Judythe Morgan blog Archives - View from the Front Porch

25 09, 2025

Guest Author Today – Pamela S Thibodeaux

By judythemorgan|2025-09-07T17:04:12-05:00September 25th, 2025|Author Interview, Guest author, Guest blogger|2 Comments

Welcome Pamela S Thibodeaux, my Guest Author Spotlight today. She’s here to tell us about her novel, My Heart Weeps.

Meet Pamela ~ Award-winning author, life coach, and spiritual mentor.

“Inspirational with an Edge!” ™ is her author tagline and also defines her life, her writing, and her coaching style.

You can find and follow Pam everywhere through LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/pamelasthibodeauxauthor
Sign up to receive her newsletter and get access to a free short story!

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Pamela is sharing with us why she wrote My Heart Weeps.

My beloved passed away in 2009. A couple of years later, while talking with a gentleman whom I’d been seeing, I made the remark, “I feel your love for me in every fiber of my being, and my heart weeps because I’m just not ready for anything more than friendship.” My next comment was, “That sounds like a book title.”

This book took eight years to write, was released on the anniversary of my husband’s death, and is the story of one woman’s journey from grief into new life and parallels mine.

When life takes everything, your world stops. Can a retreat heal the broken lives of two wounded souls?

Melena Rhyker’s world shattered the day her husband died. Lost without the man of her dreams, she digs deep to find a path out of her sorrow. Discovering an artistic retreat, she vows to find a reason to carry on and focus her life in a new direction. Can she heal her own heart and find her new beginning?

Garrett Saunders knows pain. He’s spent most of his life hiding from his past. Regrets and lies haunt him, but he longs to leave them behind and embrace his true self. Will Melena’s efforts to rebuild her life in the face of such grief encourage him to exorcise his own demons of guilt and shame?

Will two hurting people find peace, wholeness, and perhaps love in the heart of Texas?

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~EXCERPT from My Heart Weeps

At 6 p.m., she pulled into the carport, turned off the engine and laid her head on the steering wheel.

“Well, I’m home again. Made it through another agonizing eight hours or so, now to get through another night.”

Gathering every ounce of courage she could summon, she disembarked from her vehicle, retrieved the mail from the box beside the door, and entered the house. She thumbed through the envelopes and advertisements, then laid them on the table and poured a glass of juice. She reached for the bottle of over-the-counter pain reliever and froze.

It would be so easy to end this pain.

Oh, what an enticing thought. Just take a handful of pills and end it all. Would she wake up in heaven? Would Jesus meet her there? Would Jonathan? What about the kids or Mama—would they understand? Or would she destroy them? Where was the faith she claimed to have? Why was it failing her now?

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To see how love and faith conquer all, grab your copy of Pamela Thibodeaux’s second-chance women’s fiction at these retailers:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4lN4mr4

Other Online Retailers: https://books2read.com/MyHeartWeeps

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DISCLAIMER: I do not read every book/author I host. Please do your book research before you buy.

9 09, 2019

Took A little Trip to the Gulf of Mexico

By judythemorgan|2019-09-09T06:54:24-05:00September 9th, 2019|A Writer's Life|0 Comments

As I rode in the car, a line from an very old ballad played in my head.

“In 1814 we took a little trip … on down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.”

Chances are you won’t recognize the lyrics.

The song, “The Battle of New Orleans,” was #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1959 and Johnny Horton won Best Country and Western Performance for his rendition.

I love those oldie ballads that tell such great stories. “Trailer for Sale or Rent,” “Big Bad John,” and all of Harry Chapin’s song are other favorites.

“The Battle of New Orleans” was an educational ballad. If you’re a history buff, you know there was a battle for New Orleans in 1814. And, the story song was accurate.

But New Orleans wasn’t my destination on my trip to the Gulf of Mexico.

I was headed to Corpus Christi with my youngest daughter and her oldest son to get him settled at the A&M campus there.

Taking a child to college is such a mixed bag of emotions. Exciting and sad at the same time.

My eyes teared up as we bid him farewell at the end of the day. Grandson looked a little apprehensive at the prospect of being totally on his own so far away from home and family to me.

His Mom managed the drop off better than I did. She knew her kid, had confidence in his ability to handle the new situation.

By Marcom.tamucc – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,

I made a second trip to The Island University on Labor Day weekend with his Pepa. This time to bring him back home for the holiday.

Grandson was all smiles. He’d loved his first week and couldn’t wait to get back!

