Wow! It’s been a long time since we’ve written a blog post. Summer got busy with children going here and there between camps, church activities, and our family vacation. Somewhere in the midst of all of that chaos, we celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. It’s been an amazing journey, but God’s faithfulness has overshadowed our own human weaknesses and sustained us through many trials and…
The Undervalued Encourager
The other day, I (B.) was in Walmart, and the elderly gentleman who was ringing up my groceries asked if he could make a personal observation. Confused, I nodded, and he proceeded to tell me that I had a lovely smile. He thanked me for sharing it with him. Now I always feel as though I am socially awkward and not outgoing enough, so that…
Divine Coincidences
God brings people across our path every day for His purposes and never by accident. I (B.) was reminded of this fact again when I “just happened” to sit by a lady from Libby, MT at the NCW renewal conference in Seattle, WA. There were at least 30 other people in the room, but she was the one who happened to be by me. Now…
Contentment
But godliness with contentment is great gain. ~ 1 Timothy 6:6 I (B.) was recently convicted (again!) with this verse. I think contentment is one of the hardest virtues to attain especially for Americans. Our entire marketing system is based on the sad reality that no one ever thinks they have enough. And authors are not immune from the pull of discontentment. We are bombarded…
Elvensty Discounted Through Sunday, April 21, 2019
For Easter weekend, we are running a sale through Sunday evening on Elvensty. Check it out here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CWL97JJ
Literacy: An Amazing Gift from God
The other day, we went to watch a movie. We don’t often watch movies anymore because we simply don’t have time and too often the values presented within are contrary to our own. However, this movie intrigued us, so we took our oldest three children and went. It was called Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy. It began as an apologetic for Mosaic authorship of…
Where It All Began
The story of Jerro that we reference in our books is an actual book that I (B.) wrote before we even started writing Elvensty. It was to be the first of a series written for a junior high audience. Though we never released it, the story helped flesh out the concepts that eventually became backstory of The Swordflower Saga. In Elvensty, Palo gives an abbreviated…
On Spreadsheets and Calculators
One of our main writing tools is spreadsheets. This is M.’s specialty, and he may go a bit overboard in the use of them. We have our Master Calendar Spreadsheet along with book specific sub-calendars. We have a spreadsheet of the temperatures for the Crossing and the Hiding and how they would affect the planet’s climate. We have a spreadsheet for the characters split into…
Be Still My Soul
We were snowed in on a Sunday afternoon, so we decided to put together a video for one of the songs from Auxland. This song was played on a flute by Palo in the story, and we wrote new “translated” lyrics based on the hymn “Be Still My Soul”. This is one of our favorite hymns, and we really like how the lyrics turned out,…
True Companion
This song was written many years ago when M. was having a pity party (not unlike the one Aya had in Auxland!). He was the worship leader for the college group and had scheduled a practice only to have no one show up. So he did what anyone might of have done and skipped the main church service. As he was struggling through the…