ADVICE Early in 2018 I reached out for advice from a number of people. One was John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart and other books. He was kind enough to respond with some personal words. H...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-writing-dream.html
Words are powerful. They can hurt or heal. They are treasures in each heart and we dare not keep them to ourselves. After Under a Cloudless Sky was published early in 2018, I started getting fe...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2018/05/words-are-jewels.html
What is your secret? We all have one. We all have something buried on the top of some hill of the past. Our great hope is that the secret will stay buried. Unseen. Dormant. A secret unsettles...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2018/01/your-secret-my-secret.html
A writing friend asked a question recently about a project he felt compelled to write. Publishers didn't clamor for his book and he was wondering what to do—actually, he was asking the pivotal ...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2017/10/advice-to-writing-friend.html
I woke up a few days ago humming a tune, thinking of a hymn I heard the Back to the Bible Quartet sing on a radio program long ago. This is one of those songs you have to sing in 4-part harmony t...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2017/04/more-love-to-thee-o-christ.html
Eight years ago, I made a commitment on Inauguration Day. Today seems like a good time to renew it. See what you think about "My Oath of Office" below—and the addendum by an anonymous responder...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2017/01/my-oath-of-office-2017.html
Five years ago today my father died. He had slipped away from my mother, and my brother and sister-in-law suggested I get there quickly. I drove up to the house with crickets and frogs providing ...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-end-and-beginning.html
Dr. Tim LaHaye has died. But, of course, we know he is now more alive than he ever was. A few thoughts about him. In 1995 I was hosting a program called Open Line on the Moody Broadcasting Net...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2016/07/better-than-bestseller.html
THE BEST REASON TO PRE-ORDER THE PROMISE OF JESSE WOODS My hope with each story is that it will grab you by the throat because you care about the people in the story. I took a couple of week...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-best-reason.html
REASON #4 TO PRE-ORDER THE PROMISE OF JESSE WOODS Music is critical to me getting my fiction right. I use songs of the period or soundtracks from films that get me in the right mood for the s...
REASON #3 TO PRE-ORDER THE PROMISE OF JESSE WOODS Setting is important to every story—and in the ones I tell, I try to make the setting so much a part of the tale that you feel as if you ar...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-setting-for-story.html
REASON #2 TO PRE-ORDER THE PROMISE OF JESSE WOODS Our first apartment in Chicago was at a place called Atrium Village. It was built at the edge of the Cabrini-Green housing project, just ac...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-link-to-real-life.html
REASON #1 TO PRE-ORDER THE PROMISE OF JESSE WOODS I think we all have pivotal years in life—when internal and external forces collide to shape us. For me, 1972 was pivotal because that was ...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-pivotal-year.html
The County Fair always makes me think about life. Maybe it's the aroma of corn dogs, popcorn, cotton candy and turkey legs that does it to me. Or the barkers who yell, "Step right up!" Or, "We ha...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2016/04/musings-at-county-fair.html
We had a chicken coop made for us by a neighborhood young man. It is hawk-proof and coyote-proof, the two main predators here in AZ. We had gotten these chickens for their eggs, but even more fo...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2016/01/lessons-from-chicken-coop.html
The Kendrick brothers have their story about how the film War Room originated. I have my own story that I brought to the writing of the novel based on the film. Our family was living in Illino...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2015/08/my-own-war-room-story.html
I said it out loud and to no one in particular during the NCAA tournament. “I miss Billy Packer.” It wasn’t because I didn’t like the commentators, necessarily. It wasn’t because Billy ...
The mind is an amazing thing. It can recall stuff from years ago with just a slightest hint of an aroma. I had a list of things, tissues, a recycle bin, a movie for my son, stevia packets and v...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2015/03/sundays-are-peppermint.html
Dear Woman behind me yesterday in church, over my left shoulder, who talked through the first part of the message: I can’t tell you how much I dislike it when people talk at the movie theater...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2015/02/to-woman-behind-me-in-church-yesterday.html
I can still see him standing at the top of the carpeted stairs in our Illinois house in his Blues Clues shirt, the two-tone green with the collar. The stairs had a railing on the right side but o...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2015/01/thoughts-on-dad-and-son-at-college.html
Lord, I give thanks for the things you brought me through in 2014. I give praise that these events, decisions, trials, struggles and problems did not consume me like a fire. This was my fear. Tha...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-prayer-for-2015.html
Being thankful is swimming upstream. It’s breaking out of the normal existence and routine. Here are the top eight things that prevent my heart from beating to the thankful drum. 1. Busyness....
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-top-eight-hurdles-of-thanksgiving.html
I had a professor in college who taught me a lot about journalism. He taught from the overflow of his life as a reporter. He taught how to interview. He taught the difference between writing for...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-lesson-he-never-taught.html
I said it loudly and with conviction. I said it to my dog. But I didn’t hear the irony until later. Tebow, our Morkie, was perched in his favorite spot on the back of the couch, scanning ...
https://chrisfabry.blogspot.com/2014/10/you-dont-have-to-bark-at-everything.html
I wept at the grocery store. I walked inside and was transported to the street where my grandmother lived more than 45 years ago. It was the smell, of course, that did it. The electric doors op...