Fire the Rocks with Beauty

Bloom where you are planted. Light up the rocky ground with the fire of the gifts and enthusiasm that God has given you. If lovely flowers can bloom vividly on the slate roof of a building, we can light up the rocks where we’re planted with God’s glory.

I’m a Texan. I love Bandera, Texas, “Cowboy Capital of the World.” It’s my home and the setting for most of the Christian mystery-romance-suspense books that I’ve written: Bridge to Nowhere, Love’s Beating Heart, Shadow Chase and Until the Shadows Flee. Heart Shadows is set in the Nevada desert.

When my job ended in Bandera, I left. I’ve left Bandera before, but I’ve always gone back. I call it the boomerang effect. The LORD told me to leave, but I fought against going. I prayed and begged God to change His mind all the way to Alabama. Alabama had an even higher unemployment rate than Texas – which made me wonder why I was there. It took me a couple of months to find a job. I had never been out of work before in my life. But it gave me time to write my next Sunpenny Publishing release, Bridge Beyond Betrayal, and when I did find a job, it was a great job with a great boss. God blessed me for blooming where I was planted – even though it wasn’t Texas.

Now that I’m in Scotland, I realize why I was in Alabama. The LORD moved me there to shake the soil out of my roots and free me to marry my wonderful husband, author Alan T McKean (The Scent of Time & The Scent of Home). Surviving in a colder, wetter climate and adjusting to culture changes sometimes made me feel like a weed clinging to a rock, more likely to fall off than bloom. But with God’s grace, my life has blossomed around me in spite of all my human errors and weakness. Besides having a great husband, a lovely rough collie dog named Angel Joy, and living by the sea in a place that simply has no ugly views in any direction, the LORD has given me time to write. That resulted in the pro-life adventure-romance, Love’s Beating Heart, which has been acclaimed by critics as “inspirational” and “life-changing.” God blesses us when we bloom where we’re planted.

So if you find yourself planted in rocky ground, decide to fire the rocks with your beauty. You are beautiful because God created you and He doesn’t make junk! God gives all of us gifts. You may not be a writer, but God has a plan and a purpose for your life. He has a reason for sticking you in the rocks. Think of the lovely roof flowers waving cheerfully from their lofty heights on slate and be encouraged. All things really do work together for good to them that love the LORD, just like the Bible promises. If God sticks you in the rocks, He will water you with a special blessing that you wouldn’t get anywhere else.

Fire the rocks with beauty!

Missing the Click

Photographers know the feeling well. They miss the picture of a lifetime because they miss the click. One second sooner, one second later…Missing the click transforms what could have been an incredible capture into an average, okay picture.

Writing is the same. You can have written one of the greatest books of all times, yet if no one reads it…it sits in limbo with all the other millions of unread books. Promotion for the book can be off by a mere click in time. Promotion for my pro-life adventure Love’s Beating Heart hit one week too late to ride the tidal wave of public outrage when it was revealed that babies born alive at an abortion clinic had their spinal cords clipped with scissors to kill them.

Christian mystery-romance-suspense Bridge to Nowhere, published by Sunpenny Publishing, just missed the tidal wave of publicity that was generated when my husband Alan McKean – a Scottish minister – released his first book The Scent of Time, which was deemed by some as “too sexy to have been written by a pastor.” When press releases went out for Bridge to Nowhere, sales increased only slightly. I had missed the click. The fact that I had gone from living under a bridge to writing a book with bridge in the title; the fact that I was living under the bridge after fleeing childhood sex abuse; the fact that the abuse had produced two pregnancies when I was a teen – followed by two forced non-medical abortions that nearly killed me – none of those facts increased sales. It was almost as if no one cared about about what I had suffered or wanted to know how I had overcome and recovered so other victims could be encouraged. Really, it wasn’t that no one cared – it was that I missed the click.

Our Christian lives are like that. Sometimes we miss the click. Being a Christian does not prevent us from having problems. Living for Christ is hard. Even if there were no other trials, atheists can be rabid. Why they attack Christians and their beliefs and spend so much time and money fighting a God Whom they don’t believe exists, I cannot imagine. But because they do, they can cause problems, especially in the workplace. Remember, what doesn’t make you bitter, makes you better. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. All things work together for good to them that love the LORD. Pressure and criticism sometimes make us silent when we should speak. Constant attack on our beliefs can keep us from taking needed action. We miss the click.

Jesus forgives us for missing the clicks. Yet when we get it right, our life becomes the perfect symphony God orchestrated for us. So don’t miss the click!

Follow the Jumper!

