Books
Elizabeth in the Woods
A writer never knows when the muse is going to speak or what it is going to say.
I was discouraged. My novel wasn't getting any better after the umpteenth rewrite. I had begun a practice of going into the woods near my home to meditate under an old oak tree. One Saturday the words "Elizabeth loved the woods more than anything" spilled out. Then, the next three lines - "More than chocolate cake. More than dog kisses. More that her ruffled pink pillow." I was hooked. I wrote the story in two hours, laughing and crying the whole time. A children's book? Well ... a children's book that's also for adults.
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Matches in the Gas Tank,
a Memoir
An inner voice woke up me at 2:00 in the morning and told me to start writing. This wasn't a gentle voice; it was loud and commanding. I crawled out of bed and went to the computer. There was no doubt what I would write about. I was weighed down by a big, ugly secret.
I had not grown up average and middle class as I pretended. My fifth-grade educated father had taken Mother and me into a cult when I was three months old. When Dad became disillusioned with the Radio Church of God, he lacked the emotional maturity to lead Mother - then a true believer - out. Mother, my two brothers and I stayed faithful while Dad acted out his fury as a violent, alcoholic pyromaniac. The result was profound poverty and never-ending fear.
Matches in the Gas Tank tells the story of my first 17 years in the Radio Church of God with its punitive and abusive structures presided over by the dictatorial Herbert W. Armstrong, the Church's founder and prophet. His vision of how to get to "The Kingdom of God" and avoid a sea of flames consisted of unending lists of rules covering everything from food consumption to financial responsibilities to avoiding medical help to clothing. But more than an insider's view of a cult, it is a story of redemption. Set in the days between receiving a call to go to the hospital where my dad lay comatose and dying - a man I had not seen in 30 years - and the funeral, I explore the world I had spent a lifetime running from and, ultimately, find a way to forgive.
