It had been a while since I last read The Lord of the Rings—just about four and a half years, to be exact. Same with The Hobbit. And, to be honest, I couldn’t give a timeline on when I last read The Silmarillion; I just know it was sometime in high school. Since I’ve been …
Continue reading Rereading the Tolkien Canon (The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, & The Lord of the Rings)
Fueled by an explosion of inspiration and angst, I wrote Our Company of Fools at the beginning of January 2016. I’d never written a book of that length that quickly. I’d never written a more personally emotional book. I never wrestled so much with a story through the ebbs and flows of editing and revision. …
Continue reading How Our Company of Fools Changed My Writing
Careful! A web of major spiders–er, spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home lies ahead! Despite my neutral feelings about Spider-Man, Spider-Man: No Way Home managed to land in my Top 5 Favorite MCU Movies, sitting just behind Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame, Thor: Ragnarok, and Thor. Putting aside my nostalgic bias for Thor (the superhero …
Continue reading Audience Expectations, Longing for Redemption, and Spider-Man: No Way Home
If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know that my appreciation of Andrew Peterson—a singer-songwriter and author—goes back many years. His music encouraged me through my gap year, I once described his book Adorning the Dark as a writing retreat in book form, and I’m a fan of his Wingfeather Saga, which I reread …
Continue reading My Quest to Nashville: An Advent Reflection
The 20s are weird. No, I don’t mean the 2020s—though it certainly has been a strange decade so far. I mean the 20-somethings, the age every kid wants to reach, the stage of life that many people might say are the best years of your life… The age that is, well, underwhelming. And overwhelming. At …
Spoilers for Marvel’s Eternals ahead. Consider yourself warned! Anyone who’s followed me for a while knows that I am a huge Marvel Cinematic Universe fan (particularly of the Thor movies). The way Marvel has built this massive, interconnected universe that still continues to captivate and excite is impressive to me, and much of my own …
I love scrapbooking. I think my enjoyment of this hobby of mine speaks to two truths about who I am. One, I love memories. Granted, I tend to cling to memories a little too tightly at times as a way to cope with the many moves and goodbyes of my young life. Which is why …
Continue reading The End of My Baylor Story: Thoughts After Second Graduation
This is not an easy post for me to write. One, because what I’ve been reflecting on and growing in feels super complex to distill down, and two, because it is hard for me to be vulnerable these days. A lot of my growth over the past two years in graduate school relates back to …
Our Company of Fools by Madelynn Orion is now available on Amazon here. For more information about the book, see here. * It’s here, it’s here! On the day of its fifth anniversary, Our Company of Fools is released to the world! When I first held the proof copy of my book, I cried, “It’s …
Continue reading Foolish Musings: Reflections on Our Company of Fools, 5 Years Later
Reminiscing about the past often points me to the work the Lord has done in my life and all the good that has happened, often in spite of (or even because of) the bad. As I thought back on the history of how Our Company of Fools came to be—which was full of highs and …
Continue reading The History of Writing Our Company of Fools
