I apologize for the silence, folks. For the past several days, I’ve been trying to come up with some crazy exciting story to explain my absence – something involving portals, dragons, and a mysterious call to save he world – but once I sat down to write it, I figured there’s actually no need to elaborate on the true story.

It’s fairly thrilling, involving a death-defying escape and a helicopter ride and flaming vehicles.

Intrigued?

Well, long story short … I was in a car accident last Wednesday. My truck spun out on a road with a speed limit of 70 mph and ended up slamming head first into a tree. Not sure if I blacked out completely or was just really dazed, but my first conscious thought was of buzzing in my ears and smoke everywhere and pain and something wet dripping on my hands.

Then somebody was pounding on the side of the truck, shouting “Get out! It’s on fire!”

That brought me to pretty quickly. I tried the driver’s door, but it was jammed. But the adrenaline was pumping hard enough that I managed to jump over the console into the passenger seat, open the door, and stumble out in the arms of the folks who had stopped when they saw my truck smoking.

From there, I watched as my truck caught on fire and was consumed by the flames – after my rescuers managed to salvage my laptop and all the important stuff I had in the front seat – and waited for EMS to arrive. A helicopter took me to the hospital where I’ve been since. Apparently I broke my jaw in multiple places and fractured parts of my face, so I’ve had one surgery so far and another coming up, and several days of napping in the hospital in between.

All in all though, this story is the most exciting story I could have come up with, because I can clearly see God’s hand on the whole situation, and I am simply left feeling grateful. It could have been so much worse than it was. I mean … I was able to walk away from the accident – sure, I didn’t get very far, just out of the reach of the flames, and I had to take a wee detour past the hospital, but those are just minor details in the big scheme of things.

Nobody else was injured. My truck was the only vehicle involved. And yet once more God’s perfect timing came into play when there were people who came along the road just afterwards who were extremely helpful! Throughout the length of my stay in the hospital, I have been overwhelmed with the kindness of friends and family and sometimes even complete strangers who have rallied around me.

I have so much to be grateful for.

Including a publisher who was very understanding when I had to inform him that my Orphan’s Song edits were going to be just a tad late since editing a novel on high doses of pain medication doesn’t make for the best combination.

So here we are. I’m alive. I have not forgotten poor Alexander and hope to be continuing his story soon … though it might be a bit sporadic at first, since I’ll be neck deep in the last of my edits post surgery!

At the end of the day, all I can say is the Lord is good!