UnEmbraceable — Cover Reveal!

Here is a sneak preview of the cover for my next YA novel:

An Apocalyptic Romance

When the pick-pocketing prostitute Tamar steals Leonardo’s wallet, she sparks an avalanche of events  in her life, but are her massive troubles with the law any comparison with what’s going on in the rest of the world? Will she find true love before the world falls apart?  Will she even live through the violence of the advancing horde?

Leonardo is a computer programmer with a unique approach to these zombie-like kids who attack before and after every earthquake. He’s not afraid of death, but can he survive falling in love with someone who’s broken and unembraceable ?

UnEmbraceable is a spin-off of the Revelation Special Ops series, and the characters are based off of Old Testament characters such as Hosea, Gomer and Tamar. You don’t have to read the RSO series to enjoy this romance/suspense/thriller.

Release date: July 15, 2013

Mark your calendar, lock your doors, open your heart and fasten your seat belt.

Sheep Lesson #1: Eye Level

We had a mad morning dash through wonderland, and at 11pm I’m still breathless!

I awoke at 5:30am and dragged my family out of bed by 6:30 so we could get to the farmers’ market by 7:15 at the latest. Our mission: to find someone selling sheep.

No one there sold sheep, but they knew a waitress at the local diner who knew a sheep farmer.

The waitress was on vacation, but our very friendly waiter suggested we visit the feed store.

We finished the generous helping of pancakes, eggs and home fries, then we visited the feed store. While convincing Kenzie that we weren’t there to buy a duckling (no matter how cute the duckling was), we learned the name of the local sheep farmer: Walter.

Walter showed us around his farm, but said he wouldn’t have any lambs ready for another month.

We did get to see a lamb who’d been born 3 or 4 hours before we got there, and we did get to pet this absolutely adorable Hampshire lamb. Priceless.

Walter told us about TJ, who might have ewe lambs ready to sell.

We called and left a message.

While we waited, we visited yet another feed store.

Then, that perfect moment happened: we received a phone call and an invitation to visit the farm immediately!

TJ and his family were so sweet and personable and down to earth!

And from them I learned my first sheep lesson. If you crouch down to eye level, the sheep will come to you gladly and willingly.

Morning swelled into afternoon, and it didn’t look like we were getting our lambs. We had to go home to care for the chickens and do some yard work.

That’s when my husband told me: TJ was going to drop off two of their ewes to us this afternoon. And with the gift we’d received two days ago we could easily afford both lambs.

Rachel and Leah

This meant that my husband had to finish building a pen for them–fast. He did a marvelous job too!

Our twelfth anniversary present to one another this year: sheep.

What a fantastic present too! We’ve learned so much from these sheep! And from God through these sheep.

The biggest lesson by far has been about eye level.

When I crouched down and stretched out my hand, these two adorable ewes came right up to me and displayed tender affection.

In the Bible, God often refers to people as His sheep.

And He came down onto our level, into our day to day lives, meek and lowly, utterly humbled, and stretched out His hands toward us. All day long, as I thought about this, my heart burst with blooms of thankfulness I’d never known of before.

And while I go to hit my pillow in anticipation of my first full day as a shepherdess tomorrow, I think of Jesus, the Great Shepherd of our souls. He came down to our level. And how I want to be close, oh so close to Him. He came so close that He even became a Lamb. Oh! How I love this Man!

All the Killdeer Games

Before I moved to Texas, I had no idea what a killdeer was. It’s a banded plover and one of the chattiest birds in the world.

My daughter is obsessed with them and wants one as a pet.

The joint venture, mama/daughter drawing of the killdeer. Those are eggs. Yes, really.

This is Kenzie’s version of a killdeer with its eggs (psst…not drawn to scale)

At the moment she has the next best thing.

Just to the other side of our fence, a killdeer has made a nest in the rocks, a nest so camouflaged that it took me ten minutes to find it even after my daughter pointed it out.

She’s been watching it very closely and observing all the killdeer games.

