Sabrina's Blog

I lost track of time and forgot to post my Monday post yesterday, so it's a Tuesday post this week. *sheepish grin* Better late than never, right?! The ugly fish man creature surged toward me through the eerie green water, a sharp coral knife in each hand. The portal, my only hope for returning home, stood on the other side of him. I pushed against the water to propel myself backwards in a vain attempt to dodge the bite of his weapon. He moved like the viper of my homeland, quick and without mercy. Time slowed as he loomed closer, his right hand arcing toward my chest. My heart thundered in my ears as my thoughts splintered. Part of me wondered how it was I breathed under water, another part wondered that mermen weren’t as handsome as I’d always imagined, and still another part continued to watch the knife move closer. My mind gathered itself as the tip of the knife sliced through the odd seaweed shirt I wore. Just as I braced to feel the sting of its bite, I woke up.  ...

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."  ~Albert Einstein To me the fantasy genre is the epitome of what using your imagination is all about. Reading fantasy makes  you think 'what if' and encourages you to move past accepting what you are told. Would Einstein have received his Nobel Prize in Physics for developing his theory of general relativity without first using his imagination to 'think outside the box'? I very much doubt it.  As a child, fantasy stories helped me learn to question the world around me. My mom might have told me that the wardrobe leading to Narnia was simply a figment of C.S. Lewis' imagination, but I still wondered if she could be wrong. This one is still up for debate. *grin*  I firmly believe that when  your perceptions of reality are blurred as a child, that ...

I am a goal setter and have been since I was a child. I just work better if I have something I am working towards. During high school my goal was getting into college. During college it was getting my degree. After college it was being a good wife and mommy. I have goals to complete by my 30th birthday , goals for my family, and goals for my writing group . It only makes sense that I would make a list of goals when I started writing a year and a half ago. So I thought I'd share it with you. Sabrina's Writer Goals 1. Get better at editing.  2. Be offered a contract by a major publisher. 3. Win a contest. 4. Keynote a conference. 5. Sell my books worldwide. 6. Inspire new writers. 7. Teach new writers my hard won knowledge. 8. Learn to like editing. (Yeah, I'm not holding my breath either. *grin*) I'm sure I'll add to this, but for now it's a good start.  How about you? What are your goals as a writer? Have you completed any ...

Old episodes of one of my favorite shows, Xena Warrior Princess, made me a bit nostalgic, so I thought I'd theme this Friday post: Flashback Friday and post pics of some of my favorite shows that helped develop my love of the fantasy genre in which I write.  Having Hercules and Xena team up was awesome! I have always been a huge fan of Greek mythology, so this show was a big hit with me as a kid. I never missed a new episode and LOVED reruns...especially marathons! Having Xena be such an awesome and beautiful female hero was an added bonus.  On the science fiction side of things, I can remember watching Star Trek Original and my favorite, Star Trek: The Next Generation, with my mom. I have never been one to become overly obsessed to the point that I ever wanted to learn Klingon or dress in a Trek uniform, but I still enjoyed the adventures of both Captain Picard and Captain Kirk.  Space became even more interesting when the series ROSWELL...

Last night I struggled to find motivation for my usual evening walk. I just wasn't feeling it. I wanted to plant my rear on the couch, eat another bowl of the homemade butterfinger  icrecream I had made the night before, and play on Facebook or watch a show. Definitely not one of my more shining moments. *laughs* You know you'd have a hard time choosing a walk over this, too!! Then I started thinking about the domino effect that would commence if I skipped the walk. One night of skipping would lead to another and another until all the progress I've made would go out the window like waste from a medieval chamber pot.   This struggle struck me as extremely familiar and I realized only a couple of weeks before, I had struggled with lack of motivation to write because I knew I had edits that needed done.  I HATE editing. Finding all the places I've made some grammar mistake, become repetitive, contradicted myself, or basically forgotten how to spell,...

One of my writer friends recently read my complete novel for the first time. She loved it, of course. *grin* However, like any great critique group buddy, she had suggestions for me. One of those suggested figuring a way to break up my novel into 'parts' to help the reader realize that years are passing.  In theory, I understand what she meant, but I wasn't sure how to actually go about doing it. So I turned to my trusty Google and this is the very helpful site it found for me. Anatomy of a Novel So I thought I'd share it with others of my writers friends who might understand something in a theoretical way, but like me, might need more of an explanation. In other news, my husband and I are in the process of becoming entrepreneurs. We are buying a company called Award Solutions . So beginning in about 2 weeks or so, if you are in Oklahoma and looking to purchase trophies, medals, certificates, name tags, plaques, or anything else listed on the website, give us...

If you're like me, you may be considering an afternoon nap to gear up for an evening of 4th of July festivities and fireworks at your local park. *wink* Before you seek out your pillow, head over to: A Feast of Fantasy I interviewed best-selling author, Brandon Sanderson, about his follow up novel to the Mistborn Trilogy, The Alloy of Law , and I know you'll enjoy reading what he had to say.

Stories have been created since the beginning of time to teach and entertain audiences. They have also been used to rally people for a cause. Since American's celebrate our country's independence day this week, I thought I'd focus my blog post on a writer that used his pen to support Independence in America: Thomas Paine. Thomas Paine, one of the most radical of the founding fathers, wrote Common Sense, the best selling book in 1776. He believed so much in political, social, and economic equality about which he wrote that he never owned a slave and used his earning from the book to support the American Revolution and George Washington's army. When it seemed that the end was near and loss would be eminent, he wrote The American Crisis,  in which those famous words, "These are the times that try men's souls." were penned. So today, I'd like to salute Thomas Paine, who I believe would have liked to see how far our country has come, but who would s...