The Cop: A Free Story from Seven Years Running
Today I’m sharing a story which will appear in fuller form in our upcoming book, Seven Years Running. Enjoy!
My Stab at Sci-Fi
My fugitive childhood running from the cops inspired this sci-fi scene, running from an evil slave tycoon.
A Woman Pursues Ecuadorian Residency in Loja
When I found out we would be returning to Loja (unexpectedly, see 2016 Holiday Letter), I downloaded The Visa Chase and Other Fun Stories of Ecuador, by Diana Cevallos to my Kindle. Diana is an expat from the United States who has been living in Ecuador since 2011 and in Loja since 2012. She spent…
Making Meaning From Your Past – A Toastmasters Speech
Below is the transcript of a basic speech I put together for Toastmasters several months ago. I plan to expand this speech and mix it up with some other stories and tell it wherever people are interested in hearing it! If you know of any podcasts or radio shows or audiences who might enjoy an…
The Metal Skeleton in Mexico
What follows is a story from my childhood. The brief background: when my sister and I were six and eight years old, our mother kidnapped us (at our request) to protect us from our abusive father, who had won custody of us. We lived as fugitives for seven years. Five of those years were in…
The Research Behind Our Story
If you’re my age or older, you might remember a time during the 1980s when the pictures of missing children appeared on the sides of milk cartons. I remember sitting at the kitchen table and asking about those pictures and feeling very apprehensive that a scary stranger might try to kidnap me. Not long after that,…
Where Are My Children? A Story Eerily Like Ours
Are you looking forward to the release of Seven Years Running? If you enjoy these types of books, I have a recommendation for you. A couple of months ago, I read a book called Where are My Children? by Cassie Kimbrough. My mom read it recently, too. We have been talking about all the similarities with our…
Behind the Scenes of 7YR: Our Book Writing Tools
It takes a lot of dedication to write a book. It’s a major undertaking! Co-authoring a book has its advantages, but also adds a new layer of complexity, especially when the co-authors live far apart, as my mom and I do. Are you curious about how we’re doing it? Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the…
Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico: One of My Childhood Homes
When I was a kid living on the run with my mom and younger sister, we spent about a year living in Uruapan, in the Mexican state of Michoacán. Recently, memories of Uruapan have been flooding back as we polish up that section of our book, Seven Years Running. Our favorite place in Uruapan was…
A Sherlock Holmes in El Paso (New Book Excerpt!)
Hey, everyone! I’m excited to host my first ever guest post on the blog! This is a true story, written by my mom, Rhoda Friend. It will appear in the book we are co-writing: Seven Years Running. I’ll let you jump right in and enjoy. Take it away, Mama!…………It was my day to volunteer at…
2016 Goals
In last week’s post, I wrote my overview of 2015, looking back at what went well and what didn’t go so well. This week I share my goals looking forward to 2016. Following the basic format outlined by Chris Guillebeau, I write down the major goal categories and set several specific, measurable goals for each….
2015 in Review
My 2015 started with a cold snap in Fort Collins, Colorado. Keith and I had just brought our motorhome to Colorado and we were still settling in, with the heaters all running full blast. The excitement of living in a great town and the prospect of soon finishing not one, but two books I’d had…