The darkened impression molded into the crumbling brick snagged my attention. The ragged brick was nestled into the wall of a fort and, upon seeing it, I sucked in a surprise breath over the precious detail. A detail many around me missed. The fingerprint of a slave. Let me back up for a moment. You see, I finally found my mother ship. It's in the quaint and charming town of Savannah, Georgia. I knew my history-loving bookworm self would find a treasure trove in the historic Southern town and boy, was I right. I was especially intrigued by a fact…

Pinnacle Mountain State Park in Little Rock, Arkansas was a happening place to be yesterday. Everywhere I looked there were children, dogs, mothers and fathers, laughing friends, college students and the retired. It was a beautiful day to be outside. There was also a lot of bickering, most of it coming from unwilling friends and family members being guilted into hiking to the peak of the mountain, a task that can seem a bit daunting when one looks up to see the top third of the mountain is nothing but boulders and scrub brush. The trail is marked by small…

I don't like waiting. I'll admit it. Especially when I sense something good just around the bend. Sometimes the anticipation is sweet. Other times it's almost unbearable. Agonizing. Like waiting in line for Splash Mountain at Disney World in 100 degree heat. (No fast passes included.) In 2003, at the encouragement of a friend, I sent a package of children's songs I'd written to a publisher for consideration. I thought it would be rejected within a few weeks. It wasn't. But it wasn't accepted either. So I waited and waited. Then I waited some more. Weeks turned into months, months…

Have you ever been stuck dangling from the top of a roller coaster? Our family recently vacationed at a theme park and, being a roller coaster aficionado, I couldn't wait to ride the new coaster. It promised to be a dizzying, speeding bullet with large twists, loops and a stomach clenching drop. As we rounded the corner to get in line, I stopped short with surprise. There at the top of the roller coaster's 162 foot peak, one of the cars was stopped cold. A group of engineers scurried around the car, tugging and pulling but to no avail. People…

Barney Fife. Scarlett O’Hara. Inigo Montoya. Huckleberry Finn. Hannibal Lecter. Atticus Finch. Sherlock Holmes. Elphaba. Luke Skywalker. All great characters with vibrant and memorable personalities. All a complex mix of flaws, quirks, dreams and failures. Here’s the thing about finding characters…predictable characters are dull characters. I think most would agree that the above characters are all interesting, memorable and larger-than-life. So what can you do when your characters seem lifeless and limp? 1. Find a trait from someone you know as a jumping-off point. Mark Twain based his character Huckleberry Finn almost precisely on his childhood buddy Tom Blankenship. “In…

Ah, the infamous 'comfort zone'. We crave it. We want it. It gives a sense of security and well-being, doesn't it? But here's the thing: the comfort zone is actually quite deceptive. It gives us the illusion of security, the illusion of happiness, of comfort. But oftentimes it's nothing more than a lie spilling from the lips of the enemy because hewants us to be complacent, ineffective and, quite frankly, too comfortable to get up off our backsides and do something. You see, great heroes of faith, the men and women who have changed history and shook up the world…