I'm a firm believer that to be a good writer, you must read, and read a lot. I don't read nearly as fast as many people do, but I manage to get in 60 - 70 books a year. 

Sometimes people ask what I read. Other times they assume what I read. Whenever I answer either side of the question, the person on the other side seems surprised. 

Some people assume I read only LDS fiction. That one surprises me. Why would I read only this market? Sure, there's a lot of great stuff in it, and a variety of genres, but I'm not sure why they think I don't read other things just because I publish in this market. More...

Several years ago, I was a member of a pretty remarkable ward book club. We read a variety of titles, not limiting ourselves to just national titles, just genre fiction, just LDS fiction, or even to just fiction. We had some great discussions (and great treats). We read classics and new releases, self-help books and everything in between.

But we had one member who struggled. It seemed that no matter what book we picked to read, she didn't have much to offer by way of discussion. The more emotionally intense a book was, the less she liked it. During the meeting after reading Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, she revealed what was bothering her: she didn't like to read anything that discussed issues that were upsetting. Kidd's book was about one of her two hardest topics. At the top of her list: Civil Rights and the Holocaust. More...

Last week a Deseret News reporters interviewed me about Band of Sisters and the Flat Daddy Project. I've done several interviews recently, but this particular reporter asked something no one had yet.

In my last post, I ranted (who, me? rant?) about writers who put a message before the story, how messages in books will come across more powerfully if they aren’t put there intentionally. How I hated people asking what message I put in Tower of Strength. (I didn't! Yes, there are messages and themes, but they developed on their own.)

Then I got an interview form for my upcoming Band of Sisters, which will be featured in Covenant's Book Worms newsletter. One question made me take a step back and rethink the whole message thing—had I done exactly what I professed to hate?

The question was something like: What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

That's almost a backhanded way of asking what message you put into it, and I was scared, because I had an answer.

But then I realized that in a sense, it's a different question altogether, because after a book is written, you can look back and see things differently than you did while writing it.

I realize that some people will still read Band of Sisters and assume I wrote it to "teach" readers what deployment is like. And then some readers might well think, "But she says she doesn't write with a message in mind. Yeah, right." I get that. But that's not how the book came about, and it's not why I wrote it. More...

I’m admitting upfront that I’m stealing this topic from J. Scott Bronson. His last post was titled, “There’s Always a Message,” and it struck a chord with me.

Back in my early teenage years, my older sister, then an English major, and I got into a friendly discussion/argument about whether a story could exist on its own without an underlying message.

I was firmly in the camp that yes, of course it could. Not everything is a fable or must end with a moral. Not every writer pens a story just to teach a lesson. Puh-leese. My sister disagreed, saying that every story has something to say and teach. At the time, I was too immature to get what she was saying.

Many, many years later, after my first novel came out, this same sister came to me after reading it. She had a bit of an, “I told you so” grin on her face. I had no idea what she was about to say. What came out stunned me.

“Your book has messages and themes and symbols.”

It . . . what?

She complimented me on how well I’d incorporated a particular theme into the narrative, teaching the reader a certain lesson. “Told ya,” she said.

I never did admit that I hadn’t meant to weave any theme or symbol into the book. After she pointed it out, I looked back and thought, “Cool. That’s actually kinda neat.” But I didn’t put it there on purpose. (That was 2002. I have yet to tell her.)

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I've been thinking quite a lot about Rachel Ann Nunes' post, just before this one, especially where she talks about how revising her latest book "essentially removed God from my novel."

And I've been wondering why the LDS fiction I've read hasn't had that much to do with God and how we LDS perceive Him and strive to become like Him.

I'd like to offer some ways that I think we could write stories about LDS characters receiving personal revelation, and growing in the gospel aside from what some consider tried (and tired) conversion stories, without reverting to any no-longer-valid-or-interesting "deus ex machina" endings, and, I would hope, avoiding the risk of offending "certain readers." More...