In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours. ~Mark Twain We had a teasing day of spring/summer this week. Temperature zoomed up to 78 degrees. Then it plummeted. Here it is April and not even April 1 so we can think it’s an April Fools’ joke and snow is in the forecast. Snow. 3 …
April Fools’ Day on Easter? When Did that Ever Happen?
Today is April 1st and it’s Easter Sunday. At church we tried to remember a time when Easter fell on April Fools’ Day. We couldn’t. So I looked it up. Isn’t the internet the handiest? When you have a question like that, somebody out there has already posted an answer. So what’s the answer. The fact is you have to …
A Spring Giveaway
If you are on my newsletter list, you know I finally got around to sending out some news. No big news. No book sales although I have noticed lowered prices on a few of my books on Amazon and perhaps other online booksellers. So with nothing much going on except spring dragging its feet about showing up here in Kentucky …
Goals and Deadlines
“Goals are dreams with deadlines.” (Diana Scharf) Writing Sans Deadlines For years I wrote my novels without deadlines except for the ones I made for myself. I would set goals for getting this or that story written by this or that time. Usually I did not meet those self-imposed deadline goals. Life would happen with all sorts of interruptions of …
A Peek at a New Character
I’m always depressed when a book ends, because those are my friends for however long the book takes to write. Since I spend so many hours with these fictional people, I sometimes see them more than my real friends. And then they’re gone, and we’ll never be together like that again. (Seanan McGuire) The above quote has plenty of truth in …
Spring is Springing
“No winter lasts forever. No spring skips its turn.” On Tuesday, Spring officially gets here per the calendar. After the record breaking warmth we had in February for a week or so, spring let winter take over again. I knew we’d have to pay for that early warmth. We always do. Mother Nature keeps a record, but I didn’t think …
March Snows
Music comes from an icicle as it melts, to live again as spring water. ~Henry Williamson Spring officially arrives in five days. Usually here in Kentucky we are enjoying spring like weather a week or two before the calendar declares it so. But this year we had those one or two weeks in February. Very unseasonable warmth with May and June …
Saving Daylight
“An extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow an hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.” -Winston Churchill Did you remember to spring forward this morning and make it to church on …
Shaker Story Road
“Never wish a thing done; do it!” (Shaker saying) I’ve shared with some of you on my Facebook page that I’m working on a new Shaker book. I’ve also probably shared with you here on One Writer’s Journal that I never planned to write more than one book about the Shakers. That first book, The Outsider, took years to be published. I had …
A Storytelling Couch
The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn’t. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice – by work. – Donna Tartt I was once called a storyteller by a person I respected. I think it was one of the nicest things anybody has ever …