Follow the Jumper!.

Follow the Jumper!

We are blessed to live in Fortrose, Scotland, within walking distance of Chanonry Point where the dolphins come to jump and play. Well, truthfully, to eat salmon!

One thing we’ve learned about photographing these amazing animals is to follow the jumper. The firth can be full of surfacing dolphins, but if none of them jump – the pictures are boring ones of water, fins and backs. To get an interesting photo, watch to see which dolphin is a jumper and keep the camera trained on the jumper.

Life is like that. Some folks sit watching their TVs and eating snacks and let others jump out of apathy and attempt to change the world. If you want to have an interesting life – jump! You may come down on the wrong foot and end up with a sprain. Don’t let that stop you – sprains heal. Mediocre couch-sitters will despise you and attempt to break you in pieces with words so that they can build up their self-image without getting up out of their comfort zone. Not to worry. Jesus went through the same thing. He was a Jumper.

Being an author is similar. My goal is to write “jumpers.” Books that people will remember; mystery-romance-suspense books that will inspire them to leave their comfort zone and jump for their dreams. Bridge to Nowhere, from Sunpenny Publishing, follows older Texan protagonist Miz Mike who would mind her own business except for her motto to “never let an adventure pass by unmolested.” She almost loses her faith in God when her youngest grandson is kidnapped and law enforcement lets the murderer who kidnapped him escape. Her involvement in the mystery threatens the renascent romance with her cowboy hero Marty. Then she jumps.

Love’s Beating Heart jumps all over the place. A pro-life teen and up adventure-romance with a strong supporting arm for homeschooling and the sanctity of marriage, Love’s Beating Heart is out there jumping through the waters of controversy like an entire pod of dolphins!

Heart, Shadows, Until the Shadows Flee and the soon-to-be-released Fear of Shadows all contain a strong Christian message woven into the action and believable characters – not some preachy tacked on addition. They all jump.

Writing “jumpers” matters to me. I want to offer readers books that won’t discomfort them with profanity or negative lifestyle examples. Books that entertain and delight. Books that jump! Someday I will be gone just as surely as the dolphins fade away from Chanonry Point when the salmon run is over. My desire is to leave something behind that will cause others to jump up out of their ordinary lives and do something extraordinary for God.

I want to live for the jump!

Prickles & Stickles

I relate to my tough Texan heroine in Bridge to Nowhere, released by Sunpenny Publishing. Miz Mike always minds her own business, but she can’t resist mystery – so she winds up in one pickle after another when she sets out to molest new adventures. Miz Mike is adamant, intransigent, and intractable – only about important things, of course!

Me? I’m just stubborn. Take the prickles and stickles incident. No, don’t. You don’t want to go there.

When we first got our rough collie Angel Joy, she would only catch and collect balls as long as they were easy to retrieve. If they went too far, went into the water, or into bushes – it was our job. Golfers along the golf course would holler, “Can you get your dog to find my ball?” To which we would reply, “She won’t even find her ball.”

Angel Joy now goes into the water – as long as it’s not too deep – and into tall bushes and grass to find her ball. Not prickles and stickles. She’s smart.

Yesterday the wind blew off Moray Firth at near gale force. Her ball whipped into a hedge of wild Scottish roses intertwined with blackberry vines and gorse – solid prickles and stickles and thorns.

Suddenly Bridge to Nowhere‘s Miz Mike hijacked me. I body slammed those prickles and stickles and thorns and stickers and plowed a path into the impenetrable growth. Angel Joy nipped in, grabbed her ball and backed out again. It took me a bit longer since I was speared with thorns, stickers and vegetation with pickles, stickles and hooks.

Sometimes success demands that we plow into prickles and stickles. Staying in our comfort zone won’t get the job done. This is especially true in writing. It’s not enough to get a book published. After that comes the marketing – even if by pushing yourself forward you feel like you’re plowing into a rose bed and coming out with thorns rather than the fragrance, color and softness of rose petals.

Some readers will love you and everything you write. Others will hate you – not because what you’ve written is bad – but because they disagree with you. When that happens, you feel like you attempted to pluck a rose for your sweetheart and grabbed thorns instead.

If you’re a writer, I won’t encourage you to become like Miz Mike. For one thing, she and I are Texas born. It takes a while to learn how to be a Texan. For another thing – she’s my character! But I will encourage you to be stubborn. Get over your fear of prickles and stickles. They only hurt a little bit. Plow ahead with confidence and don’t let criticisms and discomfort steal your dream.

