This is not the longest of the stories I’ve written, not by a long shot. It isn’t even the length of a novel, and it certainly wasn’t the first book to come into existence. Yet it is the first to appear here in Behind the Books, and for good reason. This little volume serves as a kind of presentation, an early observation of what I often call an emotional landscape shaped inside an atmospheric one. In other words, the storms around us have a way of shaping or completely disheveling the person within.

 

For me, that atmospheric landscape was the Northeast United States. Winter was not a season; it was a personality. Growing up in it, I learned to embrace the storm from without. And one of those places and occasion was my beloved school. And let me tell you, my school district believed no storm was strong enough to justify staying home. Blizzard? Ice? Snow up to your eyebrows? “See you at 8 a.m.” They almost never canceled, which, depending on your perspective, either builds character or character degradation.

But those years did something. They formed a way of seeing. Storms teach you about endurance, about direction, about what matters when everything else is white and loud and cold. And through the years, those experiences shaped my perspective the very perspective that eventually became the heart of Footprints in the Whiteout.

 

Most of my books, whether a full novel or a shorter work, they are usually written, polished, edited, formatted, and published in under a month. That is my normal rhythm. Efficient. Focused. A little intense. But Footprints in the Whiteout refused to follow that pattern. This one took years. A little over three years, to be exact. And looking back, there is a lesson in that delay, one that I learned along the way, and one you might find helpful too.

 

Not everything good must be done quickly to prove it is good. And before anyone misquotes me, let me be clear: this is not an invitation to procrastinate. Romans 12:11 still stands. Not slothful in business. Fervent in spirit. Serving the Lord. In other words, work hard and do not be lazy. Serve with devotion. But there are some things, especially the meaningful things… that require time. They need space to grow, to mature, to become what they are meant to be. Forcing them only prevents them from coming to pass.

Take Naharre, for example. Spoiler alert ahead, so consider yourself warned. When I first wrote Naharre, it felt complete and beautiful. But I sensed there was room for a continuation. A family. A deeper unfolding. And yet, for years, I could not write it. I tried. Nothing came. So I kept working on other things, not realizing that life itself was preparing me to write the continuation, the story that eventually became The Age of Plenty and the Poverty of Want, a crucial part of this book. That story could not have been written earlier because I had not lived the things that would give it weight.

 

And that raises a question worth sitting with. How many things in our lives do we force simply because we assume urgency is good and delay is failure? How many good things could we have been part of, or produced if we had simply waited for the right season? Trees do not grow faster because we shout at them. Storms do not pass because we glare at the sky. Growth takes time. Roots deepen in silence. And sometimes the very storm we want to escape is the one preparing us for what comes next.

If the storm outside teaches you endurance, the storm inside teaches you honesty. And between the two, honesty is usually the harder lesson. The external storm might sting your face, freeze your eyelashes, and make you question your life choices, but the internal storm is the one that sits you down and says, “We need to talk.”

 

In Footprints in the Whiteout, the inner storm is not a dramatic explosion. It is a narrowing. A tightening. A quiet pressure that pushes a person toward the hard place, the place where excuses stop working and the soul has to face what it has avoided. Naharre learned this in a way he never expected. He wanted solitude, but what he truly wanted was control. He wanted the world on his terms, and that desire led him through a door he was never meant to open.

 

Naharre’s storm was the storm of self-importance. His mind refused the new season even though his body was already in it. He tried to escape the noise of others, only to discover the louder noise of his own thoughts. The dim room, the second door, and the rugged hard place were not punishments. They were mirrors. They revealed what happens when a person chooses isolation over humility. And when he saw the old man fishing in the wrong pool, surrounded by better waters, he saw what he would become if he continued down that path. A life spent doing the right thing in the wrong way. A life trapped by its own stubbornness.

 

The storm within is the threshold storm. It is the moment when the path narrows and you realize you cannot carry everything you once did. Some things must be set down. Some things must be confessed. Some things must be healed. And some things, as Naharre discovered, must be surrendered before the next chapter can even begin.

