With Christmas 2024 a warm, happy memory and the resolutions made on New Year’s Day still unbroken, tonight I will take down our Christmas tree and put away the shiny ornaments for another year. Today is the twelfth day of Christmas, or Epiphany, celebrated by many Christians as the day the three kings arrived in Bethlehem bearing their gifts of …
A Peek at my Writer’s Journey
I like to say I inherited my love of baking and gardening from my mother; a love of horses, reading, and writing from my dad—and the wanderlust gene from both. When I traveled to Southold, L.I., with my mother in 1999 to discover our roots, passions collided: my love of faith, family, travel, history, and writing. Little did I know …
April, a Time to Remember and Celebrate
April 10th is National Sibling Day, and I love a day to remember and celebrate our siblings! I have three, a sister and a brother who live in Oregon with their beautiful families. And our beautiful sister who left us too soon for heavenly spaces. Her name is Linda – our mom called her Lulubelle. She liked to write, and …
What’s In a Name?
I love names. I love the stories behind the name, how a name can define a person and sometimes not. Names are important. Even God knows us by name. My church offered a seminar called Younique – a course on finding our “one-of-a-kind divine design” and I jumped in. I’ve been struggling with some of the current issues of the …
Hitting the Pause Button
I’m hitting the pause button for the next three weeks. Some might be thinking, but haven’t you been hitting pause for like the last three years? In some ways, I guess. But with extenuating circumstances and certainly not intentionally. But in the next three weeks, my church is going to hit pause as a congregation as well as individually. Not …
Happy Twelfth Night!
Do you celebrate Twelfth Night? Growing up, I understood the meaning of the Epiphany in the church, but it wasn’t until I immersed myself in researching England for my Southold Chronicles novels, that I understood the twelve days of Christmas. Silly me, thinking it had to do with pear trees and a partridge. But of course, the Epiphany is celebrated …
Research: Chasing Clues, Ideas, and Whims
I love researching a new novel. I love letting the story swirl in my head as I chase clues, ideas, and whims across the country and into research heaven: libraries and museums, historical sites and societies, bookshops and academia. Wherever the road may lead is research heaven. My fiction is based on real historical women and to trace the path …
A View from My Porch
My view changed in 2020. Many of us–okay all?–experienced a shift in how we think about our health, education, workplace, shopping, recreation, etc, etc–not to mention our relationships and politics. It’s not been easy, but hopefully we’ve learned a few good things from the chaos. And of course, we hope for better things in 2021. Along with the other changes, …
Choosing Thankfulness
Today I’m choosing thankfulness. My life in 2020, perhaps more than any other year, is filled with events that with each month that passes, feel insurmountable. Perhaps you feel it too. I chose a word, like many do, for 2020 early in January. It was reconnect. I envisioned that word on many levels: with family, friends, with God. I looked …
A Victory Garden
I planted a Victory Garden yesterday, inspired by the Victory Gardens of WWI and WWII. Originally called War Gardens in WWI, while soldiers fought on the European battlefields, loved ones at home showed their support by planting vegetable gardens. Slogans such as “Sow the Seeds of Victory”and”Preserve Your Reserve” encouraged Americans to grow their own food to help preserve the …