Tanara McCauley

Culturally Imagined Stories

Category: Faith, Relationships, and Other Topics

  • Dare to Live the Dream

    Every dream has a starting point. My love of reading, and the eventual desire to write, began in the pages of two childhood classics. Where the Red Fern Grows is the first book to ever make me weep. Not cry. Weep. Hysterically. As if my house had just gone up in flames and every family…

  • Too Fat to Fly

    But those who wait on the Lord…they shall mount up with wings like eagles. The other morning I pulled up to my driveway and encountered the fattest pigeon I’ve ever laid eyes on. After the initial shock of seeing its size, I wanted to see it move out of my parking spot. I approached, fully expecting…

  • Promised

    Life–if we’re honest–is hard. That’s not to say it isn’t good. Laughter, the arms of a child thrown around your neck, kisses from the one you love–these are all precious tidbits of the countless things that keep us striving to lengthen our days. But life does throw many a curve ball. And these unexpected hurls…

  • White Chocolate Banana Nut Bread

    My favorite banana bread recipe is from William-Sonoma’s Essentials of Baking cookbook. If you can find the book, which is no longer available through their site, I recommend you snag it. It’s a culinary gem. I’ve since slightly altered the way I make the banana bread recipe, mainly adding white chocolate, more nuts, and cutting or tweaking an ingredient…

  • Tongue on Fire

    My son hovered over the boneless, tasty looking mango-habanero chicken wings with a gleam in his eye. “Don’t touch ’em son,” I told him. “They’re too spicy. We saved you the others.” He grabbed his wings, satisfied enough, but greedily licked the sauce from a finger that had grazed the forbidden ones. The small taste set…

  • Green Thumb Blues

    8 weeks: Ooh look how it’s growing! 9 weeks: Wow that thing sprouted! 10 weeks: Is that what it’s supposed to look like? 11 weeks: Wait, which variety did I plant? 12 weeks: I hope that’s not a weed. 12 1/2 weeks: It better not be a weed. 12 1/2 weeks + 1 day +…

  • Ready…or Not: An Author’s Pre-Conference Petition (and Parody)

    In less than a week, I will kiss my husband and kids goodbye, board a plane, hoist my carry-on in the overhead compartment, and fly to Indianapolis for the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) Conference. I’ve worked on my proposal and one-sheets (all that’s great about your novel on one page), practiced my elevator pitch,…

  • Have You Leapt Yet?

    Nothing is more disastrous than to study faith, analyze faith, make noble reservations of faith, but never actually to make the leap of faith. -Vance Havner So the question is: have you leapt yet?

  • O Death, Where is Your Sting!

    These past twelve months have seen their share of trouble. In the circles of my family and nearest my family we’ve endured several trials and losses, from serious illness diagnoses to organ transplants to multiple unexpected deaths. Tomorrow we bury another loved one, a beautiful soul who was like a fourth sister in our close…

  • You Marathoner, You

    Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.” 1 Corinthians 9:24 Go ahead then. Let’s do this thing.