Many of you know that my son is an HR contract worker in Afghanistan. This morning at  6:00 a.m. (Afghanistan time) his compound in Kabul was attacked by Taliban men dressed in women’s burkas. They set off a car bomb at the front entrance and then began lobbing grenades into the compound and shooting. By the grace of God, my son got into a bunker safely, but it was the closest call he’s had since going over there. A sad little side note is that May 2 is his birthday and the cooks had made him a little birthday cake–which got destroyed by shrapnel–along with most of his clothes which was in the laundry that took a major hit. A pretty lousy birthday.’ I got to skype with him this morning, and he is fine. Here is a small story about the experience that he sent me to cheer me up: “Here is your happy thought, Mom. I got to the bunker and was looking around and saw my Rough Tough Marine friend sitting at the end of the bunker reading An Uncommon Grace when the second round of bullets and explosions were going on. I knew he was ready […]

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I’m hanging out with one of my Amish friends today–she’s writing some poetry for me to use in my next book–and somehow we get to talking about homemade Amish egg noodles. She tells me she doesn’t know how to make them. To put this in perspective, this is a woman who milks cows, raises chickens, grows a huge vegetable garden, and helps butcher her own pigs. The fact that she’s never made homemade egg noodles astonishes me. It turns out that there is a small local factory that makes Amish egg noodles and all the Amish women simply buy them dried and packaged. Well–thanks to my mom’s old-fashioned cooking, I have made tons of egg noodles! So I volunteer to teach this Amish woman and her five daughters how to make my favorite dish which I always thought was Amish: Egg noodles and cabbage drizzled with butter and sprinkled with crisp bacon. So here I am today, with five lovely Old Order Amish girls ages twenty-one to five, gathered around me while we mix and roll and cut. The mother fries the bacon and cooks the cabbage while watching ad commenting from the stove. The littlest one really wants to […]

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So…I’m in Holmes County, researching my next Amish book, and since I’m going to be here all week and it’s still not tourist season, the owner of Hotel Millersburg gave me a great discount. This historic hotel is lovely and clean–decorated in antiques and authentic Victorian decor. Only one problem-it turns out that this really IS off-season. A three-story hotel–and housekeeping told me this morning that I’m the only one staying here. Seriously. It’s after nine o’clock and I just crept down the stairs to get some ice and a pop. Could hear every creak of the floorboards. Felt like all the old pictures of dead people hanging on the hall way walls were looking at me. You know–moving eyes. Came back to my room. Slammed it shut. Hit the dead bolt immediately wrote down a title for a new Amish book—Murder In the Millersburg Hotel. lol

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I’ve given two talks in the past 48 hours. One to a group of aspiring writers at my local library, another to a book discussion group a couple hours away. Both had dreamers there with stories in their soul who have always wanted to write. Nearly all were people who had put these dreams on hold while they raised families, tended to ill parents,and  worked demanding jobs. Most were at a point in their lives where they finally had the time to write–but assumed they were too old at 40, or 50, or 60 to try for publication. When I began seriously writing and submitting at age 50, I “knew” I was too old–but felt compelled to at least try. At my first writers conference where I shakily pitched my first book to a New York editor, I was astonished to find out that my age didn’t seem to be a consideration. The only thing that mattered to her was whether or not my writing was any good. She accepted a manuscript, read it, and turned it down with suggestions for improvement–not because of my age but because the novel’s structure was dicey. I was sixty years old when my […]

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My third published novel came out yesterday and is doing really well. I’m especially grateful for this book to be read because in a small way, it is my own story. No–I never came out of the Swartzentruber Amish faith–but like many Christians, I had to trudge through a whole lot of legalism before I understood the power, the mercy, and the freedom of God’s grace. It became the difference between life and death to me. It became the difference between breathing freely–or barely breathing at all. A reader just sent me an e-mail saying that she saw two complicated love stories going on in An Uncommon Grace–the one between my Amish hero and military heroine, and the one between my hero and God. I hadn’t though of it in those terms, but she’s right. I have some very smart readers.  

