Davalynn Spencer's Blog, page 53

Are You Cynical About Love?

Saturday I drank coffee and sat at the feet of one of my favorite authors as she shared her expertise and experiences – all day!

Rachel Hauk was the speaker for this year’s Write in the Springs conference hosted by the Colorado Springs chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers.

When I grow up, I want to write like Rachel.

Well, since she said the same thing about another author, I guess that’s a common desire to confess. However, God has given us each a distinct “voice” to use in our writing, not someone else’s. But it’s certainly fun—and encouraging—to hear from a highly successful author who is farther along the road than I.

The conference was held at the beautiful Franciscan Retreat Center just west of Colorado Springs. I arrived early and strolled along a garden-like path where I found a mounted copy of Desiderata by Max Erhmann. I’ve not paid much attention to this poem in the past, but Saturday morning one segment stood out:

Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,

it is as perennial as the grass.

Rachel writes inspirational romance, as do I. (We finaled together last year in the Selah Awards.) Writing about love was my reason for attending the conference, and finding the word “love” in such a setting brought to mind the words of the Apostle Paul,

 “The greatest of these is love” (I Corinthians 13:13)

God’s unfailing love is a recurring theme in inspirational romance, and that’s exactly what I want my readers to come away knowing—that God loves them without measure.

What a great day it was – apart from the world in a beautiful setting, reminding ourselves why we write about love and who the source of that love is – Jesus.

It was also fun to visit with fellow authors from Colorado whom I see about once a year or every-so-often on Facebook. And to my shame, I’m not very good at matching a flesh-and-blood person with his or her micro-chip size photo from social media.

Glad I’m not alone in that deficiency. One hostess didn’t recognize me either!

Event planner and ACFW/CS President, Beth K. Vogt (with me at left) and her hard-working team, Mary Agius, Casey Herringshaw, and Suzanne Norquist pulled off a fabulous day. And by the way, Beth’s 2014 release Somebody Like You is a finalist this year for Contemporary Romance in the Rita Award from Romance Writers of America. Go, Beth!

I’m also pulling for a couple of fellow clients of my agent from Hartline Literary Agency, who have titles finaling this year for the Rita: Rose Ross Zediker’s The Widow’s Suitor,  and Kate Breslin’s For Such a Time.

I pray that you are not “cynical about love.” But if you are, give God a chance. His unfailing faithfulness is a gift you shouldn’t pass up.

 

Now What?

He lives.

Everybody thought it was over, but it wasn’t.

Imagine yourself in Palestine around A.D. 33. Would you have been surprised? Would you have been frightened? Relieved? Looking over your shoulder, wondering who was your enemy and who wasn’t?

Would life ever again be the same as before?

It depends.

 

If you were the powers-that-be, you’d be forking over big bucks in a cover-up (Matthew 28:11-15).

If you were a woman transformed by forgiveness, you’d be telling everyone you saw Him and they’d think you were crazy (Mark 16:10, 11).

If you were hurrying out of town and met an interesting stranger on the way, your expectation of what should happen would cloud your eyes to what did happen (Luke 24:13-29).

If you were a man who said, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” you’d be on your face saying, “Oh, my God” (John 20:26-29).

So who are you? Here, now, two millennia later.

Will your life ever again be the same as before because He lives?

Who is the Lord of your tempest?

I am pleased this week to welcome guest blogger and debut author, Norma Gail Thurston Holtman, with her encouraging words about the storms we all face.

 

 

 

 

 

Then Peter got down out of the boat,

walked on the water

and came toward Jesus.

But when he saw the wind,

he was afraid and, beginning to sink,

cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Matthew 14:29-30

Waves crashing and rolling in the dark of night, Peter climbed out of the pitching and yawing boat and set off across the foaming waves toward Jesus who walked peacefully atop the surface of the water. Peter and his companions were not timid men. Most were fishermen, hardened to the toil of fishing boats and the rough, unpredictable waters of the Sea of Galilee. Storms were nothing new, but something about the ferocity of the roaring thunder, the lightning streaking across the sky, and the tumult of the waves frightened them on that night.

To the amazement of his companions, Peter strode across the thrashing sea with confidence, his eyes fixed on Jesus’ face. Then, in a sudden moment of panic, he glanced down in amazement at the churning water beneath his feet and his heart filled with fear of the impossible. He began to sink.

