He’s not the same guy…

Purchase Links: Amazon & Pelican Book Group
A Routine Audit? Hardly. Red flags—including some goon who’s following her—raise McKinley Frasier’s suspicions that numbers don’t add up at the insurance firm. When someone tries to snatch McKinley’s daughter from school, she turns to police officer and ex-fiance, Renner Crossman—the cop who walked out on her a month before their wedding. But Renner’s not the same guy who broke her heart ten years ago. He calls himself a “new man.” She trusts the new Renner with her daughter’s safety…but what about her heart? 

Change…love it or leave it?

Back in the fall of 2012, several of my author friends were announcing multi-book contracts. I was thrilled for them, but inside, my inner voice mocked. “You’ll never get one of those. You can’t plot.”

Sure, I’d managed to crank out f
ive romances, but they’d all been written in advance, and individually contracted and published with Pelican Book Group. For me, that meant writing a story, submitting it, and then waiting, praying and hoping for a contract. I dreamed of snagging a contract for a series that I hadn’t written yet…to know that the story I was laboring over would have a home when I finished. But, in order for that to happen, I needed to force myself to learn how to plot, so that I could submit a proposal based on a synopsis or summary for three stories that hadn’t been written yet.
In the early stages of my writing career, I’d tried plotting. Oy! My neighbors could probably hear my ranting and thrashing about my office, banging my head against my desk and threatening to toss my laptop out the window. 

Change…it never gets easier, does it? 

But that fall, this confirmed pantser finally determined to become a plotter. You can read my tips on how I made the transition here and how I organized myself here. Trust me when I say there was plenty of weeping and pulling hair involved, especially when I plunged into simultaneously plotting out five books, two independents and three for a series. 

I’m nearing the end of my timeline, and I’m thrilled to report that this week I completed my fifth plotted book in just a short~ or long, depending on how you look at it~ eighteen months. 

Change is never easy…but it’s possible. I like routine, and change hurls me out of my comfort zone, leaving me unsettled and anxious. But with a little faith and a good bit of persistence, I’m always amazed at the outcome.

“If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” ― Anthony Robbins

Do you embrace change or despise it? 
What’s the most difficult change you’ve experienced lately?

Doubt…or Trust?

“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Mt 28:16-17 NIV

Jesus had warned his disciples all that would happen surrounding his crucifixion. They’d been hanging around with him for three years and had witnessed countless miracles, so many they weren’t all recorded in the Bible (Jn 21:25). You’d think that they would have believed him, right?

Not. 

Everything happened exactly as Jesus predicted. One of his own disciples turned him over to the authorities in exchange for trinkets of silver. Jesus was beaten, whipped, and then nailed to a cross until his last breath. A heavy stone was rolled across the entry to where his broken body lay, and guards were posted outside the tomb. 

All events he’d told them about ahead of time, happened exactly as he’d said. To the last detail.

When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.


Seriously? The disciples doubted?

Men that had followed Jesus around for three years? Soaking in his words, watching him perform miracles, witnessing the compassion in his eyes as he looked upon his children? 

Doubt. 

What a nasty, five letter word that sometimes slithers in to my life. Whether it’s in my marriage, my writing, my faith…

Why do I struggle with it so?

Because doubt is a lie of the enemy, an all out frontal attack by the devil to rob us of joy, of peace that passes understanding. The enemy tosses out those tiny nuggets of doubt, and if we let allow them to take root, they blossom into full-fledged fear.


The disciples doubted even after they’d had a chance to see Jesus, to touch the holes in his hands, to hear his voice. Peter doubted after he’d stepped out of the boat and he looked down at the waves crashing around his feet. Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” Mt 14:31 NIV

I can sometimes picture him, with an outstretched arm, glancing down at me with warm eyes, full of compassion, and in a loving voice, saying, “Oh, Dora, where’s your faith? Why must you doubt?”

God promised that He’d always be with me. Why rob myself of joy and peace by doubting? I choose trust over doubt. 

Do you struggle with doubt? Which will you choose?
Doubt or trust?

http://www.linkytools.com/thumbnail_linky_include.aspx?id=204557A to Z blog hop at Patterings.

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