by Carol James
I remember the first thoughts I had when my husband and I arrived in Atlanta, Georgia from Fort Worth, Texas. We’d driven for sixteen hours with our cocker spaniel, a Styrofoam cooler full of tropical fish, and enough plants to start a small nursery in the back seat of our compact car.
As we made the final leg of our journey around the Atlanta perimeter to our new home, I stared through the window into the pitch black, fighting to stay awake in the early morning hours. And that’s when I first noticed them. Even though “Everything’s bigger in Texas,” the stars outside my window were larger and brighter than any I’d ever seen in Fort Worth.
Suddenly I realized the stars weren’t stars at all. They were streetlights and porch lights—diamonds shimmering through the forest of majestic trees that blanketed the hillsides of Atlanta. Trees. Hills. Rarities for a girl from Fort Worth. And I thought, “Father, please don’t let my eyes ever stop seeing this magnificence. May this beauty never become commonplace or invisible to me.”
While I’ve always loved the splendor of the tree-covered hills in Georgia, with each return trip to Texas, I began to see a stark beauty in the flat, almost treeless landscape around Fort Worth. An allure I never saw when I lived there. An openness that called to my heart. And in the midst of the simplicity of central Texas, the fictional town of Crescent Bluff, the primary setting for my novels, was born.
In a pivotal scene in The Waiting, Katherine, the heroine, realizes she’s lived most of her life in bondage to an idea she now believes is false. The setting for that scene needed to be different from the rest of the novel. It needed to paint a powerful picture of the freedom she’d found. Yet nothing my mind conceived felt right. So I did what I always do when I hit a roadblock. I closed my laptop and took some time away.
We headed out on a camping trip to Cloudland Canyon in north Georgia. And there, hiking along the rim of the canyon, I found my setting. I looked twice for a “Setting Reserved for Carol” sign, because this was what I’d been searching for—exactly where Katherine needed to be. I snapped a picture. Texas is a big state; surely I could find a comparable location.
Enter the perfect place—and only a few hours from Crescent Bluff. Cloudland Canyon was about to be transformed into Balcones Canyonlands in the Texas Hill Country.
And although she didn’t yet know it, Katherine was going on a road trip.
Carol James is an author of inspirational fiction. She lives in a small town outside of Atlanta, Georgia with her husband, Jim, and a two-year-old Jack Russell “Terrorist,” Zoe. An English/education major in college, she has taught students as young as kindergarteners and as old as high school seniors.
Having always loved good stories with happy endings, she was moved to begin writing as a ministry––to encourage others as she’d been encouraged by the works of other authors of inspirational fiction.
Retired from her "real" job, she enjoys spending time with her husband, children, and grandchildren, traveling with friends, and serving in the production department at her church.
And, most days in the late hours of the night or the wee hours of the morning, she can be found bringing her newest novel to life.
You can follow Carol here:
Instagram: cjames5119
The Waiting
Katherine Herrington has her life under control—just the way she likes it—until she loses her mother, her boyfriend, and her job. When she was a teenager, she made “The List” and believed God would bring her the husband she desired. But after years of praying and no husband, she’s ready to accept the probability that God’s answer is “No.” That is, until she goes on a blind date with Sam Tucker.
“You have a question you want to ask me,” Sam whispered.
“Oh, I do? And what would that be?”
“You’re wondering why I haven’t tried to kiss you.”
Ktherine’s face was on fire as she stepped away. There’s no way he could have possibly known her thoughts.
“And you think it might be because I’m not attracted to you.” He entwined his fingers with hers and then raised their clasped hands to draw her back to him. “But you’re wrong.”
“Why haven’t you tried to kiss me then?” Katherine asked. “Every other man I’ve ever dated would have at least tried by now.”
“I’m not every other man.”
He was right about that.
