I feel like I failed," I said. "Don't beat yourself up," Jim said. "She might not have turned out like you planned, but that don't mean she turned out wrong.

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.

I became known as Lily Casey, the mustang-breaking, poker-playing, horse-race-winning schoolmarm of Coconino County, and it wasn't half bad to be in place where no one had a problem with a woman having a moniker like that.

Sometimes something catastrophic can occur in a split second that changes a person's life forever; other times one minor incident can lead to another and then another and another, eventually setting off just as big a change in a body's life.

But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.

God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.

When someone's wounded, the first order of business is to stop the bleeding. You can figure out later how best to help them heal.