Inspired by Life ... and Fiction

Novelists bound by the pen, sisterhood, & more

The Fairest Maidens Medieval Series Releases! (And a Giveaway!)

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The Fairest Maidens is HERE! After months of planning and preparation, I’m super excited that The Fairest Maidens, my newest medieval YA romance series, will hit shelves next Tuesday (Sept. 20)! I had a lot of fun writing this series for many reasons! One reason I loved creating this series is that I used the same fictional world that I used in last year’s The Lost Princesses series. I … [Read more...]

Prayer Walk

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Somehow it's easier to meet Jesus in the quiet of the early morning. I've found this to be particularly true for me over the last month. Thanks to COVID closing/restricting gyms and my desire to escape the Texas summer heat, I recently switched my usual exercise routine from lunchtime to early mornings. For the last couple months, I have been rising at 5:30 am and walking 2 miles around my … [Read more...]

Autumn Excitement

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In Texas, we usually get a tease of fall in September before summer blazes back for one more go. This year, the tease is going on two weeks now. Highs in the mid-80s to low 90s, nights in the mid-60s to high 70s. I know those are summer temperatures to some folks, but it is a great reprieve from a summer of well into the 100s. The cooler mornings have me thinking of the things I get most … [Read more...]

Divine Twists & Turns

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Three weeks from today on October 6 Colors of Truth my 17th novel releases, and I'm especially grateful to finally be at this milestone with this book. Because writing this one has been a journey—in so many ways. First—I wrote the majority of Colors of Truth during Dad's final year of life here on earth with dementia. So a lot of what God taught me during those exhausting but blessing-filled … [Read more...]

Pen Pals: a reunion

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I had lunch with an old friend last week. Ann and I go WAY back to when we were little girls of maybe eight or ten. My family's former pastor and his wife had moved to the Norman, Arkansas area, and were involved with a mission there. Rev. Ellis Turner and his wife, Viola, helped set up a pen pal program, matching the kids in our little country church in Kansas with kids involved in their … [Read more...]

A Stolen Bible Used by God

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This is the third and final blog post in my Lost & Found series! (If you missed the first two installments, you can find them here and here). My heartfelt thanks to Susie Pederson whose beautiful story I'm sharing with you today. It's a testament to how God often works in ways that we perceive as disappointing because we're unable to comprehend the big picture. It's a huge blessing when … [Read more...]

The Reality of Romance

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Romance is hard work. In our novels, we often stop at the point that a couple is discovering and leaning into their new love -- unless it's a marriage of convenience, and then they have to learn to love each other as newly married strangers. They go through struggles to reach that point, real barriers, but then the book closes with an acknowledgment that life won't necessarily be easy, but as … [Read more...]

God’s Sense of Humor

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Hi friends, Mike and I celebrated twenty-eight years of marriage this week. Twenty-eight years. We were so young when we married, and we married quickly. We’d only been dating three weeks when Mike proposed, and we were married four months after that. Two months later, I found out we were expecting our first child. Our friends and, to be fully transparent, our families gave our marriage the … [Read more...]

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