I’m thinking about the word BASKING this morning . . . just outside our door, a cute little lizard is doing just that, and so am I on a walk down the road. Basking in the sunshine, both of us.
Sunshine plays a role in a story set in the 1860’s in Texas Hill Country. The intense heat must have seemed like an antagonist when two hearty Sisters of Divine Providence set forth by wagon to an outpost to create a school for settlers’ children.
Most likely, they’d have done just about anything to reduce the sun’s effects–can you imagine what one might SMELL entering their vehicle? A mix of hardscrabble dust, horse or oxen or mule manure, and….yep, good old sweat.
This gives you a peek into the kind of research required to paint a scene that stays in the reader’s mind. Exactly how many layers of other clothing did the Sisters’ black wool…yes, WOOL, and yes, BLACK cover?
But in-between dives down into history, I’ll be taking walks, basking, and watching out for my little happy lizard friend.
A grateful welcome to Dr. MaryAnn Diorio this week. She will be giving away a free copy of her novel to a commenter, in whatever format the winner chooses. In these times with so many attacks on our youth, we need books like this!
My foray into children’s fiction began many years ago while I was browsing in my local bookstore. I was delighted to discover a book about Jesus in a secular bookstore. But my delight soon turned into sorrow as I scanned the book. The author had presented Jesus as merely a teacher a prophet, like Mohammed or Buddha. Worst of all, readers were encouraged to choose to worship the one they preferred.
I literally left that bookstore in tears, determined to write a book that told children the truth about Jesus. That book became Who is Jesus?, published in 2014.
From there, I went on to write a series of chapter books for six-to-ten-year-old reluctant readers whose main character is an adventurous eight-year-old named Penelope Pumpernickel.
Dixie Randolph and the Secret of Seabury Beach is my first middle-grade novel. I love this age group and believe it to be an impressionable age during which children face choices that will impact the rest of their lives.
About Dixie Randolph and the Secret of Seabury Beach
A 200-year-old family feud, a hidden pirate’s treasure, and a theft launch 12-year-old Dixie Randolph and her BFF, Tilly Mendoza, on an adventurous journey to discover the thief, to reconcile the feuding families, and to solve what has become known as the “secret of Seabury Beach.” Along the way, Dixie faces her own personal family feud when her younger sister Heather refuses to acknowledge Dixie as her sister because Dixie was adopted. Despite Dixie’s repeated attempts to befriend Heather, their relationship worsens. But when Dixie comes face-to-face with the wrath of the thief’s direct descendant, she risks her life not only to save the feuding families but her sister Heather as well.
In this first book of the Dixie Randolph Series of Middle-Grade Novels, Dr. MaryAnn Diorio offers 8-to-12-year-old children an exciting and entertaining story that will keep them turning pages as they explore the themes of sibling rivalry, forgiveness, friendship, and adoption. Set on beautiful Cape Cod, Dixie Randolph and the Secret of Seabury Beach will be sure to delight your middle-grade child with timeless truths about family, forgiveness, and love.
MaryAnn will giving away a free copy of her novel, in whatever format the winner chooses.
Sometimes it takes a while to understand and embrace our unexpected life lessons. We keep thinking SURELY we’ve got it, surely we don’t need another time around.
Many of our favorite characters share this experience. We empathize with them. It’s not that they’re unintelligent–they’re simply human.
With no warning, things happen. We get surprised, as I did a little over a month ago walking to my vehicle after picking up the mail. Whamo! My toe hit a narrow piece of stump left in the ground, my keys, the mail, and my billfold flew through the air, as did I. And I discovered how unforgiving this rocky soil can be.
An ER visit later (thanks to friends who transported me), I began babying my left arm. Poor humerus bone–so sorry! Interesting how our total focus coalesces on one ailing body part at such times.
Since then I’ve flown round-trip to Iowa for a funeral and accomplished some one-handed writing and editing–while practicing caution at every turn.
But honestly, before this fall, I was already trying to be careful!
Can anybody identify?
Life happens, they say. And of course this could have been far worse. With more than one friend fighting for their life right now, by comparison this is minor. I’m also very grateful I can use my right hand, that no surgery was required, and for Lance’s unfailing help.
Still, injuries like this really hurt! Bless my retired Physician Assistant friend who wrote, “Bone pain is the worst.” Somehow, that makes me feel better.
But embracing my lessons? Still working on that. One thing: I’m pretty sure this fresh experience with a big owie will enter into a novel one of these days. (:
Seems I must’ve needed to learn a thing or two . . . again.
