Author Archives: Diana

Winners Announced: Freshman Writing Conference at Azusa Pacific University

Every year, students in APU's Freshman writing program submit essays and compete in three catagories: best personal essay, best argument, and best research paper. APU welcomed more than a thousand new students this year. Competition? Yea, more than a little.
I'm so proud that one of my students took first place in the personal essay catagory and [...]

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Fun Read for Fantasy Fans: Free!

Remember that for one more week, HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS can be read for FREE over at the Simon & Schuster site here: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Here-There-Be-Dragons/James-A-Owen/Chronicles-of-the-Imaginarium-Geographica-The/9781416912279

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Clay Cover (sneak peek)

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Oh Happy Day: 2008 MythSoc Award

Last year, I was awarded the Mythopoeic Society Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies; this year, a friend gave me this great photo of this event. What a tremendous honor. What a happy day.
For more about the MythSoc Award: http://www.mythsoc.org/awards/

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TCTK Reviewed by John Adcox

I'm always thrilled when The Company They Keep gets an enthusiastic review. But some reviews make me want to jump and shout "YES! You get it!! That's what this book is all about!!!" That was my reaction to this review recently posted by author John Adcox on his blog:

 In Good Company: The Company They Keep By [...]

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Collaborations: Phil Keaggy & Jeff Johnson & Kathy Hastings & Luci Shaw

I'm a Phil Keaggy fan from way back. I can't find my tee shirt from the "Love Broke Thru" tour, but I sure remember sitting in the third row on the left side in that concert, feeling awed by the music and amazed that anyone could coax a guitar to sing like that.  Since those [...]

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Creativity and Hungry Caterpillars

I love Eric Carle, the author and artist behind classic children's books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I stumbled across his blog and really like these thoughts about creativity, time, seeds, and hatchlings:
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The Seed that Grows into a Story
Sometimes ideas for my books seem to burst into bloom. But often the seed of the idea [...]

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College Writing Courses: What Were You S’posed to Learn?

Did you take Freshman Writing or First Year Composition, or some kind of writing course when you first went to college? Was it a great experience? Too easy? Too hard?
Was it even clear to you what you were supposed to be getting out of that class?
As I am getting ready to teach another group of first [...]

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This blog was posted by me.

A colleague called me the other day. He offered to buy me a latte if I could help him figure out what was so bad about passive voice. I met him at the coffee shop on campus.
I sipped my latte and explained that passive voice does not mean that your sentence is long and dangly, lacks action, uses [...]

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Julie, Julia, and Russ Parsons

I love practically everything about the movie Julie and Julia, but there is one rather annoying loose end. It pops up in the scene where Julie gets a call from a reporter who is covering Julia Child’s birthday party. He tells Julie that Julia doesn’t think much of her blog or her cooking. Then he [...]

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