Derinda Babcock - Derinda Babcock

Tammy Osborn: Serving with Grace

January 15, 2014 by Derinda Babcock

Tammy please tell us about yourself. I am a 38 year old follower of Jesus Christ. I was a special education teacher before deciding to be a stay home mom. I have been married for over 10 years and have 2 amazing children. My son, Hunter is 6 and my daughter, Brooklyn is 4. I am a breast cancer survivor, and every day I try to live a life full of gratitude. What is WeServe, and how did you get involved? Weserve is an outreach program set up by Grace Church in Durango, Colorado, to help others in need. There …

At home education with Courtney Smith

January 8, 2014 by Derinda Babcock

Introducing Courtney Smith When Courtney Smith graduated in 1998, she was a member of the National Honor Society and the National Art Honor Society. She was also valedictorian of her class. She won a scholarship to Regis University, where she graduated with majors in math, chemistry, and computer science. She earned a visual arts minor. After Courtney graduated from Regis, she taught college prep chemistry at a private high school. She is currently a nationally certified athletic trainer, First Aid & CPR instructor, and a homeschooling mom of five. What was the deciding factor that caused you and your husband to …

Room to Spare and More

December 23, 2013 by Derinda Babcock

No Room to Spare When Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem, they could find no room in the crowded town for the Messiah to be born. The Christ took his first breath in a livestock shelter and slept in a straw-filled cattle manger. Today, times are hard for a lot of people. They live with hunger, and many have no place to call home. Gerry Geraghty and his family are trying to change this in Durango, Colorado. They have found room to spare for others in their home and lives. Gerry, why do you and your family open your home …

A Christmas Promise and Soldier’s Heart

December 18, 2013 by Derinda Babcock

A Christmas Promise and Soldier’s Heart by Tamera Lynn Kraft Tamera Lynn Kraft has always loved adventures. She loves to write historical fiction because there are so many stories in history. Soldier’s Heart and A Christmas Promise are her first published works. Tamera has recently celebrated her thirty-fourth anniversary with her loving husband, Rick. She has two grown and married children and two grandchildren. Tamera has been a children’s pastor for over 20 years. She is the leader of a ministry called Revival Fire For Kids where she mentors other children’s leaders, teaches workshops, and is a children’s ministry consultant and children’s evangelist. She …

Party of One: Quit dining alone

December 11, 2013 by Derinda Babcock

Clarice, tell us how Party of One came to be? I was widowed in 1998, around the same time the movie The Sixth Sense came out. Every time I saw the trailer and heard the line “I see dead people walking around; they’re everywhere,” I would think, “I see lonely people walking around; they’re everywhere.” Fifteen years later, I still do. During the eight years I was widowed, God gave me a heart for single adults—especially those who have slipped through the cracks between active couples and busy families. You know who I mean. They’re the ones who volunteer to …

Tying the Past to the Present

November 26, 2013 by Derinda Babcock

The theme of this website is “Tying the Past to the Present: looking through the lens of history to learn lessons for today.” As a Christian historical writer, I’ve learned many things through historical research that have informed and enriched my life. They’ve given me a better appreciation of people who lived in different times, and made me thirsty to learn more. As an educator, lessons were a daily part of my life for almost a quarter of a century, and each lesson I designed was created to help students gain the skills they needed to better interact with, and …

To Blog, or Not to Blog: That was the question

November 26, 2013 by Derinda Babcock

I knew when I switched careers from teacher to writer there would be new challenges, learning, and expectations. Instead of dealing with students, parents, other teachers, counselors, and administrators, my world is now populated with readers, other writers, critique partners, literary agents, and publishing house editors. It made me nervous to think of starting over at the bottom of the pile, and I wondered if I was ready for the change. Did I have the necessary skills? Could I grow a skin thick enough to take rejection in stride and learn from it? Could I meet deadlines? Would the energy …

The Impact of Career Choice on My Writing

November 26, 2013 by Derinda Babcock

CHANGING CAREERS I was an English Language Acquisition teacher for almost twenty-five years. During this time, I worked with students from many different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. How these students communicated with me and each other, and when and why bilingual people chose to code switch, or alternate between two or more languages in a single conversation, have been sources of on-going interest and fascination for me. Randy Pausch said, “The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It’s not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or …