Welcome to Sheila Roe, an Arizona author. Sheila and I met several years ago, and since then, She’s been busy writing! She shares with us about her story for Chicken Soup For The Soul this week, and is offering TWO signed paperback copies to two of you who leave a comment.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grieving, Loss & Healing
It’s not a question of “if”, but “when” grief will intrude on your life. While it’s true there are many aspects to grief, they may rear their ugly heads in random patterns, look like something unexpected and even ambush you in a quiet moment when everything seems to be fine.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grieving, Loss & Healing is a collection of 101 true stories of grief. Each story is unique, yet there are commonalities across the spectrum. Thankfully, as our society has become more open about sharing difficult times, the way in which we approach grief as individuals and families has evolved. Chapter 7: “The Monty Dinner” is the story of a first-grief experience for children. As related in this chapter, that experience is often the death of a beloved family pet. What was a crushing blow to our children provided our family an opportunity to lay the groundwork for grief experiences to come later in life.
“The silence in the car is oppressive as we drive home on Thursday night. Just the four of us and an empty collar. The weight of a tiny dog is crushing all of us with his absence. Glancing at my husband behind the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, I turn to Max and Emma in the back seat. “Okay, tomorrow night we’re having dinner in the dining room. Your job is to find your favorite picture of Monty and bring it, and a story that goes with it.” They stare vacantly ahead. I’m not even sure they have heard me.
As parents, we do the best we can, often crafting plans on the fly, hoping they will yield the results we need and expect. In the end, we must have faith that the journey is what was intended. Perhaps it will heal us, certainly it will test us, but ultimately, it will strengthen us if we choose to share it with those we love and He who loves us through moments of darkness and light.
How has a loss affected you and your family?
Arizona author Sheila Roe has worked with those in grief since 2003. She served as a Group Facilitator for and was the lead Facilitator Trainer and Director of Development for Walking the Mourner’s Path and acted as aconsultant to the Journey to Joy grief recovery program. She has written extensively about grief, including its annual cost to American business and has presented grief training programs across the country. Sheila is a public speaker and freelance writer based in Scottsdale, Arizona whose work has been published in newspapers, magazines and books in the U.S. and Europe.
She is an award-winning author who co-wrote and co-edited the Arizona Centennial anthology Skirting Traditions: Arizona Women Writers and Journalists 1912 – 2012, the co-author of New Beginnings, Daily Christian Studies to Begin Your Grief Recovery, the author of Surviving the Holidays with a Grieving Heart and an author included in the 2022 Chicken Soup for the Soul book entitled Grieving, Loss and Healing.
Peggy Ellis join us today with the second edition of her book of stories written by World War II women. So much to learn here! Peggy’s giving away a signed paperback to one commenter (U.S. only). Thanks so much for honoring these women, Peggy!
From 1939 through the end of World War II in 1945, we learned war is not only bombs and battleships, firearms and foxholes. War demands support from people on the home front. That is the basis for Challenges on the Home Front, World War II.
Throughout history, women have held pivotal positions but too often without acknowledgement. This generation of women, through sheer determination, held the family together during the Great Depression and immediately accepted and conquered the challenge to hold their nation together during a devastating world war.
These women refused to revert to their subordinate role at the end of the war. With the support of President Harry Truman, they led the charge for gender equality which led to the equality movement of the 1970s and still affects us today.
From the time Germany and Japan declared war on Europe and the United States until total surrender in 1945, people who had dealt with the difficulties of the worldwide Great Depression now faced more deprivation and uncertainty. Women carried a major burden: the need to maintain their homes and families while taking the places men had formerly occupied in the workforce.
To do this, they had to overcome the centuries-old belief that a woman’s place was only in the home. The term ‘Rosie the Riveter’ originally applied to women working in airplane factories but came to represent various previously all-male workforces.
Challenges offers stories from eight home fronts: Belgium, England, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, The United States, Wales, and The West Indies. These first-person stories were written by individuals, not based on interviews.
Fifteen-year-old Miss Junior Red Cross Marie cared for wounded soldiers in a veterans’ hospital; at sixteen, Lucy earned silver wings as an official plane spotter; Ann was the first female to join the boilermakers’ union; Ardis taught sailors how to bake. Billie gives us unforgettable poetry. Challenges contains many more stories of women whose efforts still affect our lives today.
I have tremendous respect for a generation of women, my writers’ group helped me meet my dream of giving voice them. We contacted people we knew who had lived in other countries during the war. I emphasize that these individuals wrote their own stories.