My newest book, Love’s Beating Heart, is the most stickery and prickery since it deals with issues like abortion, pro-life, adoption, homeschooling and the sanctity of marriage. It is also the most satisfying on the deepest level. Don’t get me wrong! I love stubborn, mystery-solving Miz Mike. She’s fun, funny and fun to write. Bridge to Nowhere is a great Christian mystery-romance-suspense, the first in a series of at least six.

But plowing into the stickles and prickles gave me a lasting gift to leave behind when I go home to be with the LORD. Love’s Beating Heart is more than a book. It’s a life-saving manual.

Twisted Perfection

Bandera, Texas, “Cowboy Capital of the World,” used to be called the place where misfits fit. It still is (as Three Prongs) in the Christian mystery-romance-suspense book Bridge to Nowhere, published by Sunpenny.

Ross was a deaf mute. He rode his tractor up to the main road and caught a ride into town, visiting with friends at the coffee shop. He talked with his hands and everyone understood him.

Harold Jenkins was so twisted and gnarled from birth that he frightened children. His hands were like claws and his arms were bent and deformed. His face looked like it had been trampled on and then half-eaten by a wild hog. He had a heart of love that made him beautiful. He loved Jesus and told everyone. He was a volunteer ambulance driver and firefighter.

Occasional unkind remarks claimed that Gerald wasn’t much smarter than a mop. But even those who questioned his mental capacity lauded him as honest and hardworking. He rode his bicycle into town each day and waited until someone hired him for the day. He was always positive and never complained, even when he was dying of cancer.

Lou Colburn was long labeled a “hopeless alcoholic.” Then he got saved and exchanged the bottle for Jesus. He led trail rides, entertained guests at a local dude ranch and eagerly shared his salvation experience. Lou had TEXAS written in gold across his teeth.

Three sisters. I’m the author of Bridge to Nowhere, Love’s Beating Heart, Heart Shadows, Shadow Chase and Until the Shadows Flee. I’m blessed to be married to author Alan McKean, author of time travel adventures The Scent of Time and The Scent of Home. I am also blessed to have an extraordinary son, Luke, in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Leslie P. Garcia is the author of Unattainable. She has four lovely, talented children – all teachers and coaches – and nine great, lovely and talented grandchildren.

Vicky Potter is a talented editor and animal trainer. Her dogs visit in nursing homes and children’s homes, bringing joy to the housebound. Her dog Lucius is a star now in the musical Annie.

Abortion advocates believe that children in the mother’s womb who might experience physical or mental problems should be killed. Scientists are taking two or three human eggs, removing genetic imperfections, and putting the eggs together to create perfect babies. Had they tested us three sisters in our mother’s womb, we might never have been born. All three of us inherited a genetic weakness in math.

And how much poorer the memories of Bandera without its “misfits” – who fit?

Today I was feeling honored and blessed by God for having been allowed to write the pro-life teen & up action, adventure, romance Love’s Beating Heart. I was thinking about a world in which only perfect people were allowed to live. (Yup. I’d be out!) Without the Harold Jenkins of the world, how would we learn that true beauty is on the inside, not outside? How would we learn to look past the face and see into the heart?

Without a Ross, how would we learn to really listen, even without words?

Without a Lou Colburn, life would be boring.

Without a Gerald, how would we learn that God creates gifts and places them inside each individual and a person doesn’t have to graduate at the top of the class to be a success.

Without people who are allowed to live in spite of their imperfections, would we learn kindness? Would we learn to be thankful for our own strengths? Would we have the chance to be a blessing to others by helping someone less fortunate than us? Every life is precious. Every life is a gift from God. A world of perfect people would be horrible and twisted…and incredibly sad and empty place.

Jump out of the Box!

Alan and I are on vacation for a week. We’re not going anywhere, but we don’t have to – because we write. Alan is the author of two enthralling time travel adventures, The Scent of Time and The Scent of Home.

I write Christian mystery-romance-suspense books like Bridge to Nowhere, by Sunpenny Publishing, and Heart Shadows, Shadow Chase and Until the Shadows Flee. My most recent book is a pro-life, pro-homeschool, teen and any age adventure-romance, Love’s Beating Heart.

When we stay home, we can write. I can write my way out of a cardboard box. I did it once.

While attending UTSA, I had a socialism…I mean a sociology professor who was nuts. He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t from Texas and he was an atheist. He was always late to class. On three separate occasions, the entire class walked out because we had waited for more than 15 minutes. On the coldest day of winter, he arrived one minute short of the class leaving, wearing swim trunks, an inside-out T-shirt, and a red and black tie with white skeletons dancing across it. Without apologizing for being late, he said, “Jeans are all dirty and I lost my coat.”

