I have a confession to make. I’m a mean person. Yup, it’s true. And you’re probably thinking that being mean is nothing to boast about, especially at Christmastime, when little elf ears might overhear and put me on Santa’s naughty list. But I’ve got to tell you, I’m proud of how hard I’ve worked to cultivate my mean streak. I had to!
After all, no one wants to read about perfect characters that nothing bad ever happens to. We might want to read books with a happy ending, but first, we want the characters to earn the right to get there.
That was the most important lesson I had to learn when I started writing for publication. I had to force myself to be really, really, really mean to my characters.
Of course, ultimately, my goal in making my characters’ lives miserable is to bring them out the other side as better people. There’s a reason why James instructed believers to consider it pure joy when we face trials and tribulations. Because the testing of our faith helps us to mature.
So, if I have such good intentions for my created characters, how much better must the intentions of God—the author and perfector of our faith—be for us?
Now, unlike me, God’s not deliberately being mean.
Even if it can feel that way sometimes.
In a novella I recently finished, my characters were missing out on their happily ever after because of their fears of being hurt. Or at least that was their problem as I—the character’s creator—saw it!
But hey, what do I know?
I came to realize, thanks to Stacey’s insight, that what was really going on is something that happens to a lot of us when our life derails and we get hurt. We attempt to control everything within our power as a means of coping with our fear of the future.
And that quest for some semblance of control can usurp God’s rightful place in our heart and become the thing we cling to instead of God, because we’re no longer willing to trust Him with our future.
Granted, it’s easier for me to tap a few keys on my keyboard to compel my characters to not let fear rule their lives, than it is for us to do it in real life. But if you’re feeling in a dark place this Christmas season, I urge you to trust that God still has an amazing story to tell with your life.
The angels’ proclamation to the shepherds that first long ago Christmas is good news, precisely because our salvation through Jesus is a gift, not something to be earned.
Speaking of gifts, it’s tempting to think if I just had—fill in the blank—I’d be happy. Children sure think that way when they eagerly write a Christmas gift wish list.
Yet, oftentimes, when the stuff we think we want is stripped away is when we finally see what we truly need. For myself, I’ve noticed that when I don’t spend time with God, dissatisfaction can quickly seep into my days. Have you ever had that happen and found yourself blaming your job, or spouse, or children, or the state of your home, or whatever?
The glorious news of the Christmas story is that you were created by a God who loves you. A God who sent his Son in the form of a precious babe to deliver us from the sin that separates us from Him. And finding our hope and purpose in Him alone is the best gift we can unwrap this Christmas.
Jillian Green’s holiday cheer nosedives when her great aunt’s friend, Herbert, is killed while helping them decorate for a fundraiser. But the case is more tangled than a strand of twinkle lights, and if Jillian can’t uncover the killer, Herbert’s night might not be the only one silenced this Christmas.
At the time of posting, Boughs of Folly is part of a three-book bundle. This set of three hardcover books, currently on sale for $9.95 USD at Annie’s Catalog, would make a great gift for the cozy mystery reader on your Christmas list.
Sandra Orchard writes fast-paced, keep-you-guessing stories with a generous dash of sweet romance. Touted by Midwest Book Reviews as “a true master of the [mystery] genre,” Sandra celebrated the publication of her 25th novel, Boughs of Folly, in 2022. Her novels have garnered numerous Canadian Christian writing awards, as well as, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, a National Readers’ Choice Award, a Holt Medallion and a Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence. She writes for Love Inspired Suspense, Revell, Annie’s Fiction and Guideposts. Connect with Sandra through her website (SandraOrchard.com) or Facebook.
Can you believe Christmas is almost upon us? Didn’t we just put it away? I love this time of year, and when you come to my house, you can tell. I have decorations in almost every room. Yes, it takes lots of time to decorate, but it’s so pretty when it’s finished!
Is it just me, or does Christmas seem to come earlier every year? People start putting decorations up even before Halloween is over. Don’t get me wrong, I love decorating, but the season comes and goes too quickly. I want to savor every moment. Isn’t Christmas the most wonderful time of the year? What’s not to love? Watching Christmas movies, colorful lights flickering under a fresh blanket of snow, spending time with family and friends, etc.
Some would disagree—for one reason or another.
In Explosive Christmas Showdown, Olive Wells is thrust into the season by having to save everyone she loves from the dangerous Jingle Bell Bomber. Everywhere she goes, she’s reminded of the season—one she’d rather sleep through after a tragic event stole her joy years ago on Christmas day. The circumstance also dimmed her light of celebrating Christ’s birth and put doubts in her mind about His sovereignty. She doesn’t feel God is in control any longer.
However, by the end of the story, Olive’s spirit of Christmas is restored, and she’s decorating a tree with those she loves. She’s thankful for her amazing family, but most of all—her renewed trust in Jesus.
It doesn’t matter when we put up our decorations as long as we remember why we celebrate. Like Olive, let’s not forget why we give our houses the “Festive Touch.” Jesus is the reason for the season!
Christmas is indeed the most wonderful time of the year!