If anyone gets too close to the killdeer’s nest, the mama bird will jump off of it and run away, dangling its wing as if it was injured. The bird does this to lure possible predators away from the eggs. After some time,  when the pursuer has lost interest in the bird and lost track of the eggs’ location, the mama returns to her nest and her sitting.

All the while my daughter sketches, observes and “writes” thank you cards to the mama killdeer.

This mama bird reminds me of someone who walked among us and had all the negative attention focused on him so that he could offer us salvation. Someone who always lives to intercede for us (see Heb. 7:25).

Hebrews 12:1b-2 “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

(You are what gave Him joy.)

My daughter continues, with intense observation and rapturous joy, to sit at the fence quiet and still.

I’m taking these quiet moments to reflect on Jesus and the remarkable thing He did for me.

The Eagle and the Passover Lamb, a story

My name is Moses. I’m a crowned eagle. I am the 1748^th Moses in this line of crowned eagles. Our ancient ancestor, Daniel, saw a man named Moses, an Israelite, obey the Lord and lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt about 2000 years ago. And to remember that remarkable story, all of us first born boys are named Moses.

But something greater than Moses, or rather someone greater than Moses, is here.

I was there three years ago, flying over the Jordan River when the sky opened up and God declared that the man named Jesus, the one from Nazareth, was His beloved Son.

I heard John the Baptist say this was the Lamb of God.

I saw Jesus spend forty days in the wilderness.

I saw the day He fed over 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fishes. I had been hunting in that lonely place when all those people showed up to find Him. I saw how many thousands of them He healed.

And now this.

It’s been almost a year since I last saw Jesus, but there’s no mistake, there He is, riding into Jerusalem.

This is the time of year called Passover, when the Israelites celebrate how God freed them from slavery in Egypt. They kill a perfect lamb and eat it with unleavened bread.

Jesus shows up in Jerusalem riding on a donkey. On a colt, the foal of a donkey. Everyone is shouting praises to Him. I call out my own praises, but I don’t know if anyone hears an eagle over the noise of these crowds.

Then Jesus comes to the temple and clears away all the people who are disturbing the prayer times with their money changing booths. Jesus makes the temple a place of reverence again.

Every day, as it comes closer to the great feast, Jesus goes to the temple and talks to the people.

Then the day comes when, instead of going to the temple, Jesus is dragged before the local ruler, a very mean man named Pontus Pilate.

What is happening now? He has been beaten to where I can’t even recognize Him. And they want Him to carry a cross up that big hill?

People are saying mean things to Him. Some people spit on Him.

Can’t they see this is the Lord of glory?

Can’t they see He is the Lamb of God?

Along with all the other birds of the sky, I raise my lament. Who can believe this report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

The sky darkens in the middle of the day.

It’s so dark.

Jesus cries out with a loud voice, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit!”

We cry, all of us birds; some women, those who were with Jesus every time we saw Him, also cry. We weep and lament. What is the Lord doing?

The darkness fades, but now the sun is going down. They take Him down from the Cross. I still don’t understand.

For two days I have no desire to hunt. I cannot raise my usual song in the heights as I soar.

I do not have the heart to fly far from where they buried Him in that garden tomb. I stand there and keep watch in the trees, not far from the Roman soldiers.

It’s dawn of the third day since He died. In the distance, I see the women who followed Jesus. They are carrying large bundles. Their eyes look heavy from lots of crying.

The ground shakes. I take to the air so I’m not affected by this sudden earthquake. What’s happening?

The stone rolls away! There’s a bright light and some angels appear. The Roman soldiers fall over in terror. I’ve never seen men so afraid.

The women approach the tomb and are also afraid of the angels.

“Don’t be afraid,” one angel says to the women. “You seek Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here. He has risen from the dead! He is alive!”

Risen from the dead?! Alive?! What wonder is this! God has done something marvelous! The Lamb, the Lamb of God has died and He is alive again. Hallelujah!!

I see Him now, talking to one of the women. The sight of Him alive again fills my eagle heart with joy.

Before, when the lamb was killed at Passover, it was to free the Israelite slaves. Now, when the Lamb of God has been killed, what does it mean? Who is free?