Another time when he was late, he scurried into the room checking the number on a piece of paper against the door number to make sure he was in the right class. He had been teaching our class for six weeks. He smelled so strongly of gasoline that we gagged and moved to the back of the room. “Had a bit of trouble at the gas station,” he said. “Was pumping away when I realized I had the nozzle stuck in the back window of the car instead of the gas tank.” And he was teaching us?

A week before finals, I learned to jump out of the box. He arrived only a few minutes late and began yelling at us. “You’re all liars! You’re all pretenders! You’re all playing games!” As an adult with a full-time job, who was also a full-time student, the mother of a teen and the caregiver of a terminally ill husband, I resented that. I didn’t have time for games.

“Here’s what I want you to do,” he shouted. “Every one of you has a big cardboard box by your desk. That’s right – you, too!” We all looked perplexed, but I felt sorry for the student he had singled out.

“Now. Get into your boxes. Climb in and close the flaps. Sit in your box and go inside yourselves. Get to really know who you are. Find yourselves. When you have the truth, write it down.”

I tried. I really did. I visualized myself in the box and obediently closed the flaps. I looked around inside and thought how pretty it would be with the right combinations of colors splashed about. Then…the story came. I could see the twelve-year-old boy. Lanky and loose jointed, he walked along the desert path kicking tumbleweed, sending puffs of alkali dust over the top of his shoes. His parents were divorcing. His dad had left. His mother’s job had transferred her from cool, green Georgia to the barren Nevada desert. He had left all his friends behind. Instead of spending the summer fishing and playing ball, Garrett was stuck in a strange, empty land with no friends and nothing to do. I felt his pain. Saw him squeeze back tears of loneliness and frustration. Then Garrett kicked a box and it yelped. Looking inside, he found an abandoned puppy. Tansy later repaid her rescuer’s love and kindness by rushing between him and a rattlesnake in the backyard. I jumped out of my box and finished the story.

After reading my story, the socialism…sorry…sociology professor flailed the air as if beating off insects. “No, no no! This is all wrong! You were supposed to go inside and find yourself.”

“I did,” I told him. “I’m a writer.”

He gave me a “D” on the paper. It didn’t matter. I’m a writer. I sold the story to a Christian magazine. The check made up for the close encounter with misplaced gasoline.

So jump out of the box. Find out what God has planned for your life and go after it with all your heart.

Try a Bit Harder, Work a Bit Longer…

With a bit of weeding, digging and replanting, the garden looked nice…except for the dead branches and trunks of a tree along the fence. Our chainsaw will cut butter, but not much else and there are no repair or sharpening services in our area. The handsaw cuts a bit better, but the dead tree trunks were huge in circumference and grown too close together to allow the handsaw to get in between them. With our limited tools, cutting that dead, tangled mess looked impossible.

Enter determination. The same, “try a bit harder, work a bit longer,” that carried me past the agony and despair of receiving 150 rejection slips on different books over the years to eventual success. I now have five published Christian, mystery-romance-suspense books, Bridge to Nowhere (Rose & Crown/Sunpenny Publishing), Love’s Beating Heart, Heart Shadows, Until the Shadows Flee and Shadow Chase. I knew I was a writer. God had put that burning fire in my bones and I could not contain it. But every rejection slip made me quit and give up…briefly – before I remembered to try a bit harder, work a bit longer.

So, too, with the dead wood in the front yard. First the clippers to remove the smaller branches. With scratched and bleeding arms and facing those huge trunks, I started to give up. Then I looked again at the bright green garden tossed with blooming flowers and mocked by one clump of ugly dead tree. The butter-cutting chainsaw came out. The butter-cutting-plus handsaw came out. Then help arrived in the form of my gifted, talented husband (also an author, The Scent of Time & The Scent of Home). He had been out visiting folks in the parish. Still dressed in his clerical shirt and collar (he’s a Church of Scotland minister) Alan began helping. Between the two of us and the two butter and better than butter-cutting saws, the dead wood came out. Try a bit harder, work a bit longer.

Taking out the dead growth was the right thing to do. Besides looking better, the open space allows room to finish edging in front of the beds and trimming the shrubs.But it wasn’t easy. It took trying a bit harder, working a bit longer.

Having five published books was the right thing to do. Without preaching, the characters and action in the books point to God. It is my prayer that they will help readers find their way to the Cross of Jesus. Love’s Beating Heart sends two teens on a wild river adventure to save Baby. The fast-moving adventure upholds marriage, homeschooling and pro-life over abortion. If it saves the life of even one unborn child, I have fulfilled my purpose as a writer. But success wasn’t easy. It took years to achieve and a lot of trying a bit harder, working a bit longer.

