Let Your Dreams Be Bigger Than Your Fears

August 15, 2018August 14, 2018 Lynette M Burrows

Fear makes my heart stutter and my brain screams stop. Hope makes me smile and dream. I flip-flop between these two minute to minute. Determination keeps my fingers moving. That’s what happens when you let your dreams be bigger than your fears. My Soul to Keep launches in six days. At times I can hardly believe it. This novel has been years in the making. Why did it take so long? Fear. Many different fears. Danger The danger warnings I have gotten have varied. One danger was that I had exposed too much of my personal life. Another was that I would be ridiculed. Or I would be put on the spot about beliefs espoused in my book. Sometimes the fear was about real situations in my life that had nothing to do with my writing but scared me nonetheless. Sometimes the fear drove me away from the work. There were days I didn’t even turn on the computer. More than once I discovered I had walked away from my desk, without conscious thought. I’d return and find my computer on, a sentence half-written. Fear had stopped me again. When the fear was bigger than my dream, the fear turned […]

How I Found My Cover Artist

August 10, 2018August 11, 2018 Lynette M Burrows

Finding my cover artist was relatively a straightforward process that took a lot of time. I’m married to an artist who had an award-winning career as an art director. You’d think I would have found the process easy. Not so much. Not that my artist of choice, Elizabeth Leggett, made it difficult. She made it easy for me. I’ve never been a visual person. I love the sight of a dewy rose, the smile on a toddler’s face, the sleek lines of a sexy sports car. But, sounds make a bigger impact on me—babbling brooks, wind shushing through pine trees, and voices—from emotion to word choice to timber and volume and pace. I’m an emotion magnet—the ‘feel’ of a place, an event, or a person speaks to me. Heck, I write. Words are important. But discussing a book cover—words failed me. WHAT TO LOOK FOR When you choose a cover artist you should think about two or three skills that you’d want to see in their work. Perhaps you want great images of stars in space, or a cartoon-style character, or realistic animals. Do you want photo-realism or something more impressionistic? It’s all up to you. The artist should have […]

Declarations of Truth, Honor, and Independence

July 23, 2018August 5, 2018 Lynette M Burrows

No discussion of Independence Day in the United States of America would be complete without talking about the document. The Declaration of Independence is more than a historical document. It is not a law or set of laws. It’s a statement of ideology. An ideology of truth, honor, and independence. An ideology that is controversial at times. And one of the documents that all Americans should know and study. Yet few of us know more than the famous lines and many argue over the meaning of specific words and phrases. If your memory is spotty, or you don’t know if you’ve read the document, take a moment to listen or read the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776, the Second Congression Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. Yet, most of the delegates had not signed it until later. Did you know that eight of the fifty-six delegates who signed the declaration were born in Great Britain? There are four major points covered by the Declaration. That All men have equal and God-given rights, When a government must be overthrown and a new government must be set up, When another revolution may be justified,” And the declaration that we are free and a pledge […]