I must go learn this. What a marvelous mystery!

Me and My Bad Self

Next time I ask God to do something, I won’t be so ready to assume how He will do it. Especially if it’s something as crucial as, “Lord, show me the Cross, show me what happened there!”

I asked this of the Lord several years ago. Since then I spiraled down toward what St. John of the Cross dubbed “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

And last year, for reasons I still don’t know (maybe because I asked Him again?), I took a nosedive into the Dark Night of the Soul.

Perhaps you’re not familiar with my bad self. I’m worse than I ever imagined. And I became quite intimately acquainted with all that badness over the last year.

Every day, for a year and a half, I opened up the Bible and saw myself reflected on its pages.

I fought against what I saw there. I kicked. I screamed. I threw every kind of protest I could — wasn’t I supposed to be beautiful in God’s eyes? The hideousness I saw in myself startled me. Vile pride. Murderous selfishness. Icky self-justification. The summary list could have been tallied in 10 point font and would have paved the road from the Gabbatha (the Stone Pavement) all the way to Golgotha.

I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t take it anymore. Shutting my eyes tight, I wandered around trying to find someone who would tell me that I’m not like what I saw in myself. And in desperation I declared in my heart that this wasn’t God showing me my bad self. It couldn’t be. Everyone always said He didn’t come like this.

They weren’t necessarily lying, they just might not have experienced what I’d been experiencing.

I had a positively wretched day a few weeks ago. I outright said ‘no’ to the Lord’s prompting. It was a low point. An agonizingly low point. As soon as I said no, I felt like Peter who had just denied the Lord.

I’m astounded by God’s mercies. Completely astounded. For years I’d been so caught up in thinking how good I was that I was never able to see His mercy, I mean really see His mercy, for how glorious it is.

Today was another positively wretched day.

I have an absolute abhorrence of death. A knee jerk reaction. This is really bad if one is a chicken farmer. I cry every single time one of my chickens dies. Every time. Today, the culprit was none other than my dog.

After guiding my daughter over to the neighbor’s house, so she wouldn’t be near while I took care of things, I walked to the back of my property, dog beside me with tail between her legs, deceased chicken in one hand, rope in the other hand, crying the whole way. I had to break my dog of doing this, and the most successful way is to tie the dead thing around the dog’s neck and leave the dog like that for a while. So I did what I needed to. I tied the dead chicken to the dog.

And my dog’s name?

Faith.

What a picture the Lord was showing me in the awful deed that I had to do!

I’d been carrying around sin which had been acting like a corpse attached to my faith.

I’m about to let Faith off the hook, so to say, and I’m sure she’ll never want to see a chicken ever again. Live or dead.

And as we walk through the steps of Holy Week, I’m ready to count the paces to the cross where I will lay all my sin down. And I hope, like my dog with chickens, that I’ll never want to willingly sin again.

Because now, more than ever, I know what it cost Him. He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. He became sin. For me. He carried my sin and the wrath for my sin so that I could be in relationship with Him.

And what was one of the most hideous portions of sin that I carried?

The idea that I was at all, in my own strength, good. That saying of Jesus, the one that confused me so much for years, now makes sense:

“Who is good but God alone?”

I see now how all of humanity is on a level playing field, or rather, all in the same cesspool / whirlpool of mire. In the cross, Jesus jumped in with us (I mean, who would do that willingly?) and provided, in Himself, the means for redemption from all that.

I am undone. I am undone by His singular beauty, by the One who is altogether lovely. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.

And as painful as my journey was to get here, I ask Him again, “Lord, please show me the cross! Let me know what happened there!” Because I know I’ve only glanced the surface of His unfathomable love. And that suffering I endured during the Dark Night of the Soul cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed to me, through me, of Him.

The Morning I saw 7 Rainbows: How Ireland Shaped Me As a Writer

Although I was reluctant to spend a night away from my husband  in the new country we’d moved to, we were in Ireland, so I expected something magical to happen.

