This wonderful book is about an Appalachian community in the mountains that experienced the blessing of learning when the Moonlight School came to them. The author did a wonderful job capturing the heart of the mountain people, and the desire of many of them to learn to read and write. (Connie R) I got my edited work in progress …
The Power of Encouraging Words
Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble. ~Yehuda Berg How many of you, as children, learned the …
Appalachian Smiles
One of the fun things about researching my Appalachian books is reading about the mountaineer’s sense of humor. Since I’m working hard on edits on my work in progress that has a Monday deadline, I decided to share some of the jokes I’ve come across in reading Appalachian books. These are from a book my mother bought years ago — …
New Books, Two Magic Words & More
A box of books landed on my deck last week. My story, A Chance for Kallie Mae, arrived all dressed up in a beautiful book cover with all my words printed inside. So many words. But it’s my hope that they are the right words that will pull readers into the story and make them cheer on Kallie Mae as …
The Hunt for Those Final Story Lines
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane Once more I am searching for the end of a story. Once more it seems to be hiding from me behind a crazy mixture of words that don’t seem to be paving the …
A Perfect Name for Kallie Mae
“Names are powerful things. They act as an identity marker and a kind of map, locating you in time and geography. More than that, they can be a compass.” (From The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon In a few weeks, well, if you want to be exact twenty-three days from right now, my new book, A Chance for Kallie …
Imagination Questions Just for Fun
Today as I was searching for an old file on my computer, by chance I stopped and looked at a different old file. You know it’s like when you are cleaning out drawers or closets and you keep coming across things that grab your attention. Before you know it you have spent most of your time looking at this or …
Did You Jump Rope at Recess?
When life gets tangled, just jump rope. In my upcoming release, A Chance for Kallie Mae, (May 19th) Kallie Mae’s little sister makes friends at the one-room school and has fun jumping rope. But did you know the Dutch settlers brought the fun of jumping rope to North America in the 17th to 18th Century. Then it was mostly a boys’ …
An Outtake Schoolyard Scene with Emmie
If you have read my books, you know that I love having a young character in my stories. I’ve had two young teens as viewpoint characters – Jocie, 13, in my Hollyhill books and Kate, 14, in Angel Sister, my first Rosey Corner book. But I like having even younger characters and sometimes make them viewpoint characters too. Leatrice, …
Sunspots in the Spring
Beautiful as a dandelion-blossom golden in the green grass, this life can be. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay Here in Kentucky this year we’ve had an interesting up and down March. One week we had snow and single digit windchills. Not that many days later, we had a record breaking high temperature in the 80’s. But that’s March. Spring can come …
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