Blog
My cousin emailed me this picture the other day, with a note saying they’ve finally designed a cell phone that’s right up my alley. If you still don’t get it after a cursory glance at the picture, then you’re either a fellow luddite or a teenager who’s never seen a rotary phone. Now, this probably doesn’t seem worth more than a perfunctory chuckle until I tell you the rest of the story:
The cousin who sent the email is Amish.
I’m serious. I can now lay legitimate claim to the title of Undisputed World Champion Luddite. You know you’re a world class luddite when the Amish make jokes about your technical ineptitude.
My last cell phone was a simple little flip phone. I never took a picture with it because I own a camera. I didn’t use it for checking my email because I have a computer for that, and I didn’t use it for browsing the internet because I didn’t know how and didn’t care to learn. I couldn’t send a text message because (a) my thumbs are...
Continue Reading »
I want to point out a really nice review of Captive Heart recently posted by my friend Jackie Cooper (and no, he’s not the same Jackie Cooper who was on The Little Rascals a hundred years ago.) You can find the review here:
http://www.jackiekcooper.com/captive-heart.html
We also did a brief video interview about The Captive Heart, and about writing in general. You can watch the interview here:
http://jackiekcooper.com/dale-cramer-interview.html
Jackie is an entertainment critic for the Huffington Post, and you’ll find both the book review and the interview on their page as well, but I was hoping I could steer my readers to Jackie’s website because I want you to know more about him. He’s an unusual man.
Born and raised in Clinton, South Carolina (pronounced ‘Clinnon’, for those of us who aren’t from around there), Jackie’s childhood was the southern small-town version of idyllic. But like many of us, once he got away from home he made some errant choices and his life took a grievous turn: he went to law school, passed the bar, and became a lawyer. ...
Continue Reading »
I want to shout out a great big THANK YOU to everyone who participated in last Friday’s marathon Book Banter gabfest hosted by Bethany House Publishers on their Facebook page. It was a lot of fun, and I gained a few insights about what readers want out of a book. At the end of the day our intrepid publicist Noelle Buss chose six names from among the visitors, and those six lucky participants will be receiving in the mail a FREE copy of my latest novel, The Captive Heart.
And the winners are:
(drum roll, please)
Gwyn Ratcliff Valvende
Shaun Tabatt
Cindy Thomson
Gidget Pettey
Bobbie Neal
Melissa Dripps Lemaire
Congratulations to all the winners! All you have to do now is send your street address to Noelle at:
noelle.buss@bethanyhouse.com
Again, thanks for participating and for reading my books. Have a blessed day!
Continue Reading »
I guess it’s about time I announced the impending arrival of my newest child. The Captive Heart, book two in the Daughters of Caleb Bender series, is currently being printed and will be in bookstores in a few short weeks. If reader feedback is any indication, a lot of people are anxious to know what happens to Miriam and Domingo. The Captive Heart answers that question, but I won’t give away any more than that. I will say this: things happen in this book that I’m fairly certain have never happened in any Amish story before. The pace really picks up in this one; friends who have read it in manuscript form are telling me it’s a page turner. Imagine— an Amish page turner. It’s full of surprises, and goes in directions nobody expects.
The Captive Heart is scheduled to be in stores December 1, or you can pre-order a copy through online outlets like CBD or Amazon— which, by the way, is a really good thing to do if you’re interested in helping an author boost his sales...
Continue Reading »
A couple days ago my friend Lori Patrick sent me the following excerpt of a Bill Moyers interview with Maurice Sendak, Caldecott winning author of the childrens’ classic, Where The Wild Things Are.
Bill Moyers (to Sendak): My friend Joseph Campbell once told me long before I met you that one of the great moments in literature is this scene in WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: “And when he came to the place where the wild things are, they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said, ‘Be still’ and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once. And they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things.”
Joseph Campbell went and got that and read it to me. And he said, “That is a great moment because it’s only when a man tames his...
Continue Reading »