I have navigated the waters of infertility, chronic illness, my father’s sudden death, and my husband losing his job. In every trial God has proved unfailing in faithfulness and mercy. But when the outcome is uncertain, my thoughts stray to all the things that might go wrong. My heart knows God is in control, but my mind can’t see the impossible. My heart grows faint, my feet falter, and whitecaps of fear drag me under the choppy waves of doubt.

My heart and my feet might fail, but my God has promised He never will. When the storms of life threaten to pull me beneath the waves, I must remember the One who controls the tempest. God may allow me to be buffeted, but He will never let me sink. He will not fail, for our God is mighty to save.

 © Copyright by Norma Gail Thurston Holtman, March 14, 2014

About the Norma Gail:

Norma Gail’s debut contemporary Christian romance, Land of My Dreams, set in Scotland and New Mexico released in April 2014. She has led weekly women’s Bible studies for 19 years. Her devotionals and poetry have appeared at ChristianDevotions.us, the Stitches Thru Time blog, and in “The Secret Place.” She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, FaithWriters, and New Mexico Christian Novelists. She is a former RN who lives in the mountains of New Mexico with her husband of 38 years. They have two adult children.

About the book:

Alone and betrayed, American professor, Bonny Bryant longs for a haven of peace. She accepts a position at a small Christian college in Fort William, Scotland, craving escape from her painful past. The passionate love which develops when she meets fellow professor and sheep farmer, Kieran MacDonell, is something she never anticipated.

Kieran harbors a deep anger toward God in the face of his own devastating grief. When Bonny’s former fiancé reenters her life, Kieran’s loneliness draws him to a former student.

How will Bonny decide between her rivals? Can they set aside the past to make way for a future, or will it drive them apart?

Land of My Dreams spans the distance between New Mexico’s high desert mountains and the misty Scottish Highlands with a timeless story of overwhelming grief, undying love, and compelling faith. Buy Land of My Dreams at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Connect with Norma at:

www.normagail.org

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorNormaGail

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7874459.Norma_Gail

https://twitter.com/Norma_Gail

 

Forget New Year’s – We Have Spring!

Springtime in cow country means the babies are running and romping.

I love watching them bound away from their mamas, squiggley tails straight up like a cat’s, then bound right back again. They exemplify the season’s name: Spring!

These calves have convinced me that this is the season for new beginnings, not New Year’s. This is the time we need to take stock of our lives and lay out a plan of resolution.

As for the lists we all made in January—no wonder they’re so hard to follow. Those days are cloudy and gloomy (unless you live Down Under).

Who wants to start over when you’d rather just sleep in?

But spring? Oh, yes. How much more appropriate with its vibrant, living metaphors of renewal sprouting in the bulb garden and singing from the trees.

“Behold!” said He who sits on the throne. “I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Personally, I’m planting flowers, ordering a load of crushed rock for the driveway, and working on a new novel.

What would you like to start fresh with this spring?

 

Ever Want to Just Ride Into the Sunset?

I’m working on a Cowboy Brides story for Barbour Publishing and loving every minute of it. I’ll be the first to admit, I like to escape into a good book, and trying to write a good book is just as much a form of escape as reading one.

But I need more than a simple get-away. That’s why I’m picky about what I read and the movies I watch. If there is no hope, no life thread, no subtle message of resurrection or second chances, then I check out. I don’t need a make-believe downer.

My current work in progress is called The Wrangler’s Woman. You guessed it – a cowboy romance. The widowed rancher needs someone to show his little girl, Jess, how to be a young lady, so he hires a woman from town to do the job. She seems to have what his daughter needs. He just doesn’t expect her to have what he needs, too.

No release date yet for this story, but as soon as I find out, I’ll let you know.

There’s a little bit of cooking in the tale. My heroine, Corra Jameson, and her charge make pies: vinegar pies and strawberry/rhubarb pies. I’d love to post a picture of the vinegar pie I made last week, but it was a bit on the thin side.

And I’m still trying to figure out why it’s not called sugar or butter and egg pie when the recipe calls for all that rich goodness and just a couple tablespoons of vinegar. Made my veins quiver just tasting the results.

