Our Books

    It’s April 6. Whip-poor-will day. Let’s go to Dry Creek. Enjoy this reader favorite from our third short story collection, Wind in the Pines.     Whip-poor-will Day Hear that lonesome whip-poor-will, he sounds too blue to fly. It seems he’s lost the will to live, I’m so lonesome I could cry . . . -Hank Williams, Sr. …

A Word from Curt           Let’s go see the eclipse. It’s going to be cloudy all over the texas/Arkansas/oklahoma If we don’t go Worst case scenario, We’ll have ten hours of uniterrupted visiting   Baseball season opened this weekend. Our beloved Houston Astros were scheduled to begin play today in New York against the Yankees. Rained …

  It’s my favorite road in the world. We call it the Longville Gravel Pit Road. Folks in Longville know it as the Dry Creek Road. It’s a rough eleven mile track that connects Highway 113 and US 171. There’s so many reasons why this road is special to me. Below are several:   It’s a wildlife road:   I …

Corporal Howard Vidrine When I came to work at Dry Creek as a thirteen-year-old, one of the first people I met was Howard Vidrine. He served as the camp night watchman during my early years at camp. “Bro. Vidrine,” as we called him, lived in the Evangeline Parish town of Reddell, which is next door to the unique village of …

It’s amazing that my deepest image of Easter doesn’t come from a memorable sermon, movie, or a book. My Easter theology was shaped by a simple country woman married to a former Texas Ranger.  Her name was Lucille Mosley and she lived on Greentown Loop in Dry Creek. This is her story.     The Tomb is Still Empty From …

The Civic Center Doors This is a warning: Be careful with the doors at the Lake Charles Civic Center! I was there last week and as I entered the men’s room, I recalled Roy Greene’s story. The Lake Charles Civic Center opened thirty years ago. Amazingly, it was constructed on sand pumped out of the adjacent lake that gives the …

Trelvis and Phil Thomas. The inspiration for this story from The Wayfaring Stranger. Miz Girlie’s Prayer Tree The follow scene from our first novel, The Wayfaring Stranger, tells of Irish immigrant Joe Moore’s arrival in western Louisiana. The Irishman has been befriended by Miz Girlie Perkins, an old Piney Woods widow:   Joe slept each night on the porch. Miz …

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

It’s a tree planting day on my Dry Creek land. It’s proposal day on my book, As the Crow Flies. A proposal is the written package sent to an agent/publisher to “sell your book.” I never thought of these two actions as related. Planting pines. Proposing a book. You start with what you have. And you plant it the best …

  DeDe and I are sharing today about the needs of Voluntary Retiring Missionaries. These are career overseas workers who’ve chosen to take voluntary early retirement in our organization, the International Mission Board.   Here is the outline of our presentation:   Pray for peace in the spirits of these servants.  They’ve spent a lifetime on their fields.  Leaving their …

    Losing a dog, leaving a cap It may not seem like a big thing. But to me it was. Dee and I had spent three years without a dog. It’s the only time in our marriage we didn’t own at least one dog. Or to put it better: the only time a dog didn’t own us. Africa is …

We’re deep into the second draft of our latest novel, As the Crow Flies. I need your help in fleshing out some of the characters, scenes, and storyline. Join our Creekbank Tribe by sharing ideas at the end of this post. Thanks in advance! Today, you’ll meet the narrator of the book, a spunky teen named Missouri. Curt Opening line …

A Word from Curt I have two questions today: Where do you go for your lonely place? Where are your sacred spaces?     I’ve chosen to make the first question singular: where is your lonely place? In the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, the writer makes a key statement on the life and ministry of Jesus: 35 And rising very …

This is chapter 20 from Christmas Jelly. It’s written by one of my favourite people, Erik Pederson.  Mr. Erik touched all of us with his love, humour, and smile. He’ll always be missed in Dry Creek.   I encouraged him to write this story and had the privilege of editing it. A Danish Christmas    By Erik Pederson     One of …