Faith
Who am I? First and foremost, I am a daughter of the King of Kings. I long to bring honor and glory to God with every breath I take and every word I write. Starting the day in my prayer chair always helps. I stumble, slip up, mess up, and generally miss the mark on a regular basis, but that goal is always before me. One of my favorite verses is 2 Corinthians 5:17 — Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. I am so grateful that our God gives us fresh starts and second chances…over and over and over again.
My hubby and I host and lead a marriage group with six other couples and I’m co-leading a women’s Bible study. I’m also blessed to have a group of incredible writers meet at our house twice a month. I think back to my early days as a Christ-follower, back when I knew only a few believers, and compare it to my life now. I am humbled and so thankful.
Family
Yes, there are those regrets, those wish-I-had-a-do-over moments, but in the midst of those are moments of pure joy. After 46 years of marriage, I’m still crazy in love with my high school sweetheart. Bill and I have been blessed with four sons, four daughters-in-love, and 15 amazing grandchildren. Our two oldest granddaughters were married last summer, so the grandsons-in-law bring that total to 17. Spending time with family tops my list of fun things to do. Bill and I also love camping and rides on our Gold Wing motorcycle.
Writing
My writing career began at the age of eight when I started writing stories on anything I could get my hands on. In fifth grade, when my teacher put my bunny poem (with a red “A+ Very Good!” on it), on the bulletin board, I knew I wanted to grow up to be an author. In high school I had a poem published in the local newspaper. That was a huge moment. I was married with three kids by the time my first short story was published. I still remember dancing around my kitchen like a crazy lady with the acceptance letter in my hand.
Twenty-seven years ago I was a stay-at-home homeschooling mom. In the midst of the busyness of raising four boys, my writing dream was a fuzzy, distant memory. Then one day my friend Cathy Wienke called and told me she’d just literally thrown a book at the wall because of its trite dialogue and predictable plot. “We should write our own,” she said. And so we did. Nine months from that conversation, we had a finished manuscript. This was back in the old days before the internet and email. We used Writer’s Market to find publishers that accepted unsolicited manuscripts and started sending out proposals. After a few rejections, we received a positive response from Barbour Publishing. They were interested in our story for their Heartsong Presents line. There was just one small problem: Their word count limit was 50,000 and our manuscript was 75,000! We face the bird-in-the-hand dilemma. After a few days of prayer, we decided to go ahead and start slashing. As it turned out, what we thought would feel like lopping off body parts without anesthesia became a hilarious time of “Why did we write that?” I look back at that as the greatest editing lesson I’ve ever had. Cathy and I basked in the joy of holding that first book baby in our hands. Back then, our readers sent actual handwritten snail mail. To know that our story was touching someone enough to motivate them to sit down and bless us with a letter was such a humbling experience.
Cathy and I wrote eight more Heartsong titles and a novella together. I have also written a full-length three-book series called the Lost Sanctuary Series. (Out of print now, but watch for the series re-release later this summer.) I have two novellas in collections with Cynthia Ruchti, Rachael Phillips, and Eileen Key. A Door County Christmas and Cedar Creek Seasons are both set in my home state of Wisconsin.
Family Secrets, my recent release is the first in a series of Guideposts cozy mysteries called Secrets of Wayfarers Inn. In the series, three retired school teachers find an old warehouse that had once been an inn and hope to restore it to its former glory as a B&B and soup café. In Family Secrets, someone (or something!) is out to stop them. The inn was once a stop on the Underground Railroad and each of the books in the series will contain a contemporary mystery as well as a glimpse into the life of Prudence Willard, a former slave who became a conductor on the UR and hid people escaping to freedom in inn’s secret rooms. I am one of eight authors working on this series. One will be released every month. I just finished the manuscript for Book 9 which will come out in February.
Tess, LuAnn, and Janice, the three main characters in Secrets of Wayfarers Inn have become my good buddies after all the time we’ve spent together. I love “watching” how they strive to be the hands and feet of Jesus while sleuthing around the beautiful riverside town of Marietta, OH.
Thanks for spending time with me. Leave a comment and tell me a bit about yourself.