The Illuminated Heart Archives

Revisiting The Illuminated Heart: We are not Alone

Thea van Diepen

Seven years ago, I wrote and published The Illuminated Heart and, seeing as it’s 2020, it seems appropriate for some hindsight. *waits until the groans subside* In case you don’t know, I wrote The Illuminated Heart during Camp NaNoWriMo, which is the summer edition of National Novel Writing Month (November), so I find it a propos that The Illuminated Heart is in a Storybundle during Camp NaNo. I mention this partly because cool timing and partly because I’m finding myself

Behold the Crossing the Veil Storybundle (including The Illuminated Heart!)

Thea van Diepen

I’m excited to inform you that The Illuminated Heart is in the Crossing the Veil Storybundle! If you haven’t heard of Storybundle before, it’s a fantastic way to get a curated set of books at whatever price point you think it’s worth (or can afford!), while supporting authors and, if you want, charity as well. Crossing the Veil, curated by Rhonda Parrish, is a bundle of books about psychopomps- a being who guides souls from the world of the living to

The Hogwarts Houses of Some of My Characters

Thea van Diepen

After reading a fun Buzzfeed post wherein YA authors sorted their characters into Hogwarts houses, I decided to do the same thing. So there. Click on the images to see larger versions. :) From The Illuminated Heart The Winds (from left to right: East, West, South, North): Dagný and Finnr. Well, Dagný and Finnr’s big polar bear nose: From Hidden in Sealskin The book isn’t out yet, so here’s just a little teaser, featuring Adren and Nadin, the two main

Awful Story Outlines (That Made it into Stories), Part 2

Thea van Diepen

Not too long ago, I shared all the actual outlines of the planned story arcs for Kara the Brave (my webcomic). Today, I thought it’d be terrible helpful/entertaining to share the outlines for some of my stories that are actually now published in their entirety. The Illuminated Heart To be entirely honest, I wrote the outline for this one after I’d started writing it. I know. I’m really, really bad at this. Here’s the outline: Part One: God Has Left Me

Book (Launch Day for The Illuminated Heart!)

Thea van Diepen

Well, this is it. Today is the day that The Illuminated Heart officially goes live. I was going to talk about how I wrote it (short story: In a very intense two weeks during Camp NaNo and after finals), how awesome my editor was, and how long it took me to finally make the paperback (months. Literal months). I was going to tell you some of the great reviews the ebook’s gotten and show off what the paperback has that the