Janet Sketchley's Blog: Tenacity, page 101
February 17, 2014
Review: Do Life Different, by Jill Hart
Do Life Different, by Jill Hart (Choose NOW Publishing, 2014)
Do Life Different is written for Christian work-at-home moms, and much of the content is also applicable to Christian moms whose at-home work is parenting and homemaking. The book’s subtitle is Inspiring Work-at-home Moms to Powerful Living in Work, Family and Faith.
As a writer, I count as working from home, and although my youngest child is a teen I find the household responsibilities themselves require more “parenting” than I seem...
February 14, 2014
Carol Daniels, Heroine
If you called Carol a hero, she’d laugh. One of her friends calls her a survivor, and she’s not even sure how to take that. Sure, she’s taken a lot of pain and she’s still standing, but for how much longer?
Carol’s a single mom, starting over in Toronto after some anonymous creep threatened her son, Paul. She didn’t tell Paul that’s why they left Calgary—why she dyed her dark hair honey ash and cut it short, why she started wearing glasses with non-corrective lenses. Why she’s so “controlling,...
February 12, 2014
Come Clean. Quick.
When you are guilty, immediately confess the sin that you’ve committed.
Leviticus 5:5, MSG*
We’re human. For all the good things that means, it also means we’re not perfect. Despite our best intentions, sometimes we mess up. We don’t live up to the righteous living God intends for us.
The early chapters of Leviticus are all about sacrifices to atone for the people’s sin, and God spends a lot of time—and detail—explaining to the people what not to do. Some of it should be pretty obvious, but the...
February 10, 2014
Review: Destination Unknown, by Amy Clipston
Destination Unknown, by Amy Clipston (Zondervan, 2014)
You’d think Whitney Richards has the perfect life. In her high school senior year, she’s captain of the cheerleading squad, getting straight A’s and on track for a prestigious college. Until a D on her recent calculus test prompts her mother to insist on a tutor. Could it get more humiliating for a girl who’s a tutor herself?
Truth told, Whitney doesn’t want to go to her mother’s exclusive alma mater after high school. All her life she’s co...
February 7, 2014
Interview: Kimberley Payne on Adam’s Animals
Kimberley Payne is a prolific non-fiction writer with works ranging from activity books to devotionals to workbooks. She writes to equip women for faithful living.
Janet: Kimberley, welcome back to my blog. We talked last year about your children’s activity book, Trees of the Book—Learning from God’s Creation. Clearly it’s been well-received, because you’re moving ahead with more in the Science and Faith Matters series. Please tell us what’s new.
Kimberley: Yes, Adam’s Animals is the second boo...
February 5, 2014
Will We Wait?
When the people realized that Moses was taking forever in coming down off the mountain, they rallied around Aaron and said, “Do something. Make gods for us who will lead us. That Moses, the man who got us out of Egypt—who knows what’s happened to him?”
Exodus 32:1, MSG*
Moses has gone up on Mount Sinai in personal conversation with God. The same God who so dramatically brought the people out of their slavery in Egypt. The same God whose thunder and lightning from the mountain made them plead f...
February 3, 2014
Review: Princess Ever After, by Rachel Hauck
Princess Ever After, by Rachel Hauck (Zondervan, 2014)
Reggie (Regina) Beswick is finally living her own life. Still in her 20′s, she has walked away from a successful accounting position to do what she’s always wanted: restore antique cars. She and her partner, Al, are good at it, too.
Enter Tanner Burkholdt, emissary from Hessenberg (a fictional island duchy in the North Sea, with mixed British and German heritage), claiming Reggie is their long-lost princess—and the duchy’s one chance to reg...
January 31, 2014
Writing Tools I Use
Why did I abandon mechanical pencils for pens?
When I first started writing, I had a thing for mechanical pencils (only the .5mm ones… I was a purist). And I learned to print very small, to cram all the words I could onto a bit of scrap paper.
Perhaps you’ve figured out why I don’t do that anymore… something about trying to see those faint pencil-scratchings while using both hands to type what I’ve written.
Miniscule pen-scratchings, however, are still visible, progressive lenses notwithstanding...
January 29, 2014
Getting It. Remembering It.
And Israel looked at the Egyptian dead, washed up on the shore of the sea, and realized the tremendous power that God brought against the Egyptians. The people were in reverent awe before God and trusted in God and his servant Moses.
Exodus 14:31, MSG*
The people finally get it. They’ve seen God in action: the ten plagues that broke Egypt, and now the dramatic parting of the Red Sea and destruction of the Egyptian army.
How else could they respond but in worship and reverent awe? And by trustin...
January 27, 2014
Review: The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, by Alan Bradley
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, by Alan Bradley (Random House, 2014)
[This review contains a spoiler for the previous books in the series.]
There’s so much to love about Flavia de Luce: her quick wits, her unusual view of the world, her propensity for chemicals and poisons. The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches is book six featuring the somewhat dysfunctional de Luce family in their crumbling ancestral home of Buckshaw, England.
It’s 1951. Flavia will soon be 12. She and her sisters have matured, a...
