I’d just filled up the gas tank on my way out of Spokane when I clicked on the radio and heard a song that never fails to transport me back to the summer of 1972. Perhaps you know it? It was a sultry Georgia evening and I was babysitting my aunt’s two young children at her apartment in the low-income housing complex known as the Peabody Projects, or as the locals often called it, just Peabody. Red bricked and... Read more
This is the time in which we announce our winner for Michael Morris’s latest fiction – Man in the Blue Moon. If you don’t win today, stay tuned. We have more giveaways coming up very soon… And thanks for entering.. Read more
I’m writing this from a Starbucks in Columbus, Georgia. I made a very quick and very mysterious trip south. A secret mission of honor and happiness to help celebrate the 90th birthday of Lillian Champion. I met Lillian after she contacted me via email following the publication of some column about my father that I wrote for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. Lillian said we had a shared background of grief — her daughter, Marjorie, was killed in the 911 attack... Read more
Lucky winners of last week’s giveaway should be receiving their books in the mail any day now, and you know what that means? Yes, that’s right. You have a better chance of winning the next book, since previous winners are otherwise occupied. And I couldn’t be more excited to tell you about this next book. A novel by one of my very own personal favorites — Michael Morris. A Man in the Blue Moon has been named one of the... Read more
I worry that we have only changed out addictions. Traded in the packs of smokes for boxes of nicotine gum and increasingly larger doses of morphine that appears to offer very little pain relief. I fight this urge to walk up to completely random people and lecture them about the evils of smoking. I want to yank them by the scruff and sit them down in front of my mother for half-a-day. Sort of the smoker’s version of Scared... Read more
And do not follow the customs of the present age, but be transformed by the entire renewal of your minds, so that you may learn by experience what God’s will is–that will which is good and beautiful and perfect. Roman 12: 2 When our son was a boy he had a whole collection of toys known as Transformers. These plastic domathingies represent a host of alien robots in constant search of power and/or peace, depending upon whether they were good... Read more
Lindsey Stone says she was just joking around when she posed for this photo at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery. She swears she meant no disrespect to anyone. It was all just done in good fun, Stone insists, although, she came to regret her notion of amusement after her own friends responded in outrage when Lindsey posted the photo on her Facebook page last month. Stone and a friend Jamie Schuh, who took the photo,... Read more
Did you get the house decorated for the holidays yet? No. Me neither. I’m hardly home lone enough to wash clothes much less decorate a Christmas tree. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t found a way to celebrate the season of giving. We took time from our Thanksgiving events to do just that. We put all your names into a hat — literally into Stephan’s hat — and let our grandson Sullivan draw out the winner for Shane Hipps’s latest, Selling... Read more
Seattle’s evening rush hour traffic had finally eased off. An all-day rain had soaked the city silver. A man wearing a bear pelt cape called out as I exited Seattle’s Grand Hyatt Hotel. “Hey Miss!” Unsure who he was speaking to, I turned and faced him. Ratty dark hair hung in shoulder-length dreads. He wore green wool gloves, the fingertips cut out, and held a small white pad in one hand and a red felt-tip pen in the other. “Can... Read more
What does he mean, the Bible as metaphor? Mama asked. Oh. You know, I answered. If I say you have feet like an elephant. I don’t mean that you literally have the feet of an elephant. It’s just wording to convey a certain something. This fellow is saying that maybe some stories in the Bible aren’t meant to be literal but intended to convey a certain truthful principle. Like what? Mama asked. Like Noah and the ark, I answered.... Read more
Karen Spears Zacharias
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