Happy Christmas Eve! When I think about Christmas and Christian romance, I think about my book Christmas in Abundance, a story of a young woman who spends her first Christmas without her family. That reminds me of a Christmas I spent without my family, a Christmas that was very different from what I had planned. […]
My Life as a Small-Town Girl…plus a Book Bonanza!
If you read my books, you may notice that they all take place in a small town. That’s because, no matter how sophisticated and urbane I might have wanted to be when I was younger, I’m a small-town girl. And these days I know that for me, that’s a good thing. There’s just something I […]
Hey! What about Thanksgiving?!
Here in the US, it seems like the last wisps of smoke from the fireworks have barely begun to fade from the July sky when all the craft and hobby stores begin rolling out the fall and Christmas stuff. It never fails, immediately people begin lamenting it coming “earlier every year” and grousing about seeing […]
Planning a Wedding
One of the things I find most fun when writing Christian romance is planning a beautiful wedding at the end of a book. Of the five books out so far in my Abundance series, three of them end in weddings, including the most recent books I’ve written, Love and Roses and Love, Lies, and Homemade […]
Remembering Your First Love…plus #giveaway
Do you remember the first time you fell in love… with a fictional hero? Back in the 1970s, when I was about fourteen and growing up in the Missouri Ozarks, a family friend named Bessie gave me a stack of Grace Livingston Hill books that she said she thought I’d enjoy. An avid reader, I […]
Let’s Talk…Author Websites
I might be an author, but I’m also an avid reader. I constantly have a book going and can get through two to four books a month. Every once in awhile, I read a really great one. When that last page has ended, I stare off into space for a moment, transfixed as I begrudgingly […]
The Comforts of Home in Fiction…plus #Giveaway
When I was a little girl, growing up as an only child out in the country, I found comfort in books. Decades have passed, but I haven’t changed much. Good day or bad, give me a sweet story, a cup of tea, and a Lorna Doone cookie or two. My soul will ease, I will […]
Overcoming Obstacles
The former pastor of our church used to say that if she heard something three times, from three different people, she knew she needed to pay attention. It might be a nudge from God. I had that happen recently. I heard the same question from three different sources in one week. What are you telling […]
The Power of a Single Kind Act…plus #Giveaway
I’m getting ready to write the second draft of the next book in my Abundance series. At this stage, one of the things I look at in particular is whether or not my hero and heroine are likable. In fiction, one way to make a character more likable is to have them do something kind […]
Tied up with a Bow…plus #giveaway
At first, I thought my leaning toward writing “double” romances—stories where two couples both find their happy endings in one books—was purely based on math. In 2014, I began the first draft of Love at Sunset Lake. My goal for the manuscript, based on traditionally published novels, was 80,000 words. That seemed like a lot. […]