My life has been pretty simple. I grew up in Alabama and graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor's in Advertising. I have spent about the last ten years in web development. In 1998, a friend of mine and I started a web design company we ran for three or four years before deciding to close it due to the demands of school. Since then, I stayed in the web working with various companies in Alabama. I worked for a brief period with Southern Progress, namely with Southern Living magazine and Health magazine, in their web departments. While there, I also wrote for Southern Living magazine, Health.com., and the company's internal newsletter. I write as much as I can. For the last five years, I have been working on my first novel. I am on the third revision now and hope to be finished with this draft by the end of the year. I also write short fiction, though not as frequently as I used to due to the time I spend on the novel. My goal is to have my novel published in the next three years. Other interests include: History (particularly medieval and ancient civlizations), Reading, Foreign Language (I currently speak Spanish but plan to learn as many as I can), Landscape Photography, the outdoors, sports (especially college football), and Travel.
I just finished taking this quiz to determine which fantasy writer I am similar to. I normally don’t take a lot of quizzes, but this one was entertaining and thought provoking and accurate. It’s a 36 question quiz that took me about thirty minutes and made me actually think about… Read More »Which Fantasy Writer Are You?
On this day, June 15th, in medieval history: 1330 – Birth of Edward (“The Black Prince”), Prince of Wales and eldest son of King Edward III of England 1381 – Death of Wat Tyler, leader of the English Peasants’ Revolt; Sir William Walworth, the mayor of London, killed Wat during… Read More »Timeline: Today in Medieval History
The Book Trailer Blog An interesting site showing how people use video as a viral marketing medium to promote their books.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco Paperback: 552 pages Publisher: Harvest Books; 1st edition (Sept. 28, 1994) ISBN-10: 0156001314 The Name of the Rose is a book I read several years back and one I wanted to revisit here on my blog. This historical fiction novel set in… Read More »Review of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
When writing historical fiction, how much should your dialogue reflect the actual historical period you are writing about? Is it a good idea to write — as say — a knight during the medieval period might actually speak, or write in more contemporary language for the reader? My personal thoughts are it’s… Read More »Discussion Topic: Dialogue and Historical Fiction
Melissa Snell has an in depth post on her blog regarding the heraldic symbols of the medieval period and what those symbols mean. The information is taken from W. Cecil Wade’s The Symbolisms of Heraldry or A Treatise on the Meanings and Derivations of Armorial Bearing, a document that is… Read More »What Do Different Heraldic Symbols Mean?
The power vacuum left after the deaths of King Henry I and his only legitimate son, William, resulted in a power struggle between Henry’s nephew, Stephen of Blois, and Henry’s daughter, Matilda. Before Henry’s death, the barons had agreed to support Matilda as the next ruler of England, but instead… Read More »Stephen of Blois
“The popularity of Internet sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace might make social networking seem relatively modern. But a team of French researchers has challenged this idea by trawling through medieval documents to create the oldest detailed social network ever constructed. Working from records of land transactions dating back… Read More »The Medieval Social Network
If someone new to the fantasy genre asked you for your top five must-read fantasy novels, which novels would you suggest?