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
Luke 2:10 (KJV)
Merry Christmas, everyone! Have a precious time with your family and friends.
A bomber brings terror to Christmas as the presents go tick…tick…boom.
With criminal investigative analyst Olive Wells at the center of a bomber’s dangerous game, she’ll do anything to catch the culprit—even work with her ex-fiancé and his K-9 detector dog. But with the Christmas rampage drawing ever closer, Zac Turner’s convinced the attacks are personal. Can they piece together their ties to the bomber…before another gift explodes?
Darlene L. Turner is an award-winning and best-selling author and lives with her husband, Jeff in Ontario, Canada. Her love of suspense began when she read her first Nancy Drew book. She’s turned that passion into her writing and believes readers will be captured by her plots, inspired by her strong characters, and moved by her inspirational message. You can connect with Darlene through her website, where there’s suspense beyond borders. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, BookBub, Goodreads, and Amazon.
Dec 1st is the big release day for The Sycamore Slopes!
The early reviews are in, and readers are saying:
The characters are really well done, with realistic strengths and flaws and motives behind their action and reactions.
The story is compelling and emotional on several levels.
This is a fun and mysterious story. It was great and pulled me in right away.
Did not disappoint!
Filled with everyday struggles, a little bit of mystery, & faith in God to work things according to His plan.
Dimensional characters, even most of the secondary characters.
great world-building
engaging and well-written, kept me reading.
Some favourite quotes early readers have marked:
“The average person would never guess all they had endured to get to this happy spot. But that’s the way it often was.”
Chapter 1
“Without details, history might repeat itself. God wouldn’t allow something so cruel. Except maybe He would. Because He had. Nothing occurred that God hadn’t allowed.”
Chapter 3
“The more she hoped, the greater the risk of disappointment. The pessimistic route was safer. Yet, her cheeks warmed. She couldn’t stop the lurch in her heart. Her thumb rubbed against the backside of the fourth digit on her ringless left hand. Nothing good came from running ahead of God.”
Chapter 4
“Emma hated that a stupid hill could divide them and trickle down to split others. All the way to a fifth grade classroom.”
Chapter 4
“She showed me that the only One able to right the wrongs we face on the earth had to die in order to do it and rose to new life to secure eternity for those who believe.”
The woman he hoped might mother his children destroyed a family today.
Ben Sawyer gives the vulnerable a voice and strives to protect them, but he can’t stop the avalanche of trouble descending on his nephew. His strongest opponent isn’t the grumpy Grinch stirring up the community, but the one person he believed would always side with him: Nurse Practitioner Emma Powles.
Emma Powles is busy in her newly established medical clinic. When she treats the suspicious injuries of a local child, she’s forced to intervene for the girl’s safety. Her actions rouse traumatic memories in Ben, and their relationship might not survive.
The battle lines are drawn as the fallout from sledding and skating accidents fills Emma’s clinic. Families are changed forever, and the fight to control Sycamore Hill heats up.
Small-town charm, a faith-filled community, and a high-stakes love story make The Sycamore Slopes perfect for Karen Kingsbury and Deborah Raney fans.
Click the buy now button for a compelling romance with a dash of family drama, small-town politics, and powerful themes of overcoming.
At some point in life, most of us have asked ourselves one or all of these questions:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is my purpose?
When do I do what is required of me?
How do I go about that task?
Did you recognize the age-old five for writing? I laughed when I saw my newest license plate. It begins with “WWH,” and I thought, how appropriate for a writer. At the beginning of a new writing project, I also return to the reminder that if He calls, He equips. So I get on with the task at hand.
First of all, I didn’t evolve, I was created by the breath of God. He chose and bought me with a price, the death of His Son Jesus. The line from Victory in Jesus says, “He sought me and bought me with His redeeming love.”
God engineered in me specific and unique skills or talents, along with an individual blueprint, to obey and glorify Him through whatever work I carry out. There is no doubt in my mind that I was called to encourage through what I write. What a journey that calling has been.
As a new believer, I wrote a testimony as to how special my name is. The words were rejected by a wise editor. It took years of growth to understand why. I am not special. My name is not special. I am unique, but that only reveals how sovereign God is. He knew my name before I was born, but He gets credit because He is God. I did nothing to earn that name any more than I “earned” salvation in Christ.
A.W. Tozer once wrote, “A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love to the One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passes knowledge.”
I don’t mind being viewed as an eccentric writer or an odd duck. I know Who planned my life. I know Who died to give me life. 1 John 1:1 says That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
Our world appears to be a hopeless mess. But God’s got it. We have hope because the Bible tells us to hope in Christ. We are called for a purpose. Cling to God for the answers of life.
Christmas House
Pepper Rainwater has just bought the first real home she’s ever had, and she’s decorating and celebrating Christmas with everything she has. The neighbor’s miniature donkeys and meeting Foxx interrupt her life. Can she turn from all she’d been taught and trust strangers? A startling discovery after his father’s death forces Foxx Haven to face an unknown past. His life has been a lie. He’s distracted from work for the first time— by his heritage and his new neighbor. Can he fight his attraction to an unbeliever and discover his new life chapter at the same time? Miniature donkeys and learning about Christ have a profound impact on Pepper. But God has a mighty work to bring her hurting soul and Foxx’s new perspective into alignment. Can hope override hurting souls and enable a happily-ever-after?