When you have a dream or a task that seems impossible, don’t give up! Try a bit harder, work a bit longer.

Broken Sticks…

One day that bat-fowled fiend satan was smarting off to God and God asked him, “Have you considered my faithful servant Job?” That ornery ole devil smarted off again and said that the only reason Job worshiped God was because God had blessed him so much. So God allowed that mean ole devil to take away everything Job had except his nagging wife. Job said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away and blessed be the name of the Lord.”

So that cursed serpent said, “Let me at him again! Then he’ll cuss you up one side and down the other.” So God allowed slimeball, sleeze satan to touch Job’s body. I mean to tell you, that poor ole boy had boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. He was so messed up he had to take his boots off to scratch. Job still blessed God.

Then along comes these three friends to comfort Job. Let me tell you: when you’ve got friends like these, you’re up to your armpits in enemies. They started in on Job something fierce about how he must have done something powerful bad to get punished by God and how he was a terrible secret sinner. After a bit, Job had had about all the comforting he could stand from these fellers.

So Job says, “How long will you torment my soul, And break me in pieces with your words?” (Job 19:1)

I challenge you. Take a stick and break it. Put it back together. Does it fit right? Is it as strong as it was before you broke it? Can you put it back together perfectly so that you can’t tell it’s been broken?

Your words can break people or heal them. When you get angry and break people with words, an apology never quite does the job of mending the relationship. There is always that jagged, hurting shard of memory that spoils the symmetry of the friendship and mars its previous flawless beauty.

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Choose to speak life with your tongue instead of breaking sticks that will never mend.

At the end of Job’s story in the Bible, God held Job’s three friends accountable for their stick-breaking words. He told them they had not spoken what was right and true and ordered them to apologize to Job and have Job pray for them. Then…”the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.”

Words are powerful. Communication is a gift from God. Use yours to build, not break.

Broken Dreams

When it was completed sometime after 1893, Rosehaugh House in Avoch, Scotland, was a mansion built to glory. Hundreds of people were employed and provided with the best and highest quality materials to complete the three-story, 60-room mansion with 365 windows, marble floors, Persian rug carpeted walls, painted ceilings, carved wood, and a car-sized fireplace in the billiard room.

The fabulous mansion was demolished in 1959.

Broken dreams. It seems unbelievable that such a rich, historic, and glorious mansion could be razed. The foundation, steps, overgrown gardens and out buildings are all that remain of one man’s dream to build the most splendid mansion in the world. What went wrong?

Death went wrong. Rosehaugh was already a magnificent home when James Fletcher died in 1885. Son James Douglas Fletcher hired famed Scottish architect William Flockhart to take the mansion from splendor to unmatched glory. Then James Douglas Fletcher died. His widow sold the estate in 1953 – and by 1959 – James Douglas Fletcher’s dream mansion had been demolished.

People die. Dreams die. Sometimes we kill our own dreams by poisoning them with drugs, alcohol, gambling, or other risky and dangerous lifestyle choices. Sometimes they die of natural causes.

I am thankful that God has given me the blessing of leaving behind a shelf of dreams when I die: Christian mystery-romance-suspense books like Bridge to Nowhere, published by Sunpenny Publishing, and Love’s Beating Heart, Shadow Chase, Heart Shadows, Until the Shadows Flee and the soon-to-be-released Fear of Shadows. But the fact is, I will die. I will follow James Douglas Fletcher off the stage of life and slip into a shadowy memory.

Unlike Fletcher’s dream, my dream won’t break or die. My dream is eternal. It is simply to follow Jesus and live for Him. The Bible promises that whatever I do for Christ here on earth will follow me to Heaven. It will be stored and waiting for me in a treasure chest where no one else can steal it and where it will never rot, tear, tarnish or age. When I get to Heaven, I’ll be able to lay it at the feet of Jesus and hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Rosehaugh Estate is still a lovely place where dreams shimmer in the shade of ancient trees. The current owners are restoring the buildings that are left and many of them are rented out as holiday homes. It’s a lovely place to take dogs on a walk and capture something lovely and unique through the lens of a camera. But it is also a sorrowful, haunting place of broken dreams and trampled glory. I’m so thankful that my glory doesn’t rest in even the finest, most glorious mansion built by human hands – but rather in Heaven – created by the Eternal Hands of Jesus, the Creator of the universe.