Growing up and turning loose can be so hard on those of us watching. At least for this Nana it is.

1 12, 2012

Rush, Stress, and Busyness – Blogs last month you might have missed

By judythemorgan|2012-12-01T08:08:47-06:00December 1st, 2012|Uncategorized|0 Comments

NaNoWriMo 2012 has ended. (btw, MAJOR congratulations to those who stayed the course and wrote 50,000 words. I’m so impressed.)

Today’s December 1st. The holiday season is upon us and closing in like a speeding bullet.

If you’re like me, you’re skimming and skipping on social media sites and blogs.

Here are some blogs with writerly news or information I thought you’d want to know about:

Fictionwise is Now on Life Support – They’re Pulling the Plug in 3 Weeks’ Time

Digital Reader advises now would be a good time to go download any ebooks you still can. After December 21, 2012, you will not be able to access any of the ebooks you bought from Fictionwise sites (including Fictionwise.com, eReader.com and eBookwise.com).

Very latest on Fictionwise’s demise:

B&N is Still Sending Out Emails Re: Shutting Down Fictionwise

What People Talk About When They Talk About Bad Writing

Writer/agent Nathan Bransford’s take on a definition of bad writing.

Why is your second novel so important?

Agent Chip Macgregor discusses the biggest pitfalls in a second novel.

Sell More Fiction by Activating the Power of Book Clubs

How to employ bookclubs and discussion questions to increase your book sales.

6 Common Myths About Book Reviews

Debunks common misconceptions about book reviews

How Twitter Hashtags Help Authors Find Readers

Loved this list of handy hashtags to connect with readers

Your-e-reader-is-watching

Interesting discussion about trackers in eReaders: Your data profile shows when you read and when you don’t. Will it soon determine what you read?

YOUR TURN to SHARE: If you’ve found a blog, you think I may have missed, tell me about it in your comment.

17 08, 2012

Friday on the MILLER FARM – A Day in the life of a Chicken Wrangler

By judythemorgan|2012-08-17T09:09:29-05:00August 17th, 2012|Friday on the Miller Farm|7 Comments

Gathered in the shade to stay cool.

Yesterday morning when I (Sara the Chicken Wrangler extraordinaire) went to let the chickens out and give them food and water I discovered that one of the quail had gotten itself stuck in the space where the eggs roll out of the cage. This is not the first time this has happened so I was not at all surprised. After all quail, do have bird brains.

As I was getting it unstuck, I saw that the cage looked like something out of a quail horror movie. There were blood splatters all over the feeder. The stuck quail didn’t appear to be wounded enough to produce that much blood so I looked at the other quail.

One had what I guess would be the equivalent of a bloody lip — if quail had lips. Its mouth was bleeding and so every time it shook its head, blood went everywhere.

Not being as attached to the quail as I was dear Einstein (the rescued rooster from last week), I decided that what happened in the quail cage, stays in the quail cage and returned to the house.

Later that afternoon I went to retrieve eggs and check on the birds. One of the quail had in fact died. Since there was nothing I could do for it (I only revive roosters.), I went to play another round of “Get the egg from the small coop,” a game in which the challenge is to get the egg from the back of the cage (which is slanted away from the door) to the door and get it out before it rolls back down.

To make the task easier, I have found the perfect branch with a hook in it to scoot the egg forward. So far, my record is three tries before the egg goes into my basket.

Then I checked the other coop, which had a stunning lack of eggs. I thought perhaps the dirty condition of the nest boxes prevented the chickens from laying. After all, I would not even consider laying an egg in that filth even if I were prone to laying eggs – which I am not.

So I headed back up to the house for a shovel to clean out the nest boxes. I filled water jugs and headed back to the chicken yard with the shovel balanced on top of the chicken waterer. [In case you don’t know what a chicken waterer is check out this site.]

As I approached the coop, I saw something I never hope to see again. Bella (one of the four daschunds) had one of the chickens by the neck. I assumed she pulled it under the wire covering in the gate.

Anyway, I dropped everything to the ground and ran towards them yelling at Bella to stop.

Bella was distracted long enough for the chicken to head under the shed. Little did the chicken know that dachshunds are bred to go into small spaces after animals.

Bella headed under the shed. I, being much larger than the chicken and Bella combined, decided to approach the shed from the side in the chicken yard. I pulled the hen out from under the shed into the safety of the chicken yard.

Chicken wrangler – 1, Bella – 0

But Bella is watching, waiting…