If you have a favorite get-away book, I’d love to hear about it. Even better if the story has a mouth-watering dish that makes you want to cook up a sample of your own.

Leave a comment below, and I’ll enter your name in a drawing for a copy of my next novella releasing this summer: The Columbine Bride.

 

The Columbine Bride is the sequel to my Christmas novella, The Snowbound Bride. Lilly’s brother, Buck, meets a young widow who steals his heart and changes his mind about setting out on his own. Will he take his own courting advice so freely dished out to his nephew, Nate, or will he lose the best thing that ever happened to him? The Columbine Bride will be available in paperback exclusively from Walmart July 14, 2015,  and online in an ebook collection September 1, 2015.

 

 

Truth or Mercy?

My guest blogger today, author Amy Blake, spotlights an important balance point. Be sure to leave Amy a comment and check out her latest release, Whitewashed.

 

To me, the gospel is all about the intersection of mercy and truth. The truth is as sinners, we deserve punishment for our sin including eternity in Hell. The mercy is, as the only sinless Son of God, Jesus took the punishment for Christians and gave us His righteousness instead.

Truth: God is holy and punishes sin.

Mercy: Jesus made a way for us to spend eternity with that holy God instead of getting the eternity we deserve.

In my new adult suspense novel, Whitewashed, Patience is a stickler for truth, so much so that when her childhood friend Devon starts down the path of drug abuse, she screams truth in his face and pushes him away. As a student at Verity College, Patience encounters Lily Rose–a young woman with a bad attitude and an abusive boyfriend–and Patience again spews cold, hard truth without considering how her words might do more harm than good.

Yet when Patience endures her darkest moments, trapped by a psychotic killer and on the verge of death, she begins to comprehend the verse her old friend Mabel, a woman caught in the throes of Alzheimer’s, repeated to her the night before: “In mercy and truth atonement is provided for iniquity; and by the fear of the LORD one departs from evil” (Proverbs 16:6, NKJV).

Patience begins to understand that truth and mercy go together to make the way for repentance. As Mabel’s elderly husband Moses says, “The truth shows you the sin you need to root out, while mercy helps you do the rooting.” Patience realizes speaking the truth to Devon and Lily Rose could never be enough without mercy to help them comprehend the truth.

Just as God is a God of truth who showed great mercy to His children through the death and resurrection of Jesus, so we ought to be people of truth who show mercy to those around us.

 

About Amy:

Amy C. Blake is a pastor’s wife and homeschooling mother of four. She has a B.A. and an M.A. in English from Mississippi College. She contributed to Barbour’s Heavenly XOXO’s for Women, Book Lover’s Devotional, and Every Good and Perfect Gift. Amy’s short stories and articles have appeared in Focus on the Family, Mature Years, Significant Living, Vista, Encounter, and other publications. She has won awards at St. David’s Christian Writers Conference and West Branch Christian Writers Conference, and her juvenile fantasy novel, The Trojan Horse Traitor quarterfinaled in the 2011 ABNA contest. The Trojan Horse Traitor releases in November 2015, and Whitewashed, released February 15.

Connect with Amy on her website, Facebook page, and Twitter.

About Whitewashed:

Eighteen-year-old Patience McDonough has a plan. Despite her parents’ objections, she will attend Verity College in Hades, Mississippi, and live with her grandparents. She’ll complete her degree in record time and go on to become a doctor. But things at the college are strangely neglected, her class work is unexpectedly hard, Grand gets called out-of-town, and Poppa starts acting weird—so weird she suspects he has Alzheimer’s. On top of that, she has to work extra hours at her student job inputting financial data for the college—boring! But soon her job gets more interesting than she’d like: she finds that millions of dollars are unaccounted for and that something creepy is going on in the Big House basement. She discovers secrets tying her family into the dark beginnings of Verity, founded on a slave plantation, and she is forced to question the characters of people she has always trusted. Finally, confronted with a psychotic killer, Patience has to face facts—her plans are not necessarily God’s plans. Will the truth set her free?

Whitewashed is also available through Mantle Rock Publishing and as a Kindle e-book.

one thousand blessings

The shadow of His wings has become an important theme since a family member has fallen so ill. Two weeks ago I blogged about the juniper branches in our yard spreading like protective wings over the birds and rabbits and squirrels, providing shelter during winter storms.

