Our Books

Ivory “guarding” the office.   “Sugar and Ivory” From the Curt Iles book,Hearts across the Water It’s odd but I will always think of two dogs when I think of the long night that Hurricane Rita struck Dry Creek Camp.   We had 350 people on our grounds. They had been moved and bedded down in our most solid dorms …

“Branding Dogs” A case study on a misunderstanding Eddie Anyone who knows me is aware of how much I love dogs. One of my older friends always said, “Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like dogs.” One of my writing priorities is to include a good dog in every book I write. I don’t just like dogs. I love dogs, especially …

Rusty Thompson on the highway In the coming weeks, we’ll be blogging our funniest stories. Some will be new and others will be old favorites. The following one, entitled “Rusty” is from my third book, Wind in the Pines. It’s a favorite story of my friend Peggy Benoit. Let us know your favorite funny stories from my books, and we’ll …

Roy Greene’s Door 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 city …

Why I write I write for influence. The written word can travel into places– and hearts– far away from where we are. This is a picture of Josh Miller, a great great great great grandson of Joe and Eliza Moore. Josh is a student at Pitkin Elementary where I visit yearly for their Family Reading Day. Josh is looking over …

76 years of marriage—no, make that 77. They were always together. In my fifty years of knowing them, I can seldom recall seeing one without the other. And that’s how Uncle Gordon and Aunt Letha will live on in my heart. With the recent death of my grandmother’s last living sibling, Letha Reynolds, a marriage bond of 76 years was …

“You’re the Man” I wonder if they’ll give Captain Sully his “Broken Wing” award. It’s a special aviation award for safely landing a disabled aircraft. As you are aware, Chelsey B. “Sully” Sullenberger III is the pilot who saved the lives of 155 passengers of US Airways Flight 1549, when he safely landed the large jet in the Hudson River. …

This is an excerpt from my third book, Wind in the Pines. As I watched today’s inauguration of Barak Obama, I was reminded of an estimated one- million- man crowd I was a part of on the National Mall. This is a story of what God taught me there. “From ‘Big D.C.’ to ‘little d.c.’” …Sometimes the best place to …

Where is your prayer tree? Jesus, in His sermon on the mount, talked about having a place to get alone with God. In the older Bible versions, He called it a “closet.” The New International Version states it this way: “When you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen.” Matthew 6:6 …

The first short story in my first book, Stories from the Creekbank, continues to be one of our reader’s favorites. It is entitled “The Evening Holler” and I’ve told it and read it to literally to hundreds of groups over the past ten years. At the end of this short story is a special picture from Africa and a postscript …