Memories grow moss, you know, and sometimes a writer must scrape them to find what she’s looking for, to uncover what she hopes to mine for the story taking shape in her head.

So . . . I’m on a research trip, this time for a new novel that’s set in the area where I grew up: the Olympic Peninsula in far NW Washington State.

If you’d like to follow along as I write this new tale (slated to publish through Tyndale House in 2025), join me, will you? Send me your email address → HERE ← , and I’ll write you an old-school letter each Saturday. In it, I’ll include my word counts, writerly musings, and personal life stuff you won’t find online. You’ll be automatically entered in lots of book giveaways, too.

These letters are brief. Quick reads for you. And if you reply, I’ll always write back.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep posting here—always nature photos and sometimes book reviews. I’ll link this blog to the bottom of my Saturday Letters, so you won’t miss a thing.

I’d love to bring you with me.

Day 1: Mt. Angeles Road climbs out of Port Angeles and into the Olympic Mountains toward Hurricane Ridge. The Beaumonts built this cabin in the foothills in 1887.

Homesteaders, they lived here nearly 40 years.

The cabin then sat empty for another thirty years, until historians moved it a mile south.

Roof, walls, stones, generations of life echoes . . . all mossy.

Characters will do more than scrape moss in this new story of mine. But how much more? What will it take to unearth a memory and drain its power to take captives?

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Day 2: Dawn in Sequim—twenty minutes east of Port Angeles.

Good morning sky.

Good morning Olympic Mountains.

Good morning wild, luminous Dungeness River.

Welcome to the story.

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When crows are roosters.

(Find the birds, then the barn. You’ll recognize both in the novel.)

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Enough book concepts for now.:)

By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way home again, back to the place where I shot these next pics.

Megaphone.
(Sunrise over Church Mountain, North Cascades.)
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“What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight.”
—Matthew 10:27

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Last summer Blake ALMOST drove the tractor and brush hog over the entrance. He saw the yellow jackets streaming in and out of the hole in the ground seconds before he would have crossed it.

Whew.

Those stingers died in the fall, like they always do, so we all went digging.

Ever have a run-in with a ground nest?

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Clinging.

“My whole being clings to you; your strong hand upholds me.” —Psalm 63:8

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Thanks for stopping by, friends. So glad you’re here!

Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks.