Writers often debate the merits (and demerits) of prologue and epilogue—the figurative bookends of a story. Why? Many readers find them distracting, misleading, disconnected, and unnecessary. I’ll confess I just finished a book which I otherwise enjoyed, but whose prologue (written from the villain’s point of view) I completely forgot until I reached the epilogue….
Can you believe it’s that time again? On New Year’s Eve, my daughter and I both hustled to make our yearly reading goals. I finished around 9 p.m. She slid in at 11:25. Both of us in time for punch and fireworks in Chile! Now for the recounting of my top 12 books of 2025….
Do you like biographies? Maybe it’s the dozens of missionary life stories I had to read in Bible college, but I’ll admit my reluctance to receive this particular book from a coworker, let alone read it. Hearts of Fire shares cameos about eight women of the persecuted church around the world, collected by The Voice…
What if I told you all the myths of Chiloé are true…from a certain point of view? A certain point of view? That little phrase—and the echoing question—comes from the original Star Wars Trilogy. You may remember the classic scene from Return of the Jedi where a disillusioned Luke Skywalker accuses Obi-Wan Kenobi of deceiving…
Happy 2023! During this year, starting today, the international mission agency that my husband and I work with in Chile will celebrate in a variety of ways one hundred years of service in this battlefield of the great spiritual war of our time. Fittingly, we were originally known as the Soldiers’ and Gospel Mission of…
At bedtime in my family of daughters, I heard more “Read me a story” than “Tell me a story.” Now that they’re adults, the clamor has evolved to “Write me a story,” but the urge is still prompted by our storytelling gene. Recently, I attended three days of seminars in a fabulous online writers’ retreat….
It happened again last week—I read another Christian book that started out with SOOO much potential. Until it petered out in a light gloss of forgiveness and a pinch of repentance. Well, okay. We surely need to forgive and sometimes we ought to repent. But whatever happened to a life-changing crisis of character? Without a…
In 1986 our family attended a Christmas Dolphins show at sunrise. While the military dictatorship in Chile hastened to its eventual demise, I was then a young mom living in a seaside hamlet where we still didn’t have telephones (or a bank, gas station, or pharmacy either, though that doesn’t enter into this story). But…
Of course, you remember the classic meme where a woman reviews her life by means of a series of footprints on the beach. She wonders why God disappeared at the most difficult moments of her life, but it turns out He carried her then. He was there all the time. Recently a dear friend spoke…
My writing ministry file, labeled 20:24:28, holds almost 400 digital pages right now. The other day, as I finished my blog series on story motifs, I scrolled back to the beginning of the document and discovered some interesting points that I should review more often. In a lot more areas of life, it’s a good…
“Do you believe in destiny?” Nicolás Serrano, up to his elbows in apple mash, asks halfway through my first book Destiny at Dolphin Bay. His friend Melissa has questioned his self-identification as a Chiloé islander, knowing he grew up a city boy. As she watches him make cider in an antique press, she sees him…
Sometimes it feels as if we live in a permanent disaster zone. Earthquake! Tsunami! Drought! Flash floods, forest fires…and now a pandemic. In Chile, we tend to live on the ragged edge, always semi-prepared for when disaster strikes. Among the subplot threads of many of my Seaglass Books is woven the background motif of some…