by Melissa J. Troutman | Jun 27, 2025 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track
Something Else: The Background When I heard about Something Else before its release in January, I didn’t know what to expect. After all, it was the original story, Something I Am Not, that had me sobbing on my bedroom floor after midnight. (No wonder it won the 2020...
by Melissa J. Troutman | Apr 25, 2025 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track, Mystery
Introducing Lady Jayne Disappears by Joanna Davidson Politano: Pride and Prejudice meets Little Women, wrapped in a bit of Charles Dickens, and tied with ribbon borrowed from Sherlock Holmes. As a writer and a reader, I appreciate few things more than reading books...
by Melissa J. Troutman | Nov 22, 2024 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track
Every writer dreams of visiting her story. But what do you do when the hero is more like a villain, the villain is more like a hero, and your side characters come to life with stories of their own? Oh, and you don’t know the world, and the person you have a crush on...
by Melissa J. Troutman | Aug 30, 2024 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track
The question I asked when I first finished Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ was, Where has this book been all my life? I can’t believe it took me until my late twenties to read this famous literary classic by Lew Wallace. My earliest exposure to the story was in...
by Melissa J. Troutman | May 31, 2024 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fantasy, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track
If you’re looking for a fun but deep YA adventure, with some of the most creative writing on my radar to date, look no farther than The Secret of Stardust by Heather L.L. FitzGerald. It’s the next generation of The Tethered World Chronicles—same world, second verse, a...
by Melissa J. Troutman | Dec 8, 2023 | Blogs/Podcasts, Fiction, Friday Fiction: Books From Off the Beaten Track
More gifts, more magic, more friends, more enemies, more adventures, more emotions, more themes, more stakes—more everything! Hang on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen, because once you open the cover of Lumen, the second installment of J. J. Fischer’s The...
