Real Life is Better Than Fiction

Today's Christmas excerpt is from Christmas At Martha's House Christmas at Martha's House   click on the above link to go directly to Amazon Call me Martha. Better yet, don't call me at all until at least the middle of January. I just can't handle another thing right now. I thought I had the preparations for Christmas under control until the meeting that Sunday after church. 5 Sundays before Christmas: Claire, the Sunday school secretary, says we're doing a play this year and apologizes for not getting together before now. It seems the Superintendent put her in charge and gave her a copy of the play he had chosen. It took her three weeks to convince him that it just wasn't right for us, and to come up with another script. I'm surprised she convinced him at all. But now we'll have to work extra hard to get it ready, if we think we can, if we aren't too wrapped up in our own little interests, if we really have enough faith that

Today's Christmas excerpt is from Victory Song Click on the cover to go  directly to Amazon A sound behind him made Andy turn abruptly to see that at least one other member of his regiment was seeking out a place of retreat from camp life. “I came up here to get away from the Christmas music,” Isaac’s familiar voice greeted him. “What’s your excuse?” “Didn’t know I needed one,” Andy replied with a smile. Isaac let the conversation lapse, stepped up next to Andy and peered over the logs toward the glowing horizon. After a moment he said, “We have a holiday, too. It begins tonight. It’s a festival of light. A celebration of God’s goodness and providence. Some holiday, huh?” Andy was cautious as he ventured, “Isaac, what’s wrong?” Those dark eyes snapped at him. “It’s me. I’m wrong. What I’m doing is wrong.” “How’s that? You’re just following orders, like the rest of us.” “But I’m not like the rest of you!” Isaac emphasized. “You haven’t heard the stories.”

Today's Christmas excerpt is from: Belonging Click on the cover to go directly to Amazon Thanksgiving came and went without a thought to Shelly. Since she and her father were the only family the other had there were no huge dinners. The day after Thanksgiving was when they began celebrating. They never went out in the crowds for Black Friday shopping. They always went to the woods for Christmas tree hunting.       Should she continue the tradition?       Since Christmas was so near, the house was all fresh and clean with new paint, and Shelly needed a distraction, she decided to get out all the decorations and put up the tree. She had debated whether or not to decorate. It seemed like a lot of work for one person. It also didn’t exactly seem like an appropriate time to be celebrating. There would be no gifts to buy and no gifts to be placed under the tree. However, Shelly needed something constructive to do.       She lugged the totes down from the attic. It

This Christmas season I am going to be sharing Christmas excerpts from my books. I hope you enjoy them! Come Eat at My Table Click on the cover to go directly to Amazon. “Only two more days till Christmas!” Hope danced around the kitchen chanting while getting underfoot. She was good at getting underfoot, but she was not always a whole lot of help. “Yes, we know!” Hope’s twin sister Faith said, while frosting some of the cookies she had baked earlier in the day with their mom. Hope picked up the cookie as soon as Faith put it aside to let the frosting set. “You didn’t burn these did you?” “I haven’t burned anything in a long time!” Faith said. “Yeah, it’s been at least a week!” Hope said sarcastically, taking a bite out of the cookie. “We’d get more done if you helped a little more besides eating everything,” the girls’ mom, Karin, said to Hope without looking up from what she was doing. “I’m taste-testing,” Hope said with her mouth full. “And taking pictures.”