Yesterday at church a friend presented my husband and me with what he called his Christianized version of a Japanese blessing. His cultural tradition expresses long life and fidelity in the form of a crane, and an origami hanging of a thousand cranes is often presented to loved ones and friends on special occasions such as a wedding or the birth of a child.

Our friend invited people from our church to write prayers and scripture verses related to my family’s situation on 1,000 pieces of origami paper. Then he folded each one into a crane and strung it into a beautiful waterfall-like hanging.

Such a visual representation of prayer is astounding. A thousand hand-written prayers and scriptures offered by young people and adults alike, each one folded into a colorful crane.  What an outpouring of grace and faith, time and labor to cover my family with prayer.

Another friend dear to my heart wrote to share with me the significance of “wings” in scripture. She said the ends of a Jewish man’s prayer shawl () were often referred to as wings, particularly when he spread his arms.

And she, too, was astounded by the cranes. “Two thousand wings,” she said.

I love the interweaving of God’s metaphors as He delivers His message to us. He captures my imagination and faith with such visual reminders:

“Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings” (Ps. 36:7).

Indeed, as I mentioned before, I feel the feathers of His presence.

May you tuck yourself beneath the shelter of His wings.

 

Photo of Tommy Sakamoto courtesy of Karen Gee.

Have you tried the shadow of His wings?

This photograph captures three birds. The first two are obvious; the third one is entering their shelter. Can you spot it?

The snow-blanketed juniper in our back yard is one of many spreading varieties around our Colorado home that offer dry haven to rabbits, birds, and squirrels.

These tree/bushes spread their branches like wings, bending with the weight of the snow while sheltering small creatures that flourish in spite of harsh weather.

God offers a similar protection to His children, and lately I have been burrowing deep and close.

David, the great king wrote:

Because you are my help,

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

My soul clings to you;

Your right hand upholds me. Ps 63:7, 8

Sometimes the birds sing and I can’t see them. They’re hiding in the branches of their safe haven.

How great a God we have who would give to His people the shelter and protection of Himself.

Try it – sing in the shadow of His wings.

Have you ever pressed so close that you felt the feathers of His presence?

Red versus Grey

Seriously?

Women are supporting the book, Fifty Shades of Grey? They approve exploitation?

Where are those who will stand up and say, “This is not a story of love”?

If you want romance, read romance. Read uplifting, liberating stories of “love wins.” There are countless books by excellent authors who have written such tales.

And you know what?

In the inspirational market, you will find even deeper stories of men and women looking for redeeming love-me-in-spite-of-my-faults encouragement.

The books are out there.

Don’t pay money for and read a book just because it is hyped by marketers and movie makers.

Don’t support something that will lead young women down a dishonoring and denigrating path.

Pick something else. Tout something else.

Wouldn’t you rather feel good after reading? Wouldn’t you rather feel uplifted, as if there is hope in our crazy world?

You can. Here is a list of 15 awesome inspirational books to start with: 15 Christian Novels

And if you really want to kick this recent Grey hoopla in the teeth, shed the light of God’s love on it and order the weekly devotional book, RED, from Pelican Book Group or Christainbook.com.

Fight back. Spread the word this Valentine’s Day. Share the truth.

Real love wins.

 

For God so loved the world that He gave …

John 3:16

What does doubt whisper in your ear?

Doubt crawls up my shoulder and whispers: “Writing make-believe stories is a worthless occupation. What good can fiction possibly do? And romantic fiction? Ha! What a joke.”

And then I walk down the hospital hallway to the coffee room, past artwork and photographs of my genre – the West.

Cowboys saddling horses. Log cabins. Barns, corrals, extravagant sunsets.

I want to climb into those pictures. Escape for a while. Smell the dawn sifting through a forest, hear the nicker of a horse at feeding time. Run my fingers through the rough hair of a good cow dog.

Someone took those photographs and painted those pictures, someone with a creative gift that touches my heart and offers me respite.

And I finally see why readers write to me and say they “escaped” into my stories.

I get it. I see the restorative value in the gift of story—whether told in words or pictures.

Thank God He poured creativity into His children. Thank God He lets us walk in His image and share in His touch.

How gracious He is.

 

“Let us make man in our image.”

Gen. 1:26

Photo by AJ Spencer