Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Books”
This year marks the tenth anniversary of my first novel being published. Happily Ever After came out in 2003 just as we returned home from the mission field in Russia, and I still remember staring wide eyed at the cover thinking…how on earth did this happen?
See the truth is that I never set out to get a book published.
Congratulations to the winner of my It Had to Be You giveaway, Heather Young! Heather, you’ve won a $100 Visa cash card and copies of It Had to Be You and Take a Chance on Me! My assistant will be in touch with the details.
I admit it—I love reading my books . . . after they’re published. During the writing and editing process I can get so overwhelmed with every word, every sentence, every piece of dialogue.
But when it arrives, bound, pretty, and finished, it’s done. I can’t fix it any longer.
I’m celebrating the release of my newest Christiansen Family novel, It Had To Be You, with a $100 Visa cash card giveaway and offering readers a free book club kit.
One winner will receive:
I get inspiration everywhere—the news, Facebook posts, sermons, radio talk shows, conversations. It’s always about a question, something that makes me think . . . what if?
I got the story about Izzy (My Foolish Heart), the talk show host to the lovelorn from a Brad Paisely song,
Just wanted to take this week’s blog post to thank you for all your support of It Had to be You! My publisher has been sending me reviews that have popped up over the past few weeks, and with each review I read, my smile grows wider and wider.
We did everything wrong, and by all rights, my son should have died. When the pain started, low on his right side, we put heat on it and gave him Tylenol, I also gave him a dihydrocodeine dosage. Because we lived in Russia and the medical situation sketchy, we decided to wait and see if perhaps he had an upset stomach.
We were sitting in the cold grass on a hill above the field, the temperature hovering near forty degrees, the air brisk and still enough to hear the screams as they lifted from the pile of high school football players.
Horrible, gut-wrenching screams, and the crowd went silent, our hearts in our throats as the coaches ran out from the sidelines.
I’ve spent years standing on the sidelines, in bitter cold, rain, sleet, gloom of night . . . and that’s just football. Add in hours in the gym bleachers, and then miles and miles in the car driving to track meets. More hours in the rain and cold, then hot sun . . . cheering.
Why It Had to be You? Where did the story come from?
Every story starts with a seed of an idea, something that triggers a what-if. That moment happened for me roughly five years ago at my son’s semi-final state track meet.
As I stood at the edge of the track,
