All my life I’ve heard pros in the industry say, “Don’t write if you can do anything else.” Well, I can’t, and I wonder why I’d want to. It’s the only way in the world to live inside of your dream.
I want my words to move people... just as high as they’re willing to go..
Take Fire is a YA fantasy novel: They’ve never seen each other, but McInnah, Luke, Brooke and Geoff share the same birthday. On the first second of the first minute the night they turn fifteen, all four are snatched into a mystic realm...
Who’s got the time to read them—right?
But just so I can stay in touch for those “once-in-a-blue-moon", spectacular occasions, please…
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Finding paths through gritty places have convinced me that believing-God-for-better, coupled with determination to move forward and up will result in healing, helping and hope.
Mark produced this short clip from our morning bible study. We camped out on John 15:12 for a few minutes, and dug into the original language to better understand one of Jesus’ last commands: “Love one another as I have loved you.” It’s less than four minutes – I hope you enjoy! Toni
Stitches and words—that’s how we came together and what we had in common besides Karla and Richard and Kortney and Derek. But they came later. In the beginning, it was just stitches and words. The first time I came face-to-face with Sherry was the doorway of her home. We had just purchased a house next to Central Park, and I had my heart set on custom-made balloon shades for my kitchen and breakfast area. No one was shy to tell me that Sherry Tulk was the only soul in Artesia, New Mexico who could tackle anything nearly as sophisticated as…
The art of letting go is a delicate skill. I don’t believe anyone comes into the world knowing how to “hold and release.” Letting go is a choice. It is learned, and very rarely does the one making the release get to practice before the test. Nine times out of ten, it’s a matter of swallowing the un-swallowable and prying a body part lose—whether finger-by-finger or heart-string-by-string. Letting go gracefully is a paradox among virtues. In every other instance of life—at least all the instances that I care about, passion is the key: the act of caring enhances your ratio…
At the bottom of each individual, I truly believe that every one of us has a good heart in common. Maybe it has been obscured or protected by scars, but the original seed of optimistic hope remains. There is something else we have in common—words. We use them every day for every purpose from comfort to weapons. For many of us, they are the tools of our trade, and I have personally been in love with them since I was old enough to understand that the magical thing my mother was sharing with me was called a book. Words are…
I recently moved and purchased a house that was promising, but in need of a few touches to look and feel 100% like me. A few of the changes were actually needed. A few others were wanted, but the most extraneous adjustment that I made was to replace the front door. There was nothing wrong with the old one. It was windowless, dark wood, rather plain. By my standards, a door should represent what’s beyond. After all, it does signify a beginning or end… to a visit, a nesting, an effort for connection to someone, something “yonder”—all important, at least…
