First look at my favorite! Yes, I admit it. Lighting Candles in the Snow is my favorite.
There was too much anxiety with Farm Girl and Uncut Diamonds, since they were my first, to really enjoy the process. And House of Diamonds, although I really like that novel, I was disappointed in the typesetting. The print book came out too short, too small.
I like a nice, solid novel that feels good in my hands. A thick book. Continue reading
Only an hour away from our home is the city of Ogden, the best kept secret in Utah. No crowds, no traffic, not a destination spot. But for my husband and me, it’s our new favorite place.
Because among other attractions, how can you not love a city that has statues of painted horses lining the downtown streets?
Continue reading
I am participating in the A to Z Challenge on my writing blog, Coming Down the Mountain, so anyone looking for the real alphabet posts can go there. However, with all these letters swirling around in my head, and seeing how I haven’t posted here for some time, I keep thinking of the letter D and dreams or dreaming of the future. What is a dream anyway except something we want to happen that hasn’t yet? Continue reading
I love real life stories. From the time I was young, the biography shelf of the children’s section in the library lured me in. Fantasy bores me. Give me a solid memoir any day. I’m curious about what people eat for dinner, where they work, where they go on vacation, all kinds of ordinary details that make up our everyday lives.
How to write the everyday details in story form is a challenge. When it’s done right, you get Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Or the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Continue reading
(The following is an excerpt from Farm Girl, my mother reflecting on Christmas during the Great Depression)
The Depression didn’t make any difference with birthdays, or with Christmas either, because children never expected much at those times. Back then children weren’t showered with gifts, not even at Christmas. I always got a book from Aunt Bernice and as long as there was Santa Claus, I’d get something from my parents. Continue reading
My son in law loves maple bars. Two years ago my daughter gave him maple bars for his birthday.
But not just any maple bars. Think made from scratch, dough rising, cut in shapes, then fried, iced while hot, made in my own kitchen by my daughter and me maple bars. We doubled the recipe. I fried for an hour and a half, and we ended up with four cookie sheets of maple bars. Continue reading
In my novel Uncut Diamonds, the main characters, Marcie and Shawn McGill, experience some rough times. It is the seventies, when the U.S. had one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression. Marcie has to get resourceful to make ends meet, and she gets ideas and motivation from the writings of her grandmother who was a farm wife in Nebraska during the Great Depression. Continue reading
Yesterday I had a conversation with a son who needed to get something and I told him about a less-expensive place to purchase it. He said, “It’s not the money, it’s finding time to go buy it.”
His comment got me thinking about how it is either time or money that impact decisions. Continue reading
I am a wife, a mother, a writer, a knitter, a gardener and lover of nature, a blogger, a cookie baker, an editor, a creative genius, sometimes a madwoman.
karenjonesgowen 