By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal For Father’s Day, my wife bought me a pair of virtual reality headsets I could enjoy with my sons. Yes, I’m spoiled. Let’s set that point aside. The first time I put on the VR set, I was blown away. The digital world swallowed me whole.…

By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal Prepare thyself, writer. Here cometh the soap box. In the past few months, I’ve noticed a trend in Christian writing circles—on forums and panels and in our books and blogs. The conversation always goes something like this: “I can write X because I am a strong…

By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal Raise your hand if you love purple. I raised both my hands. I love purple.  Purple is the color of joint ops in the U.S. military. That’s when the Army, Air Force, etc. pretend to play nice together. Purple is also the color of the dragon…

By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal Do you ever yell at your TV screen? I do—more often than a Christian who carries the hope and peace of Christ should. My wife, patting my arm, always tries to calm me down. “I know, honey. They got it wrong. They always get it wrong.”…

By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal Have you ever painted a room? I try to avoid it, but with the many moves of military life I haven’t been too successful. With tape applied and tarps laid out, Cindy and I put on a first coat. It never looks all that great, but…

By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal You can work a high-tech gadget into a cozy mystery, but that won’t make it a techno-thriller. To be a techno-thriller, a story must have distinct moving parts set up on a collision course that slam together into a perfect mesh. The Vocabulary of Moving Parts…