Tanara McCauley

Culturally Imagined Stories

Tag: Christian fiction

  • Stories Along the Way: “The Choice”

    Stories Along the Way: “The Choice”

    It all began at the tree. The war, that is. Though it didn’t seem a war-worthy event on that fateful day. It seemed like a simple choice. My choice. One I was free to make. A lone fruit pulsed in the tree’s center like a beating heart. And it was beautiful, its colors of fire.…

  • The Knight in Blue Jeans

    My phone alerted me to a text. I paused to read it and shook my head. It was from my husband, his latest response to a series of messages between us. I tapped the reply square. “You’re such a man.” And I didn’t mean that in a “you’re the hunk of my dreams and I…

  • Gone Fishing, Author Style

    This was originally posted on 11/09/2013. It’s that time of year again… As a child, I fished with my father. Dark, quiet nights, sometimes nothing but the calm sound of water lapping the bank, or the buzz of mosquitoes testing the perimeter of whatever insect repellent we wore. It’s been a long time since we’ve…

  • A Writer’s Praise

    Psalm 144:1    

  • A Writer’s Labyrinth

    Not too long ago my father-in-law presented me with a challenge. I placed all of my fingers together at the tips except the middle fingers, which touched at the knuckles: Easy enough, right? Then I had to tap each pair of fingers together on command, all without moving the middle fingers. First the pinkies, then…

  • Blog Hop – My Writing Life

    I’ve been asked to participate in a blog hop. The assignment is to answer four questions about my writing, then select three other authors to answer the same questions on their blogs within the next couple of weeks. Be sure to see the links to their blogs at the end of this post and find out…

  • Dare to Live the Dream

    Every dream has a starting point. My love of reading, and the eventual desire to write, began in the pages of two childhood classics. Where the Red Fern Grows is the first book to ever make me weep. Not cry. Weep. Hysterically. As if my house had just gone up in flames and every family…

  • WriMo NoMo, but Keep it Up Writers!

    NaNoWriMo is over, and like thousands of other writers, I hit over 50,000 words in thirty days. Sure a few things had to give. Blogging, for one, was chucked like an old pair of tennis shoes and left hanging on the telephone poll of “to-do-later.” And though I’d love to say my house stayed in…

  • The Research Pill

    A novel starts off with an idea. If the idea is a good one, it takes root, causes a sort of anxious excitement that makes my fingers itch and stirs up feelings for these yet-to-be-developed characters. I can spit out the first chapter in no time. Maybe even plot out the whole story in a…

  • The Elevator Pitch

    I wrote this almost a year ago. Now that my story is finally ready for the pitching stage, I thought it appropriate to share again :-). The elevator pitch. In the writing world, it’s a short summary of your book that can be told to a prospective agent/editor/publisher in the time it takes to get…