Here is a sneak peak at the sci-fi story I’m writing. It’s more in the tradition of Ender’s Game than true Middle Grade. I am making efforts to be kid-friendly, but it’s not a safe world where adults can always protect kids from having to face difficult adult issues and may only be okay for kids whose worlds aren’t that way, either. To see links to other participants samples, check out Ruth Snyder’s blog. Life After Mars Chapter One Flashes of a claustrophobic white tube haunted the Martian pioneer girl. Gloria was playing Quarter Liter in her favorite cartoon. Virtual reality was getting so good,Read More →

What do you do when it’s your turn to share, your time to minister, and you’ve got nothing? What would you hear of? That during a power outage, I got the rest of the Christmas decorations up? That I’ve been struggling with nightmares and migraine symptoms lately but the dreams weren’t so bad light night and my head doesn’t hurt so much today? Should I complain for you, let you know how hard it has been to restrain the crankiness that sometimes accompanies this? Should I pour myself out when my strength is gone? Perhaps I could swing controversial, hide my state of “nada” byRead More →

November 27, 2014 is Thanksgiving in the US. It is a day when Americans gather around a big turkey feast, thus it is also known as Turkey Day to those who forget this day is about more than food and football. It is about remembering the first settlers’ difficult fight to survive a harsh winter, one many of them lost. The first settlers managed to bring in a successful harvest the following autumn and celebrated this by holding a traditional English harvest festival. It is that event which the Thanksgiving feast commemorates. The original community who gave thanks to God for their life-saving harvest had buried over half ofRead More →

  I joined the Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month Blog Tour due to personal experience. In my teens, my grandfather suffered a form of Alzheimer’s combined with dementia and ended up losing his home and much of his possessions before anyone realized he was unable to take care of them and defend himself from con artists. It was a terrible time and as he was living with my family we continued to be baffled by his odd behavior. Like many families who don’t understand the disease and/or don’t recognize the symptoms, my family operated under the mistaken idea that Grandpa could be persuaded to “buck up”Read More →

Christians like to argue over the nature of the thorn in the flesh, whether it’s physical disease or a demonic assault. My response: who says we can only have one thorn in our flesh? I have several of the chronic illness sort. Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome is a hormone problem that can cause depressive moods. On top of that, I have inattentive-type ADD, which can cause meltdowns, especially if I get over-stimulated, and I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which again has triggers that can cause me to regress back to the way I thought as a child. When that happens, I’m stuck thinking like an ADD child/teen inRead More →