Okay, you’re in a pickle.  A fix.  You didn’t put yourself there, but in it you are, and now you must choose: Do you do the right thing?  Or do you do the easy thing? Oh, the temptation is strong.  You’re weary and worn and you silently scream, “Easy!  Can I just this once go Easy? I’ve fought the good fight.  I’ve tried to be a good person, to treat people well, to do what I say, and not be a jerk about things.  I do what I can to help others—even though when I need help, often no one’s home.  And for my trouble I’ve been betrayed, stabbed in the back, unjustly accused, stepped on, lied to—you name it.” Sound familiar?  We’ve all been there.  We’ve all felt that way at one time or another.  And we’ve all been so weary of it all that we just want to duck our heads back under the covers and block out the world. But we don’t duck because we know the world won’t go away.  Because we know we have to come out sometime.  And if we don’t deal with “this junk” (whatever it might be) now, we’ll have to deal…

They’re everywhere and on everything—great debates and moral dilemmas.  I expected to run into a few when I tackled human trafficking in DEADLY TIES, and I did.  But I also ran into one I didn’t expect. Writers love it when that happens—when they get surprised, I mean.  But it’s hard to love a surprise that kicks you in the gut, and this unexpected surprise did.  And it didn’t mess around.  It kicked hard. You see, Lisa, the heroine, knows a domineering, controlling husband is holding her mother, Annie, virtual prisoner.  But her mother won’t leave.  She’s refused to leave for years.  Annie holds with the strict view that when you marry, for better or worse, it’s for life.  She’s far from alone; it’s a valid position many women hold. But there’s the other side of this, too.  The opposing view that says there should be no moral dilemma or great debate in leaving a man who is a control freak and guilty of emotional abuse.  I personally fall on this side of the scale.  To me, a loving and imperfect father wouldn’t want his child abused or living in an abusive environment.  If a loving imperfect father wouldn’t want that,…

Does a normal person ever get to a place where they forget or lose their sense of self? If so, what happens to those things that make us unique individuals? Things like the way we feel about love, morals, values, ethics, our perspective on the way we see the world? Our faith? Do our automatic responses stay the same? If we (hard to imagine!) hated chocolate, do we still hate it? Those were the kinds of questions in my mind and so I decided to think about them and explore them in FORGET ME NOT, the first book in my new Crossroads Crisis Center series. The worst-case scenario would be to have a person whose entire life was suddenly a mystery to them. That’s a feeling we’ve all had at one time or another; a moment when we look at ourselves in the mirror and we’re not quite sure who that person is looking back at us. So naturally the heroine had to have her life stripped from her–all of it! Once it had been, then I could see what was left. I was admittedly eager. I know. I’m awful. The protagonist endures a long, difficult and sometimes scary journey,…

Reality is good. We all live our lives steeped in it. Some days are better than others. We know it, accept it, and consider ourselves lucky if we end up with a few more good days than bad ones. We take care of ourselves, our families, our careers. We handle the expected demands–the voluntary demands and the compulsory ones–and the thousand other things that need to be done on a routine basis. We also handle the unexpected demands, everyone’s crises, and the things that we couldn’t plan or prepare for with a million years’ advance notice. And, wonder of wonder, somehow we manage to do all these things and stay sane. So why then, when we mere mortals accomplish the impossible with monotonous regularity, are we’d begrudged our desire to indulge in an occasional bit of whimsy? Admittedly, I’m having a little trouble with understanding this. While it seems it’s perfectly acceptable for us to do all of the almost superhuman things that we do, we get every reaction from strange looks to admonitions for wanting to do something just for the fun of it. Sometimes, justification is actually asked for, and on occasion (can you believe it?) required or…

There are times in every life when we’re soul weary, exhausted and all that’s left in us is to run on faith. And then, when we’re positive things can’t get any worse, they do, and we’re reduced to running on fumes of faith. A while back, I went through a fumes-of-faith situation. Actually, at the time, it seemed like I was down to my last fume. You’ve likely been there and know exactly what I mean. It’s the time when you’re stuck in a situation and feel like you’re living that old saying about having one nerve left, it being frayed, and someone or something is strumming on it like it’s a banjo. For me, the nature of that time took the form of a lot of eye surgeries (tough for a writer to write when she can’t see a thing), lots of pain and feeling awful (not exactly conducive conditions for creativity). Being unable to move much (I had to sit with my eyes closed day after day), I couldn’t read, watch TV, and had to have an escort to move around even inside the house. Doesn’t that time sound like fumes to you? It certainly felt like fumes…