I checked into the hotel that stood two blocks from the shore of the Irish Sea, feeling sad that I wouldn’t be able to see the ocean from my room. Then, as it happened, my room needed to be changed. Instead of staying on the second floor (or, as they call it in Ireland, the first floor), my new room would be off in the northeast corner on the fifth floor.

The orange streetlights out my window cast a hint that I’d see a sliver of ocean in the morning. But it looked as if the rocks of nearby cliffs would block most of the ocean view. It wasn’t the seaside getaway that I’d envisioned. At least the hotel smelled like an old sailing ship. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant smell, but since I love old sailing ships, it had redeeming qualities. I sighed, collapsed into the padded armchair beside the bed and opened my Bible.

My goal for the night and the following day was two-fold: to find refreshment in God’s presence and to pound the pavement looking for some much needed employment.

I fell asleep on the chair with the Bible open on my lap. Sometime in the middle of the night, I crawled into the stiff, but very welcome bed.

I didn’t realize that I’d left the blinds open. A blindingly bright sunrise over the sliver of sea I could see from my window nudged me to the most energetic wakefulness I’d felt in years. I leaped from the bed to the window.

A passing shower added to the sun’s brightness. And because of this shower, rainbows cascaded off the cliffs and into one another until they reached the ocean below. I sat back and counted them. One. Two. Three. My pulse raced. I knew I was seeing something rare and, in its own way, magical. Four. Five. Five distinct rainbows dancing across the cliffs right before my eyes. I grabbed my journal and chronicled everything that I saw, and everything the Lord was speaking to my heart about it. Promises. Rainbows speak of His promises. All of His promises are yes and amen in Christ Jesus.

As I popped into one nursing home after another on that rainy day, the morning’s ecstasy faded. No one wanted to hire me. I needed six months of experience in Ireland, not America.

As I dragged my feet toward the station to catch the mid-morning train, I decided to look up at the sky and breathe out one final prayer. Before the words left my mouth I saw them: two more rainbows, one on top of the other. Six. Seven. I had just seen seven rainbows in one morning. I didn’t find a job that day, but I found joy in the Lord and I found home in Ireland. On that train ride, I picked up my pen and decided that I’d write fiction again while I looked for a job. The job turned out to be my fool’s gold.

From the ravines where silver waterfalls and bleating sheep are the only things that break the silence, to the shorelines and cliff walks that stretched far longer than my stamina, Ireland’s landscape (and people) inspired me. I wrote my fantasy trilogy while living there, and very many of the things I describe in these books were written because I saw them, felt them, smelled them, experienced them in the land, the wind, the people and the sea of Ireland.

Book giveaway:
If you’d like to win a paperback copy of one of my novels, leave a message below with the title of the book you’d like to win. Here are the titles:

The Elite of the Weak (book 1)
Pharmacia: Those Magic Arts (book 2)
The Captives (book 1)
Pyromarne (book 2)
How Shall We Love?

The winner will be selected at random on the evening of March 18.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Kissing Your Future

Hope as a puppy judging whether or not it’s okay to kiss Faith’s nose.

“The future needs a big kiss…” ~ Bono
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord…
“plans to give you hope and a future.” ~ Jeremiah 29:11

Hope. It’s the sloppy wet kiss you can give your future. And if you’ve had even a cursory glance at the news lately, you’ll probably agree that hope is an important thing to infuse your future with.

Hope. It’s like the five smooth stones David plucked from the stream before he ran to face the giant.

Hope. It’s less about the thousands that might help me out of my current financial pit and more about reckless wisdom to do what my current yearnings scream against.

I’ve given lots of thought to the idea of HOPE lately, and kept my ear to the ground to listen to what people are saying about it. Here’s what I’ve learned.

When kids, particularly teens, hear about End Times scenarios, no matter which version they hear (pre-trib, post-trib and other scholarly terms that most people wouldn’t be familiar with) it doesn’t give them hope. Rather, for most of the people I’ve talked with, hope gets sucked clean out of them. This is contrary to 1 Thessalonians 4:18. What’s going on?

