Castle Gate Press has gone indie, meaning that we’re happily providing services to authors. These services include book layout, editing, mentoring, and advice. We are thrilled to be able to foster development of authors, particularly in Christian sci-fi/fantasy, our favorite genre. We’re proud of our run as a small press, especially our Selah Award and […]
Behind the Scenes: A cruise gone wrong by Leeann Betts
Readers often ask where I get an idea for a story, and my answer usually is, “I don’t know.” Which is usually correct. I don’t know. Most always when a story comes to me, it’s because of the crazy way my brain combines three or four separate incidents, characters, stories, or a combination of all […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Lynne Tagawa’s characters struggle with the ague
Eighteenth-century Philadelphia smelt bad. That’s one tidbit I discovered when researching my latest book, The Shenandoah Road: A Novel of the Great Awakening. And there were waves of disease: smallpox, malaria, and yellow fever. New Englanders and Quakers had decent standards of personal hygiene, but horses pooped everywhere, and there were no toilets, only “necessaries” […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Zoe M. McCarthy Imagines Love on a Golf Course
Ask any member of my golfer-laden family if they think I’d write a story where love happens on a golf course, and they’d laugh. In my early golf encounters, I resorted to observing everything except the golf to keep my interest in the game. While watching golf on TV with my husband, my thoughts drifted […]
Castle Gate Press will assist indie authors
Castle Gate Press has published using a traditional model from 2013-2018. One of our books is an Amazon genre bestseller, and another won a Selah Award for Christian fiction in the speculative category. Yet another was a finalist for Selah, and another a finalist for the Grace Award. In short, we provide award-winning editing. We […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Leeann Betts looks to numbers
When I sat down 15 years ago to see if I had one book in me, I had no clue where to start. And now, all this time and more than 30 books later, every time I face the blank page, it’s the same. Where to start? I’m an avid reader of mysteries, particularly what is […]
The Writing Craft: Author Jennifer Slattery tells how to co-write a book successfully
I’ve never understood how two authors with different muses, voices, and ideas, could, combined, form one cohesive work. Sure, Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim Lahaye co-produced the legendary Left Behind Series, but … those men are clearly brilliant, which I am not. I struggle to keep my own plot threads straight. Why in the world […]
Our book is a Selah Awards finalist!
Castle Gate Press’s book Children of the Forgotten by Charles Franklin, published last year, has finaled in the Selah Award for speculative fiction. These prestigious awards are given out for a variety of genres by the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference each year. Last year, our title Cruel Messenger by Timothy Ayers won the […]
Behind the Scenes: Author June Foster tells a shaggy dog story
Last summer, my husband and I spent three months in the tiny town of Shell, Wyoming, population 50, at the base of the Big Horn Mountains. In our RV, we performed what is called “work-camping” at Shell Campground and Cabins. Mainly my husband worked. We gave them 20 hours a week in return for a […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Susan M. Baganz and the tomboys
A couple of things went into writing Donuts & Detours. I was inspired by a young woman I once knew who hid her femininity and had a rocky past with her family of origin. I added that to another young woman who loved working on cars. Her parents tried to dissuade her from that line […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Mary (ML) Hamilton finds a mystery in a newspaper
Does anyone out there still enjoy getting your news from a newspaper? I look to the Internet for up-to-the-minute news, but there’s nothing better than a newspaper for leisurely reading about what’s happening around the local community and the state. You just never know what you’ll stumble across. For example, years ago while living in […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Bonnie Engstrom answers reader questions
As soon as someone asks what you do, the first question is either “When did you start to write?” or “How long have you been writing?” No one ever asks how long you’ve been published. Many people view writing a book like an ethereal cloud to grasp. They don’t understand how much hard work it […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Glenn Haggerty thinks like a bad guy
My story ideas usually start with a visualization of a scene in my head, often a dramatic moment. So, my novel Chase was initially just a picture in my mind: a bad-guy drug-dealer meets with one of his runners. The incident then turned into a scene which expanded into a full-length novel. Interestingly, I ended up cutting […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Pamela S. Meyers dreamed of traveling back in time
Having grown up in the small resort town of Lake Geneva, WI, I’d heard for as long as I could remember how the wealthy of Chicago had come north to Geneva Lake after the Great Chicago Fire to build large (sometimes gargantuan) homes on the lakeshore to house their families while the city was rebuilt. […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Donna Schlachter loves “The Fugitive”
The idea for this story came from a love of a movie and a friend with a great train story to share. The movie was “The Fugitive,” both the original series pilot and the more recent remake. I loved the idea of a train ride leading to a second chance. My friend had recently taken […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Sara L. Foust and her dream career
The heroine in my debut novel, Callum’s Compass, is Kat Williams. She is a wildlife biologist tasked with documenting spring salamanders in select water sources of Anderson and Morgan counties here in East Tennessee, where I live. I chose this career path for her for a number of reasons. Having her out in the forests […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Lisa J. Flickinger tells of a childhood trip
The original seed for my latest release Fool’s Notion was planted long before I put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard). When I was nine years old, my family packed foodstuffs, clothing, and my grandmother in our brown panel van and drove eighteen hundred miles to Los Angeles for a vacation. We toured the amazing Disneyland, […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Shannon Taylor Vannatter & the city girl living in an abandoned farmhouse
A few years back, a young single woman from our church had to move out of her apartment on very short notice. The only new place she could find where she could move in quickly was in the country. The house belonged to another church member, but it was old and had been uninhabited for […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Catherine Castle never caught the bouquet …
Everyone knows that the lucky lady to catch a bride’s bouquet will be the next one to get married. But do you know where that tradition came from? As early as the 1300’s, getting a piece of the bride’s dress was considered lucky, so female guests would try to tear off a piece of the […]
Behind the Scenes: Author Donna Schlachter’s desert oasis tale
A Prickly Affair came about as the result of a long-standing friendship, a step-mother who I dearly loved, and a desert oasis I longed to write about. Mary Davis, a good friend, contacted me because I’d worked with her on a previous romance collection, wanting to know if I was interested in another, and I […]