MY STORY
I'd love to say
writing is a soothing balm to my soul; rather, it’s an itch that never fully subsides, a longing often unfulfilled, a calling that seems ever elusive. And yet, I have a string of books under my name that calls out, “I am an author!”
I’m still surprised with that label.
Perhaps, it’s best to say I’m a seeker of story, of the narratives of lives, of history, of God’s place in it and through us all. And in that seeking, I try to flesh out thoughts on a computer or paper or notepad. If I’m lucky, they flow into a stream of narrative, a story I feel and can impart to the reader.
That’s what happened with They Roared Like Lions, my most recent novel where I took the all-too-real events of one of the culminating events of the 2nd Great Awakening in America and put it in historical fiction form. Because the spiritual preparation for that movement was foundational, The Waking Up, the first in the The Revival in the Kentucky Frontier series, could only tell part of the story.
In They Roared Like Lions, I take the families from The Waking Up and set them on the national stage of revival in 1801 at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, the undisputed location of the largest gathering during the 2nd Great Awakening. For me, it was an incredible journey through history and watching, in hindsight, a move of God that profoundly shaped a nation.
Prior to writing this series, I was swept into homeschooling our sons, helping my attorney-turned-pastor husband in our church, all while keeping up with my South Carolinia family and farm. Somewhere in that mix, I made the time to pen ColorBlind. Taking my dairy farm upbringing and blending experiential knowledge of life in ministry, ColorBlind tells of a young pastor’s daughter’s coming of age and touches on racism in the 1960s.
My college degrees -- a bachelor’s from Clemson University and a master’s from the University of South Carolina – have allowed me to dabble in PR, teaching and even office management on the side, but the move to middle Tennessee, where the smells of dark-fired tobacco curing in smoke-filled barns replaced those of dairy cows and freshly cut corn, has greatly impacted my writing.
And the future? Oh, SO many ideas rolling around in my head. A mystery series? Young adult fiction? A third book after They Roared Like Lions? What do you think?
I would love to hear from you, so you can send me message here.
If you are into Instagram, you can access my rambling photos and thoughts here.
As to blogging, I need to blog. In my soul, I want to blog. It’s just like green olives, in fact. They smell wonderful; they look fun to eat, appealing. But I just can’t make myself do it. Perhaps that will change one day.
