families, and getting framed for a blind date because you accidentally ran into someone popular, there’s a thread of emotional genuineness about how it really feels to deal with things. Honesty the only thing that gives relationships integrity and I think that shows in The Harrisons.

And there will be more updates.