I grew up hearing all the old stories and songs that created a verbal history of our area, and wanted a way to document those stories. I decided to do it in a way that also explored our area from the eyes of outsiders to show the complex set of values we hold so dear. I must admit, the romantic in me also loves the interplay of total strangers who are thrown together and must work together in order to survive. The book actually takes place in the small town where I grew up, and incorporates many of the stories I have heard over the years

I love story telling, the history of my home place, and I am fascinated by relationships of all kinds.. Relationships between men and women, men and men, and women and women.,adults and children, and most of all, the relationship we all could have with God our Father. I find strength in my relationship with my husband, and yet to be with a group of women is also healing, and those different dynamics intrigue me. I love writing, and just wanted to share my points of view with others by writing.

There is some work involved in getting ready to publish on Smashwords, but the payoff is astounding. It reaches out to so many avenues that I would never have thought of, let alone had time to format my book for. I am treated with respect as an author, and find it a pleasure working with them.

Finding out what I am going to write. Sometimes I start out one way, and then one of the characters surprises me and I just have to follow where that person is going with it. I love seeing the thoughts in my head form a book, right in front of my eyes. It is amazing.

I am thinking of them every letter I type. I love communicating, and am always aware of how they will perceive what I am writing. Without readers, there is nothing to pull the words out of your spirit.

Book two is already done. I am in the process of getting it edited, formatted, and ready to go. I have two more books in the works that have nothing to do with the Living Waters Series, but I definitely see a third book in the making.

I get out of bed every morning just to see my dogs and my husband. I love our little house, and I love all the big brown eyes of our two, three, and four pound Chihuahuas, as well as the big brown eyes of our one hundred twenty pound half Chow Chow, half Buick, Kodi. And I love looking for my blessings, and ways to bring God's love to earth as it is in Heaven. But what gets me to leap out of bed, is the days I have nothing to do but write. I love everything about it. The closest way to explain the way I feel about it is that it is exactly they way I felt when playing as a child.

I scour the websites of all retailers to find books that interest me. I hate to admit it, but I won't read a book just to be reading. I have to know what the content is, the period of time it is set in, etc. I love historical romances, but currently I am reading books about the joy filled Christ. There is supposed to be more joy in our faith than I find out there... more fun. More laughter.

It was a poem for fourth grade. I take a bath and rub and scrub. Then I get out and clean the tub. I put my laundry in the hamper, then with my pajamas on I scamper through the door, and down the hall. And then into the bed I crawl. More of a poem really, but it told a story.

I can tell the difference in when I am writing, or just typing words. When I am writing, the words just flow and I can feel the story coming to life inside me. But when I am just trying to fill paper, I usually have to go back and erase it. It is stilted, not funny or sad, and disconnected. I don't plan out where the book is going, I just create characters and then listen to what they have to say. I am blessed with a husband who says, "I will do the dishes, the mopping, answer the phones, do all the meal preparations, and all the laundry. All you have to do is write."

I had taken out a library book when I was very small, and hid it because I wanted to keep it forever. It was a story (in poem form) about how trees support other trees when they fall. No matter what kind of tree the fallen tree was, the standing one "held out its limbs in sympathy and caught the tree the storm had hurled to earth." "They bear the burdens of their own, and bear as well another form, a neighbor stricken in a storm." At the end, it asks, "Should trees be nobler to their kind than men, who boast the nobel mind? Should there exist within the wood this great eternal brotherhood of fir and pine, of hill and glen, and not within the hearts of men? God grant that we be like to these, and brothers as brotherly as trees." My Grandmother who was born in 1885, when Little House on the Prairie was being written, and told me stories her mother had told her about the Civil War, told me it wasn't right to hide the book. That I should take it back, and check it out again, and memorize the poem so it would always be with me. She also told me to remember her stories as well, because I could tell my Grandchildren that my Great-Grandmother rode a boat to Parkersburg with her Dad when she was six, then went by horseback to a parade. Her Daddy put her on his shoulders and said, "Now you can tell your Grandchildren you saw Abraham Lincoln."

I always want something that draws people to it. Something that makes the person wish they could walk right into the page and visit the people in the book. I like elegance, nothing silly or bizarre. I have great respect for the people I am writing about now, so I want the page cover to reflect that respect.