Call of the Creator: Fantasy Writing from a Christian Worldview

If you've ever read Gary Chapman's book, The Five Love Languages , you've probably figured out in what way you express and receive love. This was a book my husband, Scott, and I read through and took to heart in the months before we were married, and since then, it's been interesting to evaluate how this theory of emotional expression plays out in my everyday life. As an artist and author, I spend way too much time in self-analysis, but hopefully my observations will be useful to some of you as well. My primary love language is time. It doesn't matter if we do anything productive or exciting. I just want to know that you value spending time in my presence. Ironically, because of my socially anxious nature, it takes a long time before I feel safe enough with any person to connect with them face-to-face. So that "quantity time" that deepens my relationships is hard to come by. Clearly, it's complicated. As an artist, I have discovered that if I don...

When you're like me, and you lost your dad at 13, it's easy to romanticize how you perceive a man who's been gone for the vast majority of your life. I like to remember the Marine, the idealist, the brilliant man my dad was, even though he was also an alcoholic, a child abuse victim, and ultimately lifestyled himself to death until he left my mom with 6 kids and no real career to support us. I didn't learn much from my dad, sadly, because I was too young at the time to tap the brilliance part, while we still had him. He did, however, one afternoon in our smoky, cluttered 80s living room, teach me how to draw a tree. My dad was a charcoal artist who never pursued honing his gift outside of high school. Probably not a lot of opportunities to draw still life or models while drill instructing on Parris Island, I'm assuming. But I can't count the number of times he sat in his kind-of-gross recliner and told me how he drew a series of beautiful nudes during art ...

Artists. That may seem like weird advice coming from me, the writer, animator, illustrator, choir member, ex-trombonist. But honestly. my husband and I talk about this every day. He teaches theater (among other things) and his personal dictum has always been to avoid encouraging young thespians to aspire after acting as a profession. We firmly believe, if there is anything else you can do-- anything --you should choose that. There's a reason the cliche "starving artist" exists. The performing, visual, and literary arts live in the realm of feast or famine, and sadly, the famine is far more widespread than the feast. Now, please understand me that I'm not saying this to rant or be negative or whatever other un-plasticChristian thing I shouldn't do. The core of what I'm saying here is that every person should pursue what they are passionate about, and if you aren't passionate enough about the arts to take it on the chin emotionally a lot of the time, t...