New look! Farewell! And welcome!

Hey, Friends.

We are back! Inspired by Life … and Fiction has a fresh look, and hopefully, our new web host and new theme will have us running faster and healthier as well.

Many of you subscribe to our weekday posts via email, and if that is you, please click here and come visit us in your web browser. We think you’ll like what you see.

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FAREWELL, ANGIE!

For those of you who might not have seen Angela Hunt’s post on May 4, she has chosen to leave us after four and a half years. We’re going to miss her and her chicken posts! Her other posts as well, but I for one think of chickens differently now than I used to, thanks to Angie.

Thanks, Angela, for sharing yourself and your writing with us.

Readers, be sure to check out Angie’s latest book, A Most Peculiar Providence.

WELCOME, ROBIN W. PEARSON!

While it is hard to say goodbye to one good friend, I am delighted to get to welcome another, Robin W. Pearson. If you haven’t read one of her books, let me urge you to treat yourself. Sooner rather than later.

My first introduction to Robin was through her debut book from Tyndale, A Long Time Comin’, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to read it. Here’s what I had to say in my review: 

“This isn’t a novel just to be read. It’s to be savored. Pearson writes with a strong voice, and the memorable characters became like members of my own family. I can still hear Granny B in my head, and a part of me wishes she could share some of her salty, unsentimental wisdom with me as she did with her granddaughter Evelyn.”

My love for that book stayed with me, and I was so delighted to get to meet Robin in person when we were both on the faculty of the Vision Christian Writers Conference at Mount Hermon in the spring of 2024. It got even better when we were assigned the same cabin, me upstairs, Robin and another writer in the basement.

Quite a few members of the faculty were very familiar with Mount Hermon, and stories were exchanged during times of visiting about creepy crawlies, particularly spiders, that could sometimes be found in the cabins. That’s when Robin let us know she was seriously afraid of spiders.

Her confession came instantly to mind when I heard a scream coming from the basement in the morning as we were getting ready for the day. I grabbed one of my shoes and ran to the rescue. I didn’t think anything about being barefoot. I am always barefoot. I quickly ascertained that it was, indeed, a spider that had caused Robin to scream. She’d spied it in the downstairs bathroom. I looked, moved the waste basket, the spider scuttled out into the open, and I dispatched him with the heel of my Sketchers Go Walk. (Cue funeral music.)

I have ever since been known as “Robin, the spider slayer” (at least between the two of us). And the fact that I did it in bare feet apparently earned me some bonus points.

When Angela expressed her desire to step back from blogging, Robin’s name came quickly to mind, and I couldn’t have been more delighted when she agreed to join the writers of Inspired by Life … and Fiction. Her first post will be on Monday, June 1st. Please stop by and give her a warm IBLF welcome. And whatever you do, leave any spiders behind.

~robin