I think one of my favorite Christmases was one where I spent a lot of time doing something for someone else. The ladies of our church got together and made Christmas special for a deserving family, complete with a delivery of approximately one ton of presents on Christmas Eve. Okay…I may be exaggerating about the weight of the presents, but only a little. The surprise on the faces of each family member was so worth all the time and effort we put into it. In my opinion, that is what Christmas is all about. A couple of years ago a friend and I decided we wanted to write an advent devotional book to help families come together and get more involved during the Christmas season and throughout the year.  This year, we FINALLY finished it. There are 25 days' worth of devotions, short stories, activities for families to participate in, and songs to listen to or sing along with. So, if you are looking for something special to do together as a family, especially families with

The song My Story by Big Daddy weave says, "To tell you my story is to tell of Him." And that is so true in my life. I never used to think I had much of a testimony until I had to write it down. My testimony is one that shows how much God loves us and how involved He is in even the littlest details of our lives. Little did I know that skipping eighth grade had something to do with my mom's death. Sounds funny, but it's true. I can't spend Mother's Day with my mom, but I can honor her by sharing my testimony with you as she was so involved in it. I hope it honors God as well. It all began when I was five years old. It was Monday, the day after Easter, and my mind must have been full of questions. My brother and dad had gone to church for Awana for the evening. My 5-month old baby sister was asleep in her cradle, and my mom made us cups of hot cocoa (must have been one of those cold Easters in New York!). We sat together on the couch, in the peace and q

Today I wished a couple of friends a Happy Anniversary, an aunt a Happy Birthday, and a friend Goodbye to this life. It just reminds me that while we may want the world to stop for even a few moments to celebrate a marriage, a birthday, or a life, it won't stop. Time won't stop for anything. It has made me think about how I use my time. Do I use it wisely? Not always. That's something I need to work on. Recording snippets of life in journals is important to me as I am an emotional writer and want to remember exactly how I was feeling at a specific time. Often those snippets become a part of my writing. So, while I may not ever be able to stop time from marching on, I can always go back and recall those moments because I took the time to write them down. So…Happy Anniversary, Happy Birthday, and see you later in heaven, my sweet friend. What about you? Do you write down things that are important to you?

Photo by jesadaphorn Have you ever had technical difficulties? Sure. We all have at some point or another. Sometimes life just throws technical difficulties into our days/weeks/months just to see how we will handle them. It is usually during a time of technical difficulty that I know that I am trying to do everything right and Satan is on the defensive. I know God wants me to finish what I'm doing, but it seems there is one mishap after another or something that should have taken me five minutes takes me all day, often including a frustrating call to some sort of technical support. I know I'm not alone in this. Having worked with publishers of Christian books, I could guarantee when we were printing a book that would have an impact on people's lives. The files would all of a sudden become jumbled. The edits we had made were missing. The printers would suddenly stop working. Think I'm exaggerating? It's happened multiple times, to me and to other publishers I kno

Distractions. We are all affected by them. Some distractions are good, some are bad. Since I work at home, the distractions are numerous. Having to call a non-English speaking country because the Internet went out…again…during a big book promotion: Bad. Not getting anything done all day because of babysitting a smiling, giggling little girl: Good. Having to call for quotes because our insurance company unexpectedly dropped us: Bad. The timer on the over beeping because the brownies are done and are begging to be eaten warm: Really Good. The problem comes when we allow all those distractions to keep us from accomplishing what we need to accomplish. A couple of my distractions. Sometimes I need a distraction so I can just think. Quilting is one of those distractions for me. Writing is my "working" time; quilting is my "thinking" time. Mindless sewing/crafting also allows me time to pray. Do distractions keep you from reading your Bible and praying eve

One of my sisters after a "light" snow. We were hit with a pretty big snow storm last weekend, big at least according to Virginia standards. Whenever it snows memories from my childhood always come to mind. Growing up in New York, there was no shortage of snow, especially since we lived near Syracuse, which holds the record of being the snowiest city in the country. I remember one year to snow plows piled the now up so much on the corner in front of our house that my grandpa parked his car in front of it and made my brother and I sit on top of the pile so he could take a picture and show people how much snow there was. I remember another snowy evening, okay, it was much more of blizzard-y evening (I know that's not a word!). It was shortly after Christmas and we were taking down all our decorations so the house was a complete mess. Then someone knocked on the door. My mom sent all four of us kids "the look" that we knew meant, "Cram everything