My father was my inspiration when it comes to my fascination for the natural world. Dad grew up in the woods and, even in his 60’s and 70’s, spent all the time he could spare hiking. I expect that some of you who are reading this have been on some of my father’s famous hikes. He used to take his teenage and young adult Bible classes on hikes to Little River Canyon and Seven Room Rock in Alabama. As he led hikers through the woods, Dad would reveal some of nature’s beautiful secrets and use them as visual aids to teach spiritual lessons that those with him on these wonderful occasions would not soon forget. For example, he would show us the Bellwort, which was a plant with a small trumpet-shaped flower which always hung down. When you looked at the plant, you only ... Read More about Where Did You Learn About All of the Plants You Mention in Your Stories?
Tales of Larkin’s The Wompus Rat (part 2)
This is a continuation of my last blog post. So if you have not read that post you should go do it now. It is entitled The Wompus Rat: Tales of Larkin’s hilarious “Scary Story”. It contains some interesting background information for this post and you can find it at this link:https://storieschangehearts.com/the-wompus-rat-tales-of-larkins-hilarious-scary-story/. When in my book Tales of Larkin: Hawthorn’s Discovery I was writing the part where Rush tied a rat skull onto his head, wrapped his cloak around himself and held the dead rat’s claws to scare the Renegades, I thought his disguise needed a name. Remembering Preacher’s ghost story about the Wompus Cat, I decided to christen it “The Wompus Rat.” I laughed out loud when I thought of it. Here’s a section from my book ... Read More about Tales of Larkin’s The Wompus Rat (part 2)
The Wompus Rat : Tales of Larkin’s Hilarious “Scary Story”
If you’ve read my first book Tales of Larkin: Hawthorn’s Discovery, you know that the book is full of exciting twists and turns. When my father read it, his response was, “You could’ve made four books out of that one with all the adventures you put in it.” The reason that I made it that exciting was to keep my kids engaged. It worked! They each have their favorite parts, but the chapter that they all loved was “The Wompus Rat.” I’ve been asked several times from where that idea came. To answer that, I will have to take you back to when I was fourteen years old. At that time I was working for my father, making cuttings for a plant nursery he was building. My father had hired two other men with whom I was working, and they were known as “Preacher” and “Boat.” The ... Read More about The Wompus Rat : Tales of Larkin’s Hilarious “Scary Story”
Hey Tales Of Larkin Fans, Join Me On a Tour of Stillwaters
As I have thought about my stories, I have always particularly enjoyed exploring in my imagination the places where my characters live. I have explored the Steps where the First Clan of Larkin live, the Keep where Hawthorn, Rush and Jay live, and the Renegade Lair. But my favorite place to poke around is the Makerian stronghold at Stillwaters. The Makerian stronghold is a fascinating place to me! It is carved out of a living cypress stump that is growing out in a small woodland lake. You can enter the stronghold from the shore of the lake by a gate that has been carved into one of the cypress knees growing out of the ground near the edge of the water. This gate leads you to a tunnel that is carved through the center of the cypress root leading to the lower levels of the ... Read More about Hey Tales Of Larkin Fans, Join Me On a Tour of Stillwaters
“Where Did You Get the Idea for Your Second Book: Tales of Larkin – Larkin’s Journal?”
I’m sure all of you faithful readers have read the last blog post: https://storieschangehearts.com/how-did-god-fit-into-the-tales-of-larkin/. And I’m also sure that you have all been waiting eagerly to find out what I did with all of the background information I thought of for the first book, since I used almost none of it in writing the first book. It’s not that all of that background information was unimportant. Rather, I felt that it was important and interesting enough that I wanted to use it as a basis for a second book. My book Tales of Larkin: Larkin’s Journal is the story of the history of the Larkin people. In that story I put most of those unused ideas I came up with as I was preparing to write the first book. After the first book was published, I had ... Read More about “Where Did You Get the Idea for Your Second Book: Tales of Larkin – Larkin’s Journal?”
How Did God Fit Into The Tales Of Larkin
I’ve written before that I got the idea for the Larkin people as I sat beside a creek in the woods many years ago. From the beginning I wanted to figure out a way to honor God with the story. But since it was a tale about inch-tall people living deep in the woods with no contact with humans, doing that was going to be a challenge. Before I could write a word of the story it had to make sense to me. Many of the “hows” and “whys” of the plot had to be worked out in my mind. To do this I spent several hours thinking my way through the basics of the story idea. A lot of my thinking time was put into figuring out how these isolated people could ever have heard about God, Jesus, and the Bible. Eventually I was able to come up with an explanation for all of that which made sense to me and fit ... Read More about How Did God Fit Into The Tales Of Larkin