It took longer than I expected. I guess most things do. But finally, finally my first novel The Triple-Date Dare is now available on Amazon.com. I can hardly believe I have arrived at this point. Click here to find the book on Amazon.

Several years ago, the idea for this story started swimming around in my brain and I bought a little NEO2 writer to start putting those ideas into print. Well, print on my computer. At the same time, I was looking into LDStorymakers Writer's Conference. Although I couldn't attend while I was still living in Hawaii, I perused the classes they offered and discovered the writer's computer program called Scrivner. For the minimal cost of $40, I bought the program and started playing around with organizing my story into chapters and scenes. It made me feel like a real writer.

I mentioned in my first post that I would put here some of the prompts for events in my novels. I have a few I would like to share.

The crabbing date. Yes, this was me, perched on the bow of the little boat along the rock jetty at Depoe Bay, Oregon in the summer of 1985. Boy that was a long time ago! My husband and I were just married and we were crabbing with his father and his father's cousin. The part where the first crab ring was teeming with oodles of baby crabs was real and I truly thought about jumping into the water except for the fact that all the little crabs were being tossed in one after another. We laugh about it now, but at the time, I wasn't sure eating crab was worth the effort. My husband pulls crab rings like David did, and is rarely skunked. Now, after all these years, we still head to the Oregon coast to go crabbing.

The shooting date. We are a family of shotgun enthusiasts. But it is our daughter, Amy, who out-shot her father's friends when she was included in an afternoon excursion. I always loved re-telling the story of how surprised those grown men were when our little 17-year old ruled the day.

The couple approaching David and Laura's quiet moment in the International Rose Test Garden in Portland. Back in the day, going to the Rose Garden was a pretty romantic way to end a date and we discovered this little bench surrounded by trees which, in the evening, provided a wonderful, dark place to steal a kiss. Once while we were dating, we were enjoying the privacy of that little cove when another couple started to walk our way. When we realized they were headed right for us, my husband (who was only my boyfriend at the time) cleared his throat and said, "Good evening." The other couple truly looked like they had been confronted by the boogey-man and ran for their lives. We still laugh about that. I would love to hear their version of the story...

The driftwood sculpture. This was an art my father-in-law perfected, although he didn't sell his pieces. We are privileged to have many of his wood sculptures in our home and I always admired the way each piece spoke to different people differently.

The rest of my story was pure imagination. I loved writing it and I can't really explain well how excited I am that it is now published. I guess if I had to sum it up I would say that I realized how to dream big. And I certainly had a host of help turning this story into a novel, not least of which was the Holy Ghost guiding me and feeding me ideas as I contemplated where the story would go.

Part of my inspiration for writing is to shine a light on the LDS faith which is so much a part of my life. I know the Lord is waiting to forgive us all our sins if we will follow Him. I also know that sometimes we feel like our sins are too great to be overcome and give up before we even give Him a chance. Laura and David's struggles aren't unique, but I wanted them to see that the love of God and the love they developed for each other could take those struggles and turn them into strengths. I hope their journey can be inspiration for others.

I am currently working on my next novel: Building a Life. It's the story of a young pregnant widow and the general contractor she hires to complete the building of a house begun by her late husband. I'll let everyone know when it's available.

Thanks for reading.