In the fall of 2014, educators Eric and Rixa Freeze moved with their young family to Old Nice, a medieval town-within-a-city on the famed Cote d'Azur. They'd bought a 700-square-foot dive, an apartment in need of renovation just a couple blocks from the Mediterranean. They were a family with a plan: to live differently. No home in the suburbs with a two-car garage, no bedroom for every child, no 24-hour Walmart. Carefully researched and vividly written, French Dive chronicles the Freeze fa...

A 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleAgainst the backdrop of a hyper-competitive AAA industry and the perception that it is a world reserved for top programmers and hard-core 'gamers', Story Mode offers an accessible entry-point for all into writing and designing complex and emotionally affecting narrative video games. The first textbook to combine game design with creative writing techniques, this much-needed resource makes the skills necessary to cons...

The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi describes the journey to eternal life as going through a gate of ordinances and traveling a “straight and narrow path.” Twenty-three authors took that gospel roadmap passage as a prompt to write “a Mormon story.” They responded with a surprisingly wide range of realistic and fantastic tales. Many are human reactions to unexpected steps on the path: a lifetime of faith in a patriarchal blessing’s unfulfilled promise, a survivor of violence calling a divided ...

A collage-like mash-up of personal anecdote, popular culture, masculinity, sports, and parenting, Hemingway on a Bike takes readers through the many and varied twists and turns of the life and mind of its author, Eric Freeze. Delving into obsessions and experiences, Freeze’s essays display a keen intelligence with insights on topics as diverse as Mormonism and foosball, Angry Birds and professional wrestling, superheroes and freebirthing, Ernest Hemingway and Star Tre...

To make a friend is a joy. To make a friend in another country is a wonderment-a small miracle. Pardon My French follows the lives of an American couple who have embraced a daunting mission: Not to be spectators in France, but to be absorbed by France.Amidst the minefields of linguistic faux pas, the perplexities of French gestures, the exquisite and often exotic cuisine, and the splendor of Christmas on the Mediterranean-see what it is like for an occasionally gruff Ameri...

Can Outlining Help You Write a Better Story?Writers often look upon outlines with fear and trembling. But when properly understood and correctly wielded, the outline is one of the most powerful weapons in a writer’s arsenal.Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success will:Help you choose the right type of outline for youGuide you in brainstorming plot ideasAid you in discovering your charactersShow you ...

This collection of thirty-eight terrifying tales of serial killers at large, written by the great masters of the genre, plumbs the horrifying depths of a deranged mind and the forces of evil that compel a human being to murder, gruesomely and methodically, over and over again.From Hannibal Lecter ( The Silence of the Lambs) to Patrick Bateman ( American Psycho), stories of serial killers and psychos loom large and menacing in our collective psyche....

"In Paris (or anywhere else, really) a table for one can be a most delightful place." --Alone Time, as seen in The New York TimesA wise, passionate account of the pleasures of traveling soloIn our increasingly frantic daily lives, many people are genuinely fearful of the prospect of solitude, but time alone can be both rich and restorative, especially when travelling. Through on-the-ground reporting and recounting the expe...

2 Bestselling Guides Packed With Tips to Help You Brainstorm and Plan Your Best StoryFrom Award-Winning and Internationally Published Writing Mentor K.M. WeilandWith over 300 pages of step-by-step guidance, these two individual books have 440+ five star reviews on Amazon and have helped thousands of authors write better books.Can Outlining Help You Write a Better Story?These bestselling guides will help you choose the right type of outline to unleash your cr...

"On a tiny French island, a couple of American dreamers redefine their lives by restoring a ruin…The French House moves to a soulful, very funny rhythm all its own."—Meryl StreepDon and Mindy Wallace have always been Francophiles, so when they had the opportunity to buy a home on a small French island off the coast of Brittany, they jumped—sight unseen—into a crumbling mess that challenged their finances and their family.But when the Wallaces arriv...

Learn How to Make Your First Draft Easy!Award-winning author K.M. Weiland’s previous book, the bestselling Outlining Your Novel, showed writers how to embrace outlines in a way that makes the writing process fun, inspiring, and easy.Now it’s time to put those lessons to use! Building upon the principles you’ve already learned, the Outlining Your Novel Workbook presents a guided approach to getting the bones of your story down on paper, ide...

Dirt is a story about the places where we start. From a single-wide trailer in the mountains of rural West Virginia to the halls of Yale Law School, Mary Marantz's story is one of remembering our roots while turning our faces to the sky. From growing up in that trailer, where it rained just as hard inside as out and the smell of mildew hung thick in the air, Mary has known what it is to feel broken and disqualified because of the muddy scars leaving smudged fingerprints a...