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I have a friend who smuggles Bibles and Bible-study material into China. The communist government frowns on this sort of activity. It is a dangerous thing my friend does. You can imagine my confusion then, a couple months ago, when I was wandering through The Dollar Tree, and discovered a bin of New Testaments. I flipped through one and discovered that it was…made in China. I was at the Dollar Tree again (to those who never go to such places–everything in the Dollar Tree is–you guessed it–one dollar). I was picking up candy for my grandkids’ Easter Baskets. Had filled my buggy with cute little candy rabbits, etc. Then it struck me. I wondered where all this stuff had been made. Started reading back labels. Made in China. Made in China. Made in China. Well what-do-you-know…..this one is made in America! I put the made in China candy back on the shelf and started foraging for made-in-America candy, and there was plenty. All I had to do was look. Same price. Wandered on down the aisle. I’ve been a little nose-out-of-joint lately because a card company I used to love working for, Hallmark, has begun to outsource their jobs to […]

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There is not one thing in my life that is perfect. My hair, my clothes, my body…there is no danger of me ever being mistaken as a supermodel. Never was. I’m okay with that.The way I figure it, if everything works, nothing hurts, and I don’t scare anyone when I walk out the door–I’m good. There is not one thing about my house that is perfect. My husband and I used rough-cut lumber sawed off our own land to build it, and that lumber wasn’t always straight. I love every imperfection because after too many years of living in parsonages–this is my house. I figure if friends and family always feel welcome here–I’m good. There is nothing about our church that is perfect. People have messy lives. They make mistakes. Not every service is a soul-stirring event. Not every song is my favorite. But I love my church. I figure as long as we’re trying to follow Christ–we’re good. There is nothing about my family that is perfect. I talk too much and frequently forget what I’m saying mid-sentence. My husband works too hard and has conversations with himself while other people are in the room. One son is in […]

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My Old Order Amish friend, Naomi, (not her real name) is in much demand as a midwife—often going without sleep for long periods of time. She tells me that she is grateful for a husband who has always encouraged her in her ministry. The use of that term is important. She and her husband do not refer to what she does as her “work” or her “job.” It is always her “ministry.” I heard such respect for her in his voice when he estimated how many babies she had delivered. “Over five hundred,” he said. Then he turned to her for affirmation. “Is that about right?” She quietly amended that she had delivered well over that number. She is tired from helping a mother through a long labor the night before, and her legs ache. She has her feet up on a stool when she asks her husband if he will make her some mint tea. Mint tea is a favorite among the Amish, and most have a small harvest of mint from the plants they grow each summer. Making tea at their house is a bit more complicated than popping a cup of water and a tea bag into […]

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It was nearly ten o’clock. My husband picked up the telephone, checked the caller ID and said, “It’s Naomi,” (not her real name.) I’m not a big telephone talker, but there was a smile on my face as I reached for the telephone. Naomi has become one of my favorite people. “Are you busy?” she asked in her soft, lyrical Pennsylvania Dutch accent. Of course I was busy. I’m always busy. But never too busy to talk with a good friend, especially one who has taken the time to walk out to an unheated phone shanty in the middle of January! I got caught up on her daughter’s troubled pregnancy and how the other Amish were bringing in food and helping with housework so the daughter could be on complete bed rest. Naomi described the pregnancy problem in some detail. She’s a midwife with forty years of experience and has dealt with troubled pregnancies before. As we got caught up on each others lives, I marveled at the miles, (she lives in a different state) different customs and vastly different lives that lay between us–and yet how easily we have connected–even on the first day I met her. We discussed […]

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I am being told by those who know about these things, that my second historical is not strictly a sequel, nor is it a series. I’m new at this, and did not know the distinction. So here’s a little more information about the not-a-sequel, not-a-series book I just finished writing:-) It is set in 1871 Michigan, the year of a terrible drought. My hero is a widowed dirt farmer with five children. My heroine is an immigrant girl from Sweden by the name of Ingrid. It is a story of survival and enduring love. The sequel part comes in when the farmer is forced to seek work in one of the lumber camps and ends up in Robert Foster’s. The reader gets to see how Katie and Robert are doing, but the book isn’t ABOUT Katie and Robert. So–this is not technically a sequel. And it is not a series because each book is a stand-alone novel. Now that that’s all clear, I think I’ll go read the dictionary so I won’t make that sort of mistake again:-)

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