I’ve needed a paradigm shift of what HOPE is. And I have my arms wide open to embrace this new view.

If tomorrow is filled with famine, is there still hope?

Yes. Why?

Several years ago, I heard the response in the Lord’s still small voice when He told me I could hope because of the loaves and the fishes. Because miracles are still alive and well in Him.

And there’s this from Habakkuk 3:

¹⁷ Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.

If tomorrow is filled with war and strife, is there still hope?

There is hope in becoming all you were meant to be in the face of adversity. There is hope for you to be strong and blessed in the midst of persecution.

If I wake up tomorrow and everything I’ve worked toward is suddenly obsolete, is there still hope?

Can we hope when our dreams for the future crash on the floor like some ill-played parlor trick with the swiped table cloth and way too many dishes?

If my definition of success stretches beyond what God can do for me and into a chasing after Him no matter what happens, then yes, I’ll still have hope.

Proverbs says that hope deferred makes the heart sick. I’ve experienced this one too many times. One too many times. My heart’s been healed, but this new paradigm of hope has been a centerpiece in the healing.

Here’s another question:
Can we hope if we get everything we’ve desired and more in such rapid succession that it takes weeks to catch one’s breath and months to figure out what to dream of now that all dreams are fulfilled?

That’s one that I’ve been praying about too. What if I do get what I hoped for in this life? Is hope exhaustible?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not anxious for a downward spiral of our country or our world. The future really does need a BIG kiss. I long for the day when I can gift a hefty sum to each one of the organizations on my links page. I have hope in my heart for abolition in my lifetime, and I’ll work as hard as I can to see that happen.

But if my definition of success is getting to spend time with God, no hope deferred will make this heart sick.

I’m going to leave you with portions of Psalm 73, one of the great passages of scripture on the topic of hope.

23 Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

“I Will Repay the Years the Locusts Have Eaten”

When my husband and I bought our first house, scarcely three months after we married, it was from one of the sweetest couples we ever met. And this very sweet couple gave us this gigantic head’s up: our new neighbors would be…trying.

Trying is an understatement.

God used this neighbor to gave me a crash course in practicing the fruit of the Spirit. Could I still show kindness and gentleness when my neighbor took pictures of our friends visiting us (she said it was for evidence if she needed to call the police)? Or when she nearly called the cops because my dad dropped by at night? Could I still show gentleness when I was yelled at for getting a grass clipping on her side of the hedge?

Crash course.

It took years before I was genuinely thankful for that crash course. I was so thankful for kind neighbors after that experience, but I wasn’t thankful for those cantankerousness neighbors until a few years ago. The Lord does a quick work in the furnace. Could I love THAT neighbor as I love myself? I thanked Him for lesson my ‘trying’ neighbors gave me.

The Lord will also repay for the years the locusts have eaten.

In a perfect world, neighbors love one another and speak kindly to one another. They look out for one another and don’t suspect the worst.

My husband and I have lived in many places during our eleven years of marriage, but now we own a house again. This time we live in Texas.

And our neighbors are amazing.

This last week, while I fed chickens, chased my dogs and discovered that my daughter could read, and has been reading for a while, and refused to perform for me, my neighbor put up posts for a fence. For us. Without asking for a cent for his labor. “I’m out here anyway, and putting up a posts around my yard. Just glad I could help.”

I almost cried. His kindness was almost startling! I hope to pay this forward somehow.

Meanwhile, when his wife came home, she’d found a Frisbee for my daughter. They’re like an extra set of grandparents while the others live far away.

As grumpy and trying as our first neighbors were, God flipped it all around and tipped the scales in our favor.

Our neighbors on the other side homeschool their little girl. My daughter and this girl are becoming fast friends and spend every possible moment together.

The Lord will do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we could ask or even imagine. If He tells you that He will repay for the years that the locusts have eaten, prepare to be blown away by His generosity.

The Lord is good, and His mercy endures forever.

I’m Just So Tired

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as exhausted as I did this week. It was the sort of exhaustion where I wish I had the option of either draping myself lazily onto a couch for three days or screaming at the top of my lungs for three hours.

