Hello, Petticoats and Pistols friends! I’m so honored to be back on the ranch with you all today. Pull up a chair, because I’m about to tell you the truth about writing a heroine who sees the world in a way I never fully could, no matter how hard I tried.
I wear glasses, and I still trip over and run into more things than I’d like to admit in public. So, when I sat down to write Vision of My Heart, the seventh and final book in my Discerning God’s Best series, and gave my heroine complete blindness, I knew I couldn’t fake my way through it. I had to actually live inside a world with no light in it at all, not even the blurry kind I navigate every day.
Serafina Shankel lost her sight to smallpox. She refuses to lose anything else. Not her sharp tongue, not her stubborn independence, not the fire that made her impossible to overlook long before anyone worried about her eyes. Every scene from Sera’s point of view had to work through sound, touch, and smell alone. No sunsets. No knowing glances across a room. If I couldn’t feel it, hear it, or smell it, it didn’t belong on the page.
Connor Finnegan isn’t the rescuing type. He’s the staying type. He finds her in the storm, says little, does what needs doing, and sticks around long after the danger’s passed, because loss taught him that showing up quietly matters more than showing up loud. What grows between them has nothing to do with the way she looks, because she’ll never see his face at all, and everything to do with the way he shows up for her, over and over, in the small unglamorous moments that make up a real courtship on the frontier.
The West has always struck me as the perfect setting for a story like this. Life out there didn’t leave room for pretense. You survived by what you could actually do, not by how you looked doing it. That stripped-down honesty is exactly what Sera needed, and exactly what let Connor’s steadiness speak louder than any polished words could have.
Here’s my confession. I’m not Sera. I still have some sight left, enough to be dangerous behind a grocery cart, but nowhere near enough to have written her by imagination alone. I closed my eyes more times than I can count while drafting this book, just to feel what a hallway or a porch step or a stranger’s voice would tell me if sight weren’t in the equation. It was humbling. It was also one of the most spiritually honest things I’ve ever done as a writer, because it forced me to trust, the way Sera has to trust, that there’s more than one way to see clearly.
A Question for You
Have you ever had to navigate something (literally or otherwise) without the sense you usually rely on? What did it teach you? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments.
Giveaway
I’m giving away an eBook copy of any one of the books in my Discerning God’s Best series to one commenter today.
Vision of My Heart closes out a seven-book journey through Shumard Oak Bend, and while it stands on its own, Sera and Connor’s story means so much more once you’ve walked the road with everyone who came before them. If you haven’t started the series yet, there’s no better time than now. Grab Book One, Desire of My Heart, and meet the family you’ll come to love long before Sera ever takes center stage.
Thank you so much for spending a little of your day here with me. I love hearing from you, and knowing you took the time to comment is a real encouragement. I’ll be checking in throughout the day to chat with each of you. Good luck in the giveaway, friends! Here is the full series except for Vision of My Heart.
Author Bio: Heidi Gray McGill is a Selah Award finalist and five-time NEST Award-winning author of Christian historical and contemporary fiction. Her Discerning God’s Best series has earned over 3,500 five-star reviews on Amazon, where readers describe her work as “faith-filled fiction with flawed but lovable characters.” She began her writing journey in March 2020, after retirement, proving that God’s calling has no expiration date.
A sought-after encourager in the writing community, Heidi speaks and writes on the craft of storytelling, writing with biblical conviction, and reaching readers across generational and cultural divides. She is both independently and traditionally published, and she writes despite progressive vision loss, which has only sharpened her perspective on what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.
Connect with Heidi and receive a free prequel to her bestselling series at HeidiGrayMcGill.com.
Christian Fiction. Relatable Characters. Life-changing Stories. Fusing Faith and Fiction™
Archer King was key to developing the genre. As a professional photographer with studios in southeast Nebraska, he took plenty of serious photographs of farms, prize livestock, rural scenes, and everyday life. But around 1908–1909, he also created a wonderful series of novelty postcards showing a Nebraska where everything seemed to grow — well, a little too much.
Last week I was on a writing retreat/vacation in the Wisconsin Dells. Not the west, but a place I’d never been before. I confess I had preconceived notions about the Dells. I thought it was a tourist town full of water parks and resorts and geared to kids and families. Well, to be honest, the Dells are a tourist town full of water parks (20!! Supposedly the most water parks in one town in the world) and geared to kids and families. But you know what? It turned out to be fine because we saw some gorgeous natural sights, drank some amazing wine, and enjoyed some remarkable scenery while we were there.
The history of the area was most fascinating and what I mainly want to share with you today. The gorge that the Wisconsin River flows through is a wonderland of sandstone cliffs formed some 19,000 years ago when a glacial lake burst an ice dam and unleashed a flood that cut deep narrow gorges into the sandstone. What was left were all kinds of unusual rock formations, sone as high as 100 feet.
We took a tour boat ride up the river to view the incredible cliffs and even walked through a formation that was called the Witch’s Gulch—a fascinating moss-covered slot canyon that was spectacular with different-colored striated layers of sandstone. At one point, we had to squeeze through two sections that were very snug together. Beautiful trees, ferns, and other plants grow out of the sandstone cliffs. We also learned about the photographer H.H. Bennett (he invented the stop-action shutter for catching motion in photography), who made the Dells famous with his photographs of the area. We discovered the history and culture of the Ho-Chunk Nation, who’ve lived in the region and across Wisconsin for thousands of years.
I got words written on my WIP, my travel buddy got a blanket made for her college-age grandson so he’ll be warm in his Wisconsin dorm this winter, so all in all, a successful trip. If you’ve never been to the Wisconsin Dells, I recommend a visit, but unless you’re looking for a waterpark experience, I’d make it in late fall after the tourist season. The town may be known as the water park capital of the world, but it’s also full of history and natural wonders that are must-sees.
FYI and apropos of nothing I’ve been talking about: If you love sweet cowboy romance, 