Author Erin Stevenson shares about life while she was writing A Dream for Christmas.
When I was asked to write a devotional about my 2022 Christmas book, A Dream of Christmas, this page sat blank for a long time. I wrote the book about a year ago when I was in a different place in life. The past several months have brought some major changes, and in my recent personal time with God, I’m discovering that I’m too driven, too focused on planning out all the details, and too lacking in trust. He has allowed some pretty significant boulders to land in my path. I’m praying for wisdom on whether and how much to change course. Above everything, I want His will.
In A Dream of Christmas, the main female character, Charity, is in much the same boat. She made some mistakes in her past, but once she became a mother, her laser focus became doing whatever was best for her children—which is why she took the bold, risky decision to go on the run with them. But she continually second-guesses herself. She’s a relatively new believer, learning how to seek God’s will and how to recognize when He’s working in her life.
All my books, while different, center on a few common themes: the love between a man and a woman as God intended it, the family as He designed it (including blended families), forgiveness, second chances, and grappling with life’s problems according to scriptural guidelines.
If you’re by nature a planner, I invite you to sit back, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and just rest. Our world is filled with noise 24/7. You’ll hear God’s voice in the silence. Trust that He will take care of the details of your life. He’s promised it in His Word (Matthew 6:29-34).
When Finn Donovan answers a late-night knock at the door, there stands Charity Sullivan, the only woman he’s ever loved. He hasn’t seen her since the night nearly seventeen years ago when they shared a magical kiss after a months-long friendship.
But Charity isn’t alone, and her last name is no longer Sullivan. Her four children are with her, and she’s looking for a place to hide. Her marriage just ended, and her former father-in-law, a powerful, dangerous underworld boss, will stop at nothing to keep her from leaving with his grandchildren.
As Finn and Charity’s friendship rekindles, Finn’s protective instincts go on high alert. He’s never stopped loving her, but as an upright, God-fearing man, doesn’t want to take advantage of her vulnerability. Charity is drawn to Finn. She dreams of a future for them, but unanswered questions from the past stand between them.
When Charity receives a phone call telling her that her former father-in-law has discovered her whereabouts, she decides to go on the run again. But Finn isn’t having any of it. He has a Christmas dream of his own, and it won’t come true without Charity and her children.
Author Carol James visits today and shares a bit about her newest release and its connection to an earthquake.
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
Isaiah 54:10
Mountains symbolize strength and constancy. But what happens in your life when the constants are destroyed?
Georgia’s known for peanuts, peaches, and humidity. Not earthquakes. Yet, the Atlanta area sits along the Brevard Fault Zone. I still remember being awakened in the predawn hours one morning by the shaking of my bed and the clanging of the handles on the armoire in our bedroom. After a few seconds, silence returned, and in the fog of sleep, I wondered if what I felt and heard was real or simply a dream.
The following morning, Atlanta news confirmed it. Overnight, we’d had an earthquake.
Our little rumble was nothing compared to the major earthquakes experienced in other areas of the world. No buildings fell. No mountains crumbled. But the minor shaking and confusion it caused were disconcerting.
Several years ago, our church suffered an emotional earthquake. A group had gone on an international mission trip (as numerous teams of volunteers did many times a year) to share the gospel. During that trip, one of the team members was killed in a tragic accident. This loss tore through our church, threatening to crumble our faith and peace. Our pastor reminded us, much more eloquently than I can, that serving the Lord can be dangerous on many levels. And while we’re not guaranteed safety, we are guaranteed God’s love and peace.
Isaiah 54:10 reminds us of that. No matter what tragedy befalls us, or what part of our world is shaken and crumbles to dust, God’s love and peace are constant and steadfast. Nothing—absolutely nothing—can overcome them. And not only that, but our Father, in His compassion, feels and shares our pain. He assures us that, during the times in our lives when tragedy befalls us and everything around us seems to be crumbling away, two things remain: God’s unfailing love and His covenant of peace.
In Choosing Christmas, both Angela Taylor and Adam Thornton have had their lives shaken to their cores. They struggle to overcome the physical and emotional scars of past tragedy and loss. Believing his choices are responsible for his father’s death, Adam battles both guilt and physical pain. Angela struggles with forgiving a mother who deserted her as a child. And the only way they know to do that is by choosing to draw strength from the gift of God’s unfailing love and peace in Christ Jesus.
Heartbroken over the unfair loss of a position in the school where she teaches, Angela Taylor is determined to find an AP position.
Adam Thornton has struggled for years to overcome the physical and emotional effects of a devastating accident that occurred when he was a teenager. A successful real estate attorney and part-time handyman, Adam uses his gifts and talents to serve others.
When Angela is hired as an AP at the school where Adam’s mother is the principal, Angela and Adam find they share a past… an unexpected connection. And they must choose whether to surrender to the pain of that past or find hope for the future in the spirit of Christmas.