I originally prepared this for Women’s History Month, but some entries come from men—I only specified no battle stories. This second edition contains the original, including era photographs and additional stories. On a 2019 cruise, one of the speakers was a British authority on WWII, and my conversations with him enhances this edition.
Perhaps these stories will encourage you to research your family’s experiences during the years when women took on new challenges and proved themselves, indeed, to be “The Greatest Generation” as newsman Tom Brokaw labeled them.
This year, Peggy Lovelace Ellis celebrates fifty years as a writer and freelance editor. She continues both professions. She has published in many nationally-distributed magazines, had a regular column in the RPG Digest, ezine and print for 15 years, and published in the Divine Moments series, Merry Christmas Moments (2017), Christmas Stories (2020), and Broken Moments (2021). For four years, she produced and edited a 15-page monthly periodical for local readership. She compiled and edited three anthologies for her writers’ group: Challenges on the Home Front World War II (Chapel Hill Press, 2004; Second Edition, 2020), Lest the Colors Fade (Righter Books, 2008), and A Beautiful Life and Other Stories (Righter Books, 2010). Each contains her short fiction, memoirs, and research. She also published a book of her own short stories, Silver Shadows, Stories of Life in a Small Town (2021).
Welcome to Laura DeNooyer-Moore, whose novel about Appalachia comes out of her own experience in Appalachia. Laura is offering an e-book giveaway to one fortunate commenter.
Throw 22 Midwestern education students in a bus and drive them to western North Carolina to help in the mountain schools, and you’ve got a culture clash. Turns out the teacher aids have the most to learn.
Such was my first introduction to southern Appalachia.
Enter Mr. Woody. He lived forty percent of his life covered in sawdust. He spent half the week in the forest seeking the right wood—the way his family did for generations. His chairs were so solid he could balance each on one leg with all of his weight on it. No doubt he could make a fortune with his chair-building skills.
Yet he couldn’t tell you how long it took to make one.
Meet the blacksmith who never advertised. Though he was booked solid with orders, he took his time with 22 college kids. He demonstrated how to forge a fanciful leaf from a hunk of iron, then preached a sermon from Revelation 2 about how the attributes of iron compared to Christ.
Though blacksmithing provided a livelihood, his lifeblood wasn’t from any exchange of money. It came from the instruments of his trade, and the personal exchanges between him and anybody who entered his shop.
To put it in mountain terms, Mr. Woody and the blacksmith cared no more for money than a crow cared for a holiday.
We students also learned mountain clogging, hiked the Appalachian trail, and were captivated by the storytelling magic of Richard Chase, resident folklorist. I was struck by the number of people who created meaningful lives by a route much different than those seeking the prosperity of the American Dream.
With little money, few possessions, and no races up the ladder of success, these folks still enjoyed rich lives—a foreign concept to me then. No fancy homes, expensive cars, or Caribbean cruises. But they were wealthy with things they could never lose: a richness in spirit, a deep contentment, a joy in daily life, work, and family.
That primed the creative juices: “What would happen with a clash between big-city northern values and southern Appalachian culture?” I wrote a prize-winning short story about it when I got home.
I tucked the tale away but it wouldn’t rest in peace. Over the years, those characters beckoned me back to their hills until I succumbed and wrote their story in novel form.
***************
BLURB:
Are secrets worth the price they cost to keep? Ten-year-old Tina Hamilton finds out the hard way.
She always knew her father had a secret. But all of God’s earth to Tina are the streams for fishing, the fields for romping, a world snugly enclosed by the blue-misted Smokies. Nothing ever changed.
Until the summer of 1968. Trouble erupts when northern exploitation threatens her tiny southern Appalachian town. Some folks blame the trouble on progress, some blame the space race and men meddling with the moon’s cycles, and some blame Tina’s father.
A past he has hidden catches up to him as his secret settles in like an unwelcome guest. The clash of progressive ideas and small town values escalates the collision of a father’s past and present.
Laura DeNooyer, a Calvin College alumni, thrives on creativity and encouraging it in others. She teaches writing in SE Wisconsin. She and her husband raised four children as she penned her first novel, All That Is Hidden. An award-winning author of heart-warming historical and contemporary fiction, she is president of her American Christian Fiction Writers chapter. Her new Standout Stories blog features novel reviews and author interviews. https://lauradenooyer-author.com
There’s something about connecting with history lovers–it’s a natural high for me, and this past week in Texas Hill Country I got to do it every single day. I’m still “coming down” from this trip, and basking in the memories of so many people intent on the history of World War II and other eras in their hometowns.