 

We often think the internal storm is a sign of failure. It is not. It is a sign of formation. Trees do not grow strong because the weather is kind. They grow strong because the wind insists on it. Roots deepen because storms demand it. And the soul, in its own way, follows the same pattern. The storm within is not there to destroy you. It is there to reveal you. It is there to bring you back to the people who love you, even when you have forgotten how much you need them.

 

Sometimes the physical storm will trap your steps and hold you still, not to punish you, but to teach you to face the storm within. There are moments when the snow piles high, the wind closes every path, and the world refuses to let you move forward. In those moments, the question is no longer how far you can go, but what you will do while you are stopped. What rises in you when you cannot outrun yourself. What truth you finally hear when the noise around you is taken away.

 

Every footprint you leave in a storm tells a story. Some footprints lead a person deeper into the cold because they refuse to be still long enough to listen. Other footprints become a beacon because the person who made them learned something in the stillness that changed the way they walked. The two hunters in The Hunter’s Decision learned this in the hardest way. The storm trapped them, stripped away their plans, and forced them to choose between survival and compassion. Their footprints did not lead them deeper into the whiteout. Their choice to be still, to care, and to act with mercy became the very thing that saved them. What they thought would cost them everything became the path that brought help back to them.

 

So ask yourself. When life forces you to stop, what do you discover about your own heart. When the path ahead disappears, what direction does your character take. And when the storm finally clears, will the footprints you leave behind show a person who ran blindly into the whiteout, or someone who came out of it with a clearer step and a steadier soul.

This is why the book moves between the outer whiteout and the inner threshold. One storm shapes the body. The other shapes the heart. And together, they prepare a person for the journey ahead.

 

As you walk through Footprints in the Whiteout, you will notice that the stories are not scattered pieces. They are arranged in cycles, each one carrying its own weather system, its own lesson, and its own kind of storm. These cycles are not simply categories. They are stages of the soul. They show how a person moves from survival, to confrontation, to clarity, to belonging.

 

 

The Winter Cycle

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• The Hunter's Decision

• Contriving

• A Certain Man and His People

 

This cycle deals with the storms that come from the outside. The cold that forces you to choose between instinct and compassion. The moments when survival and character collide. The Winter Cycle teaches that the footprints you leave in the snow reveal more about you than the storm ever could.

 

 

The Threshold Cycle

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• The Standoff at Sundown

• Do, Dunt, Dingle: The Gracie Combs Effect

 

Here the storm moves inward. These stories deal with the narrow places of the soul, the moments when a person must face what they have avoided. The Threshold Cycle is where the internal storm speaks, and where the path forward requires honesty, courage, and sometimes a good hard pause.

 

 

The Fable Cycle

 

• Freedoh's Journey: Beyond the Reflection

• The Hidden Peace of the Shallow Pond

 

These stories teach through simplicity. They use small creatures, quiet ponds, and gentle metaphors to reveal truths that are often too sharp to face directly. The Fable Cycle reminds us that wisdom sometimes arrives in the softest footsteps.

 

 

The Woodland Shrub Cycle

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• Naharre and The Feast of Woodland Shrub

• The Age of Plenty and the Poverty of Want

 

This cycle deals with belonging, identity, and the danger of being trapped in your own mind. Naharre’s story shows what happens when the mind refuses to enter the new season the body is already living in. The continuation reveals how abundance without gratitude becomes poverty of the soul.

 

 

Now, if we are being honest, each of these cycles could have been its own book. A thicker one too. There is enough symbolism, enough life experience, enough theology, and enough human nature in these pages to fill volumes. And perhaps one day they will. After all, every story has a story behind it. Every cycle has its own origin. And every lesson had to be lived before it could be written.

Many readers have asked what inspired these stories. What moments, what storms, what seasons of life shaped them. Those answers are not small. Some of them are humorous. Some of them are heavy. Some of them came from years of observation. Others came from a single moment

that refused to leave me alone until it was written down.

 

These are the kinds of things we will talk about more in the reader group. The inspirations. The questions. The behind the scenes. The artwork. The sketches. The symbolism. The choices. The things that did not make it into the book. And the things that almost did.

So if you want to go deeper, if you want to ask questions, if you want to see how the paintings came about or why a certain scene was written the way it was, join us there. The conversation continues, and the journey through the whiteout is far from over.