Why was I so exhausted?

Over the weekend I finished writing one of the most difficult novels I’ve ever written. For one, it took me seven years to write this book. I usually can write a book a year, but this one took seven years. I kept trying to make the book different from what I knew it needed to be, because I was scared. Terrified. This book is sure to offend nearly everyone who reads it.

So when I finally wrote it the way it needed to be written, I felt. So. Free.

And exhausted, as if I’d just given birth.

Pleasing people has me exhausted enough to want to go to sleep. Right now. I’m so tired of this drive to please.

I’m tired beyond reason at the successive waves of disillusionment crashing against me. The decade of my thirties seems to be the magnet for disillusionment. Before I turned thirty, I believed I was always a decent, kind, loving person with only the best intentions.  I don’t blame you for that laugh that you just gave. I’ve had almost six years since that lovely disillusionment came my way, and I’m well used to laughing at myself over it.

The pendulum swung so hard over that disillusionment that I had to remind myself again and again: I do love.

The most difficult and exhausting disillusionment came through witnessing the clash of ideologies, and how militant people become concerning what they believe.

Militant.

They’ll know we are Christians by our what?

Lately it seems that Christians are known by fears and prejudices (and not just our own, mind you, but the prejudice of others toward us). Then there’s our infighting and the fact that we can be swifter to turn on our neighbor than to turn our cheek.

I don’t think I’m the only one to feel disillusioned about this lately.

But I believe that the opposite of disillusionment is encouragement.

So, how can we encourage one another?

HELP! I have a book inside me!

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear these words from a friend. You know that moment… the one where a friend comes to you and asks for help with something you ACTUALLY know about.

So many people have held my hand on this journey to become a writer (a shout out, here, to the amazing and illustrious Logan Smith, prominent hand holder). I become giddy when it’s my turn to hold someone else’s hand on their journey toward sitting down to write that first sentence, all the way to ‘The End’.

By the way, once you write ‘The End’ on your first novel, it’s only a matter of time before you write the first sentence on your next novel. If you haven’t done so already!

So how does a person begin?

Here are five steps I recommend for becoming a writer:

1. First and foremost, pray. Pray with all your might. I dare not do any of this without the Lord, especially since I seek to honor Him in all I do.

2. Second, take the expectation off your self that the first sentence you write has to be the first sentence of the novel.

3. Third of all, practice some discipline and diligence in your writing. This can be done in several ways:

• Blog twice a week, or more.
• Write three pages every day. I woke at 5am every day for 3 months to write these three pages. If you don’t know how difficult that was for me, ask my mom. I was born a night owl. But inflicting this sort of discipline on myself helped. Immensely.
• Take a course (this can often help you gain confidence as you finish assignments and receive feedback).
• Meet with other writers who are WRITING, and write together. Don’t TALK about writing together, actually write in each other’s company. Listen to their work and read your work aloud to them.

Do what fits you best. If you want to be private in your process, start with the 3 pages. If you want to build an audience, start blogging. If you want to network and get regular encouragement, take a course or meet with other writers.

4. Fourth, get to know your own creative process. There’s a spectrum of creative processes in writers, from those who plot every detail before they write the first sentence to those who figure out what the book is actually about when they’re 3/4 the way through the first draft. You don’t have to have the same creative process as Stephen King to be a great, or even a prolific writer. My awesome crit partner (love you, S. T.!) is a plotter, and I adore her books. I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer of sorts, where I know what will happen in a vague sort of way, but I dare not write that down before I write the actually story. Be okay with who you are. One process or another will not squash your creativity, unless it’s contrary to how you roll.

5. The fifth, and probably one of the most important parts for us introvert writers, is this: GET A TRIBE! I couldn’t have survived the indie-pub process without a tribe of supportive people.

Now pick up that pen, or open a word document, and GO!

Books I’ve written:

Pharmacia: Those Magic Arts is FREE for the Kindle

Tues-Thurs, Jan 15-17