Author Spotlight: Emily Conrad

We’ve got an exciting new feature on the blog today: my first-ever author interview! My sweet friend Emily Conrad is getting ready to release her debut novel, Justice (which is amazing, by the way!), and she agreed to be my guinea pig.  Justice is a work of contemporary romantic women’s fiction, with inspiration taken from the Biblical account of Mary …

What God Does In Our Waiting

I’m thrilled to be guest posting over at Jennifer Slattery’s Lives Out Loud blog. My post details how God has grown me in patience, an area in which, frankly, I’ve needed a lot of work.  

My Favorite Things

My life is full of unanswerable questions. Some are deep and philosophical, some are not. This one is decidedly in the latter category, but it does pop up every December, when I hear Julie Andrews singing about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, and that question is this: Why on earth is My Favorite Things a Christmas song? I …

“…and they shall call his name Emmanuel…”

“The story of the Bible is Emmanuel.” One of our pastors said this in a sermon a few weeks back, and I’ve been rolling it over in my head ever since. As a result, I’ve seen the overarching story of the Bible in a whole new way. Though during Advent our focus is the child promised in Isaiah, the one …

Hello! Agent Calling!

As many of you know, I recently (and gleefully) signed with my dream agent, Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. God’s hand was in every aspect of this, and I am floored by all the minute details He worked out so that Tamela and I could connect and click. The process of finding an agent is often nerve-wracking. …

Sick, Sick, Sick

We have recently made it through a round of The Creeping Crud here at the House of Wen, one that has attacked all five of us in turn and given me a renewed sense of gratitude for the good health our family usually enjoys. When my kids were babies, they had one mode during sickness: Pathetic. Seriously. There is nothing …

You Nimrod!

Last weekend, I dived back into Orchestra World for a performance of British orchestral music, the centerpiece of which was Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Even if you’ve never heard of Elgar, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ve heard one of his pieces, especially if you’ve ever been to a high school graduation ceremony. That stately, quasi-repetitive piece the band …

ACFW Mix and Mingle

Sorry I’ve neglected this space for a few weeks. With school and fall activities starting, I’d have been insane enough, but throw in a whole bunch of unexpected events (most fantastic, and one of which I will be posting about in the coming days) and it’s been completely crazy here at the House of Wen. A big part of the …

The Only Thing We Have to Fear…

Nearly four years ago, my husband got a phone call from his younger brother, who was thrilled to announce he was getting married. Now, of course, weddings are a big deal to most families, but to my husband’s family, they are Very Big Deals. As in, far-flung friends and relatives from Taiwan, people I had never met, people my husband …