by Olivia | Oct 16, 2014 | Books in Process
Welcome to the Autumn 2014 Scavenger Hunt. You have arrived at Stop #15. The hunt begins at noon (Mountain Time Zone) on October 17, 2014. You may have arrived here before the start, which could mean all of the sites aren’t ready quite yet. Once the official start has...
by Olivia | Oct 13, 2014 | Lens on Life, Uncategorized
Down came the dropped ceiling, with the ranks of fluorescent lights and plastic ceiling panels that made my kitchen look like a church basement from the 1970s. I’ve lived in this house for eighteen years. At first I thought the brightness of the kitchen was a good...
by Olivia | Oct 6, 2014 | Lens on Life, Uncategorized
I’ve been on a bit of a binge lately. I have lived in this house six years longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere else, including my childhood home. I’ve discovered, belatedly, that the frequent moves of the first half of my married life served to keep our belongings...
by Olivia | Sep 29, 2014 | Lens on Life, Uncategorized
A few days ago, I had just poured my morning coffee when the doorbell rang. My neighbor would have called if she was coming over. My daughter would have rung the bell at least six times quickly to let me know it was her. It was too early even for the FedEx guy. So I...
by Olivia | Sep 22, 2014 | Books in Process, Uncategorized
All through my childhood, my dad commuted by train to his job in downtown Chicago. It was a daily chore, morning and evening, for someone to drop him off at the train station in the morning and pick him up in the evening. A lot of my practice driving time as a...
by Olivia | Sep 15, 2014 | Books in Process, Uncategorized
Eighteen years ago I moved from Illinois to Colorado. For a long time, a couple of times a year we drove back and forth for family visits—usually spring break and Thanksgiving. My kids loved seeing the cousins, and they became quite accomplished car travelers. They...
by Olivia | Sep 8, 2014 | Lens on Life, Uncategorized
“That’s two minutes of my life I’ll never get back.” Ten seconds, two minutes, an hour, a day. We’ve all had the experience of feeling like 1) we wasted our time through our own fault or 2) we let someone else waste our time. I had my teeth cleaned the other day, and...
by Olivia | Sep 1, 2014 | Books in Process, Uncategorized
“I love that title,” people say to me when I mention Wonderful Lonesome, the title of my new book. This is the start of a set of books called Amish Turns of Time. All three books are set in the 1910s, but each book is in a different setting with a different cast of...
by Olivia | Aug 25, 2014 | Lens on Life, Uncategorized
A friend of mine died about a month ago. Sadly, it was not a surprise. He’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 21 months earlier. He was doing fairly well, considering. He worked for much of the time—when his treatments were not making him too ill to function—and...
by Olivia | Aug 18, 2014 | Books in Process, Uncategorized
September 1 is a double release day! I’m excited about Wonderful Lonesome, the first in a set of three Amish historicals. And for icing on the birthday cake, this may be my favorite book cover yet. A hundred years ago, there was an Amish settlement on the eastern...
