Welcome to my Blog

A new blog. Wow. Thanks for finding me!

Since you probably don't have a clue about who I am, let me give you the capsule summary:
I'm about to publish my first novel, A Lever Long Enough, about a small military team that travels back in time to film the theft of Jesus' body from the tomb. This book is an adventure story that plays with the possibility of Jesus actually, literally, rising from the dead. It respectfully discusses both sides of a religious topic; I wrote this book because I became fascinated with the really good arguments that support the resurrection. I love tweaking people's unexamined beliefs anyway, and am hoping this book might serve to challenge you wherever you fall on this issue.

In between all of my last-minute publishing duties (correcting a copyedited ms, assembling a list of advance copy readers, spiffing my website, getting nervous that I've missed something), I'm also writing up my findings on story structure, entitled The Story Template. This book came out of my frustration with constructing a novel --> you cannot imagine how many pages of (good) writing I threw out because the story wasn't working. I've taken apart about twenty novels and some films as well, to study in detail just how story is developed. I'm hoping this book turns out to be useful! I want it to be an interactive guide for someone (you!) to start with an unfocused but compelling image or premise for a novel or movie, and end with a solidly structured, scene by scene outline of an original, creative story that you can then write up. You can check out my website for a sampling of my approach to story design at www.amydeardon.com

OK, well that's enough for now. I feel like I'm talking to myself, so if you're reading this please let me know! I'll need to focus on what this blog should discuss; hmm. My strongest areas of interest are science, religion, and story, so this blog will probably be heavy on these subjects although my mind does wander constantly onto various and eclectic topics. I love discussions, so I'm hoping to perk some interest. Some time I'll tell you about my next novel (in progress), a prequel to Lever that takes place on the space station...

Have a good day.