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Solid  Research  is Historical Fiction Author Sandra Merville Hart's  Hallmark. As she is one of the Nine authors in the Buckeye Christian Fiction Anthology 2018, I  asked  her to give us a glimpse into her research and crafting of the story, Surprised by Love.    BE SURE TO LEAVE HER A COMMENT Better Yet, Visit All Around Books in  Troy, Ohio to meet Sandra and other Authors from  the Buckeye Christian Fiction Anthology 2018 On Saturday, October 6th! Researching the Flood of 1913 for  Surprised by Love by Sandra Merville Hart A school event for my daughter took us to Troy. The quaint city captivated me from the first visit. It felt like something ought to happen there—and that was before I was writing! A few years later, fellow authors discussed a novella collection set in Ohio locations. My mind raced back to Troy. What could I write about? My husband and I drove there on a mission of discovery. While at the Muse...

If you read my last post, you know I now live in a house located on what used to be my grandparent’s farm. Last weekend several of my cousins and their families came to my house for a family reunion. We ate and reminisced of our childhood days. We played a crazy game of relay ping-pong. And we laughed. It felt good.  Talk fell to the summer Grandpa died of cancer and how shortly after that, Grandma sold the farm.  Grandpa was sixty-six years old when he died.  Many of us are now close to that or a bit beyond. Many of us are grandparents ourselves. Of course we are “younger” than Grandma and Grandpa ever were… in our minds. But this blog isn’t actually about the reunion.  It is about living in the will of God.  It is about listening to His voice and doing what He asks. Tom and I always tried to do that. We haven’t always been successful because sometimes we’ve been stubborn and selfish. From time-to-time we slipped off the path but kept climbing back up ...

I love living on my grandparents farm as a child.... I loved living there.  My Grandparents, Gus and Dorothy I loved it in part because it was the house where my dad was born. He had memories there. My grandmother shared stories with me of when she and Grandpa lived in that house before they bought the adjacent farm.  I was building new memories of my own. I rode my pony on all sorts of adventures I created. The barn could be a castle one day and a fort the next. I could easily walk up the hill by the creek, past the pond and head down a long lane between the fields to reach Grandma’s house. Grandma always had candy or a piece of gum in her kitchen cupboard for grandchildren who came for a visit. She was very creative and made dolls and toys. She also liked to write, so she and I shared our stories. There were two wooded areas on grandma and grandpa’s farm. The “little woods” was located behind our house and the “big woods” was located on the southernmo...

Today I want to explore the idea that there is much to learn about the craft of writing through people who are not writers. This quote popped up on my twitter feed from a woman I know through Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA). It is attributed to Marc Randolph, cofounder of Netflix. Here is the picture I saw on Twitter. Thank you @SusanAbbott for sharing. “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution –because if you fall in love with the solution, you’ll chase it trying to find a problem to fit it. And if you fall in love with the problem you’ll learn everything you can to know why that problem exists, and what efforts were made in the past to solve it, and who has that problem, and under what conditions. Then you’ll come up with hundreds of ways to possibly solve it.” I don’t have the original source or context for that quote, but it was attributed to Bay Street Bull, a publication that describes itself as “ A luxury lifestyle magazine focusing on t...