This group in Junction had so many great questions.
Thanks to India Houser of the Junction newspaper, who took these photos during my book talk and sent them to me posthaste!
Such a roomful! I wish I could have talked at length with each person present. But author Lynn Dean and I received a passel of local history during lunch as well as a tour of the original part of the cemetery. Such great stories to research and share in an upcoming volume!
From Wimberley, northeast of San Antonio, all the way to Junction in the northwest, readers gathered at local libraries to discuss reading and writing. How exciting is THAT?!?!
Thanks to the staff and friends of Wimberley, New Braunfels, Boerne, Comfort, Kerrville, Mason, Bandera, and Junction libraries, Land That I Love has made its entrance into Hill Country hearts, and I am so grateful to all those who gave us such a gracious welcome.
A word of thanks, also, to the officers who patrol the highways and byways, keeping us safe on this journey. As with some details of history, it’s easy to take for granted their watchful care. And I would be remiss to neglect a thank you to the many restaurant workers who provided hearty meals along the way.
A sheriff and a game warden having lunch. A chance to visit with old friends (and a new one, Lynn Dean) over a remarkable meal at Cafe at the Ridge near Kerrville. Lynn offered her unselfish chauffeur service from the San Antonio airport and back again to that very spot yesterday. AND we had a lot of fun brainstorming future stories.(:
Progress–don’t we love it? The unfolding of my Amarylis blossom (Thank you, Karen Currie!) starts ever so slowly, but one day, voila!
Next week, I’ll be in Texas Hill Country on a book tour for LAND THAT I LOVE. Stops include the public libraries in Wimberley, New Braunfels, Boerne, Comfort, Mason, Brady, Kerrville, Bandero, and Junction.
If anyone lives in the area and would like times of the events, please contact your local library or mention this in the comments. I’m grateful for industrious library directors doing the ground work for these talks and for readers hungry for an intriguing, satisfying World War II story.
Looking forward to meeting all of you! And if any of you would be interested in a free e-copy of Land That I Love in order to post a review on Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, etc., please include your e-mail in a comment.
Thanks for your support–I hope your desires for 2022 are off to a good beginning. And here’s the same blossom about two hours after the first photo was taken. PROGRESS!!
During this quiet holiday in Arizona, I’ve been reading posts about the words friends have chosen for 2022. Although I didn’t really seek one, a word came to me the other night when sleep became difficult.
Strength. Ah, this will do. Whatever lies ahead, we’ll need various kinds of strength–energy, mental stamina, physical skill, and emotional steadiness. This, we can count on.
As usual, Lance is taking all sorts of elk and deer photos here, and this one seemed perfect for this post. This little fellow looks a bit like us right now as we await what the new year brings.
Dubious, hopeful, contemplative, puzzled . . . hesitant and frightened. Dare he trust the guy standing on our deck to snap this shot?
Nearly eighty years ago, soldiers in the horrific Battle of the Bulge surely experienced such emotions. We can’t even begin to imagine what they endured or the level of their terror–would the war ever end?
In times like the present, it behooves us to consider other times that required strength and endurance. Still, we may feel somewhat the same. Dare we trust?
Recently, a Ralph W. Emerson quote struck me as appropriate for this season.
“Be not the slave of your own past–plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain and overlook the old.”
Another one of his writings applies, too. “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
All that history teaches us, and all we have seen in 2021, instructs us that God’s promise to “be with us in trouble” (Psalm 91:15) stands firm. In spite of expecting more “trouble” ahead, we plunge onward, dive deep, and trust.
The Advent season of darkness and possibility pivots on hope, such a marvelous commodity. But in the darkness, hope can seem an impossibility.
One of Lance’s photos–Christmas candlelight Dec 24, 2021.
Darkness reminds us of our need for light. C.S. Lewis said it well, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
This past year gave us ample situations for our inner desire for serenity, safety and sanity. We certainly realize our need for peace, protection and perspective.
During this week before New Year’s, perhaps it would be good to think back to all the “lights” that came to us this past year. The moments of intuition and calmness in the midst of raging political and cultural storms around us.
I wonder what the American GI’s stuck in the Battle of the Bulge nearly eight decades ago. Food, of course, and warmth–two essentials gravely lacking in their foxholes. But surely they also remembered family times, loved ones who held them in their hearts, perhaps recent letters that re-stated the love emanating from homes far away.
Here’s to recalling the lights in our own personal histories, reminders of good overcoming evil and hope drowning out despair. Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?
