Birth of a Blog

Some of you have been following Torrie Madison’s adventures as an aspiring journalist and unwilling sleuth in the Flowers of the Field mystery series. It seems that she inevitably stumbles across evildoers in her travels. But rather than let the intrigue ruin her vacation, she rises to the challenge and does her part to bring the villains to justice before they can do away with her.

The inquiries I hear over and over are from readers who want to know how much of my own adventures are incorporated into the story. (Because I can never have a normal vacation—bizarre things tend to happen to me when I travel. All the better for plot development—but at time quite harrowing in real life.)

Like the time I accidentally went into the heart of Mexico without getting a visa. And the time my daughter and I had to walk back to the hostel in the middle of the night because the guidebook neglected to mention that the Paris Metro closes before the Latin Quarter does. But those are different stories. And probably will be some day.

I have always loved to travel, and this series came about, at least in part, due to that love. My strategy is to travel to the scene of the crime and research intensely in order to make the plots more realistic and believable. That has been my MO for both Fireweed Glow and Sunflower Dungeon, and third on the way, tentatively titled Bluebonnet Meltdown: Hammer in the Stone.

I have been contemplating a blog for some time, and decided this would be the best way to answer all those questions that come in from my readers. I have also been giving workshops on writing-related topics and mentoring aspiring authors one on one as they endeavor to craft the stories that are burning within them.

Writing about my personal life and all the little day to day details seems a bit vain—and boring. So what I envision is a combination of details about the research and plotting that went into my own writing, and insider secrets, as well as some of the things in my life that impelled me to become a writer.

To cover these diverse topics, I came up with Authors Apprenticeship. This is the name of the program I started to work with aspiring authors. While brainstorming with a friend as to what I should call the program, he suggested I use the metaphor of birth. While that works in many ways with the creative process, I didn’t want to be known as a “midwife.” With an apprenticeship I can be a “Word Wiz.” Suits me a lot better.

But an apprenticeship also describes my own journey from seven-year-old poet through junior high novelist and high school journalist, and finally a published author in my thirties.

After conceiving the idea and nurturing it to maturity, Authors Apprentice: The Blog is ready to be delivered. (I didn’t want to throw away a perfectly good analogy.)

I hope you’ll benefit from studying the writer’s craft, hearing about some of the inner workings of Torrie’s world, and perhaps be inspired by some of the milestones in my own life as I undertook the steps toward becoming a published author.