It was a warm, blue-skied afternoon on our recent trip to Arizona and New Mexico, and Anthony and I were about to hike down into historic Canyon de Chelly. First Ted and Evie, our hosts and my dear friends for a number of years now, walked us to several of the most famous lookouts […]
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God’s Guidance and 5 Small Loaves

I sat on the carpet in their living room, with these friends in their home on the Navajo Nation, and shared my heart. Last September, I’d just come from the ACFW conference in Indianapolis and then stopped to visit friends in New Mexico and Arizona. While staying with Mark Charles and his […]
When A Story Begins to Own You: Special Double-Post with Jennifer Major

Last week my friend Jennifer Major presented a question I’ve been pondering: “When did you know the story owned YOU? Jennifer and I both write about Navajo history in our novels and have been blessed with the same Navajo/Anglo family to take us under their wings and teach us much. So today, we […]
A Writer Goes A-Journeying…

So…I realized I never shared many snapshots from my most recent writer’s journey last month, to the ACFW conference in Indianapolis and then to visit friends and go a-researching once more in New Mexico and Arizona.Well, only one way to fix that! First, a peek into the ACFW Genre Night: I modeled a 1910-era white […]
A Writer Goes A-Journeying…

So…I realized I never shared many snapshots from my most recent writer’s journey last month, to the ACFW conference in Indianapolis and then to visit friends and go a-researching once more in New Mexico and Arizona.Well, only one way to fix that! First, a peek into the ACFW Genre Night: I modeled a 1910-era white […]
On Columbus Day

Hello, friends.I’m generally only going to be posting on Tuesdays now as a regular thing. But today, I wanted to just re-share a couple of posts from years back, both sharing a little bit different perspective on Columbus Day than many of us have.Some of you may have read and watched these in years past. […]
A Week, an Award, and a Story

With two of my CPs at the ACFW Awards Gala Well…I’m back, friends. Back from the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) conference in Indiana, and then visiting friends in New Mexico and Arizona, with a good bit of research and learning along the way. It’s been an eventful week. My novel Beneath a Turquoise Sky […]
Messy History and Mustard Seeds

Sometimes history is hard to learn. When I first read Richard Twiss’s One Church Many Tribes, at least once I stopped in tears and couldn’t pick the book up again for a while. I think it was the chapter about the abuse of Native American children at many mission boarding schools . . . central […]
Remembering the Long Walk

Photo from the Long Walk It was my very first interview for the story just starting to germinate in my brain and heart. Despite living five years quite near the Navajo reservation, I really knew very little about that nation of people. But my dad knew a man willing to help—Potawatomi himself, but his wife […]
Apology to Native Peoples Petition

Hello, dear reader friends. If you’ve read my blog much, you probably know a little about how the Lord has been teaching me about racial reconciliation and the often-tragic history of our country in relation to the first peoples of America. I’d just like to share with you an opportunity to raise our voices […]