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At our church, we pull out all the stops for our Vacation Bible School. It is not unusual for us to have 150 or more little kids running around squealing and having a good time. Last Friday, though, the squealing turned into terrified screaming. On the Friday of VBS we traditionally hire a company to put up a parking lot full of inflatables. We rent a sno-cone machine, and grill about 300 hotdogs and make vats of baked beans and it is all free to the children and their parents. One of the prettiest sights in the world is watching these little kids skipping around, giggling, having fun, just playing themselves silly, while the adults stand around, watching out for them, while they congratulate themselves on having survived another year of VBS:-) The wind came out of nowhere. Apart from an overcast sky, there was no warning. None. In a matter of seconds…not minutes…seconds….hurricane force winds swooshed down and literally almost blew some of the children away. The wind picked up a 1400 lb. inflatable and carried it several feet along the parking lot–even though it had not yet been inflated. Peat moss from the playground swirled around in everyone’s […]

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It has taken a couple days to write about this–a couple days to believe that it is true. On this past Saturday night, my second novel, The Measure of Katie Calloway won the most prestigious award in the romance genre–the RITA. I was up against such strong writers, I didn’t think I had much of a chance. Still….I watched the tweets of those who were at the awards banquet in Anaheim with a small flicker of hope in my heart. Then I saw my name come up as the winner of the inspirational genre and I will never forget that moment as long as I live. I screamed, and my husband came running. Then he realized what had happened and threw his arms around me and we hugged and cried and laughed and sobbed. It has been a long, long road. I read many times that it was practically impossible for an unknown author to get published anymore. I kept telling myself that the Lord had never asked me to be successful, He had only asked me to be faithful. It’s hard to write year after year with nothing to show for it except a stack of unpublished manuscripts and […]

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As I was researching The Measure Of Katie Calloway, there was one thing that kept cropping up in the old books I was reading. The wildfire that swept across Michigan in the fall of 1871. It was one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States, and yet I–who had lived in Michigan for 18 years of my adult life–had never heard of it. It was the perfect storm of drought, thousands of acres of dry-as-kindling pine tops left over from the lumber camps, farmers burning off fields, and some believe there was a low-flying comet that added its fiery path as well. I read true stories of heroism and of great stupidity, desperation and wisdom. I read of the enormous outpouring of compassion that came from people all around the country in the way of food and clothing long before the Red Cross existed. It wasn’t easy working all these elements together into a book about a marriage of convenience, but of all my books so far, this one is my favorite, and the valiant Ingrid Larsen is my favorite heroine.

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