At this past OCW conference and ACFW meeting last Monday, author Lauraine Snelling spoke on the stories of life and how those play into making your writing real. This lead me to stop and think about my own life and my own writing. The drafts I wrote in high school are as simplistic as you can find. Not in the writing skill or plot, necessarily, but there is a definite lack of real-world perspectives. Of course there was. Back then, I knew nothing. I had seen nothing. Even now, I know I’m entirely green to the world. I could name twenty people around me who have seen more in their...
Book Review: A Whisper of Peace
Description: Ostracized by her tribe because of her white father, Lizzie Dawson lives alone in the mountains of Alaska, practicing the ways of her people even as she resides in the small cabin her father built for her mother. She dreams of reconciling with her grandparents to fulfill her mother’s dying request, but she has not yet found a way to bridge the gap that separate her from her tribe. Clay Selby has always wanted to be like his father, a missionary who holds a great love for the native people and has brought many to God. Clay and his stepsister, Vivian, arrive in Alaska to set up a church...
Two {Well, Eight} Years Ago…
I officially started “dating” my now husband. It was Leap Year, 2004. I now believe good things happen on Leap Day. On Leap Year Day, 2008, my then-boyfriend proposed to me. Yes. Good things happen. (But no, we did not think a four-year long engagement to marry on Leap Day 2012 would be a good idea.) Thankfully. UPDATE {as of noon, Feb 29, 2012} I was surprised by a text of these in my truck cab from my office parking lot: I certainly won’t forget this leap day, either. What will you do on this Leap Day to push the envelope?
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How Horses Changed Me, Defined Me
Horses defined me long before I was even born. As a child, my mother was a horse owner and my father…sometimes was forced to clean his sister’s horse’s stall. (One of my favorite family stories is of him getting frustrated at having to clean the stall and slamming the metal pitchfork into the ground – and into his foot.) After I was born, it was pony rides, horse figurines, horse books and everything My Little Pony. Nothing has changed in 25 years, really. My first horse, Whiskey Rose. When I was twelve, I found my first horse waiting in the driveway after I returned from a two-week vacation with a...
Book Review: Rose of Winslow Street
Description: The last thing Libby Sawyer and her father expected upon their return from their summer home was to find strangers inhabiting a house that had been in their family for decades. Widower Michael Dobrescu brought his family from Romania to the town of Colden, Massachusetts with a singular purpose: to claim the house willed to him long ago. Since neither party has any intention of giving up their claim, a fierce legal battle ensues between the two families. When important documents go missing from the house, Libby suspects Michael is the culprit. Determined to discover the truth behind the stolen papers, Libby investigates, only to find more layers of...