Heading to the home stretch with Mayden… time to pay attention to pace, structure, and the big question Mayden poses! Enjoy!

Hey all you Mayden readers… Hope your writing is swimming along! This video was shot in the summer, but I decided to wait just a little to create the draft map I speak of here, so even though it says we are on chapter 17, we are actually on chapter 22 when I am doing this ~ It is really worthy when you start to have lots of story details (all of which can change in a second draft, remember). Enjoy!

“Thanks for coming,” Michael says to me from across the restaurant table, “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

Immediately, my gut takes a dive. I don’t have any idea what it is he is going to say next. I only know I’m not going to like it. In fact, I’m going to hate it. It’s good we are in the farthest corner table, out of earshot of anyone here unless a waiter comes over, which none have so far. Maybe Michael told them to leave us alone. But why? And why does it feels so dire all of a sudden? Already I feel tears starting to form behind my eyes, which is just so ridiculous.

“You’re leaving,” I blurt out, having no idea where it came from. Just one of those things I know before I really know it.

Michael nods. “Saturday night.” Read the rest of this entry

Something isn’t right. I can’t say what, for sure. But something.

It isn’t Bea, even though she is banging around in the kitchen, upset about something she won’t talk about. It isn’t Dad, who is sitting here at the table, reading the newspaper and ignoring everyone else. Or Sally, who is eating her hot cheesy grits in stony silence. Or even Michael, who should have left for practice an hour ago, and hasn’t said a word as to why he’s joining us for breakfast.

It’s just… something.

“I have an idea, Julie,” Dad says, without laying down his newspaper.

“Okay,” I say.

“We will need your help, Michael,” he continues. Now, he puts down the paper to look at Michael, who is all ears.

“We?” Sally says. So I guess the idea is news to her, too.

“Your Aunt Helene will be coming back just before you return to school, won’t she?” he asks Michael. Read the rest of this entry

I’m sure my face is beat red, in part from the exertion of our finger wrestling and in part from my not being able to move an 88-year-old lady’s little finger a millimeter. My whole hand shook like crazy. But did hers? Not a bit. Embarrassing to say the least. 

“Good,” Anna says, nodding her approval when we finally call the truce.

“Good?” I nearly cry out, massaging my poor finger. “I didn’t move you a bit.”

“But you held your own,” she said, seeming to think this is really worthy, “and you were not writing in pain, either.”

“That was probably more due to you than me,” I argue with a pout.

Anna smiles wryly. “Probably.”

“So what did that tell you? Could you feel Magic in me yet?”

“Oh yes, yes indeed,” she says proudly. “You’re a natural. It won’t be long before…” She trails off, noticing a butterfly has landed on her medicine bag. Read the rest of this entry

All I want to do is sleep, I think as Scottie stretches two paws across my shoulder and pummels me gently.

“It’s my day off,” I say aloud to her, gently pushing her away as I groan and pull the sheet up over my head. Actually, it’s Monday, Bea’s official day off…finally.

What this means is that this is the first morning I’ve slept in since a week ago last Sunday— the day I met Michael. Bea doesn’t seem to be interested in sticking to the limited schedule she set with Sally, at least since the incident with the fire and Magic and all that. So now she’s pretty much been here from 7 in the morning to 8 at night every single solitary day. I thought she’d take the weekend off, at least, but no. “Too much magic to learn,” she said when I suggested she might be working too hard. Read the rest of this entry

Hi Mayden Readers! Just a quick note to say I have not forgotten you, but I’m not quite ready to start writing again, so I’m taking a few more weeks of vacation. That is the joy of being a novelist, at least in my life–you can enjoy time to perk on what you want to write! Not to worry… Mayden will be back… soon! All Blessings, Robin

Keith Oatley is author of six books of psychology and two novels…..this worthy article features why fiction is worthy! It might surprise you…

For more than two thousand years people have insisted that reading fiction is good for you. Aristotle claimed that poetry—he meant the epics of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, which we would now call fiction—is a more serious business than history. History, he argued, tells us only what has happened, whereas fiction tells us what can happen, which can stretch our moral imaginations and give us insights into ourselves and other people. This is a strong argument for schools to continue to focus on the literary arts, not just history, science, and social studies.

But is the idea of fiction being good for you merely wishful thinking? The members of a small research group in Toronto—Maja Djikic, Raymond Mar, and I—have been working on the problem. We have turned the idea into questions. In what ways might reading fiction be good for you? If it is good for you, why would this be? And what is the psychological function of art generally?

Through a series of studies, we have discovered that fiction at its best isn’t just enjoyable. It measurably enhances our abilities to empathize with other people and connect with something larger than ourselves.

People often think that a fiction is something untrue, but this is wrong. The word derives from the Latin fingere, to make. As something made, fiction is different from something discovered, as in physics, or from something that happened, as in the news. But this does not mean it is false. Fiction is about possible selves in possible worlds. 

Click here to ead the rest of this article on Daily Good.

It is a great day when you get to dedicate a book you wrote in the land it takes place in! That is what I’m off to do for my latest book, do-overs: an Irish story, which is offically published as of June 22! While the family (thank you Brian, Richard, and Taylor!) holds down the fort, I’m traveling with 10 others to play for a few weeks in the Emerald Isle.

Don’t miss me too much!

And not to worry, you’ll get a new chapter of Mayden soon after my return… probably around July 17th! Thanks to all you readers, you make this so FUN! 

All Blessings, Robin

“Hey,” I hear a voice say from behind me, soft and low. My heart skips a beat, like it did when Michael first showed up. But this time it is because I thought he was beside me, not behind me. And I have no idea where Jake is.

Suddenly I’m feeling dizzy, like there’s a tornado in my head and another in my stomach, but they are not turning in sync.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. “Your dad got to talking. Guy stuff.”

“What?” I say, feeling a sense of de ja vu inside the tornado.

“Your dad,” Michael says. “He kept talking. Looks like I missed the fire.”

I look to the fire and see it has, indeed, gone down. Nearly out. When did that happen? Read the rest of this entry