Monthly Archives: November 2013

Thanksgiving Day is over. What now?

leftoversWhat does one do the day after Thanksgiving?

Fix turkey sandwiches.  And turkey salad.  And turkey–just plain old sliced cold turkey.  And turkey tetrazini.  And turkey-noodle soup.

Put up the Christmas tree.

Brave the crowds in the shopping malls.  Come home exhausted, disheveled but with a couple of bargains.   Tell stories of the peril you faced.

Sleep after all the effort put forth to clean house, welcome guests, and prepare the dinner.

Watch everything you taped while entertaining.

Clean the kitchen

Take the dog who found the turkey carcass and ate most of it to the veterinarian.grateful heart

But, most of all and most important, we can keep giving thanks!

Do you have any other suggestions?  If so, please put them in a comment.  I’d love to know.

Some Holiday Sparkle

DSC01807Patricia Johns is guest blogging today.  Her novel, hisunexpectedfamily His Unexpected Family,  was published by Love Inspired this summer.   Yesterday, I posted her bio and a blurb about this novel on my blog.   Today she writes about the miracles of Christmas.   Take it away, Patricia!

Some Holiday Sparkle

My son announced to his Kindergarten teacher that Santa wasn’t real. I got a distressed email from the teacher, asking me to make sure that he doesn’t tell any of the other children, lest their Christmas magic be ruined.

I fully understood, and I didn’t want to ruin the fun for the other kids, so I had a talk with my son about playing along with the Santa Claus game. I certainly didn’t want to be the Scrooge! And our family is big on Christmas–the tree goes up right after Halloween!

But it got me to thinking. A lot of these kids were being raised without any belief in God.  Yet there is such a protective instinct around the idea of Santa, wanting these little ones to hold onto the possibility of Santa for just a couple more years.

Santa… He knows when you’re naughty or nice. He loves you, and he knows the desires of your heart. He adores children and he wants you to be good. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. You aren’t alone when there is Santa Claus.

The parents know that one day their children will no longer believe in Santa, but they don’t want to tear that away. Not yet.

I didn’t feel the need to tell my son that Santa was real. As Christians, the sparkle and mystery doesn’t vanish after the tree comes down. Christmas lasts all year when you believe in God. Miracles, angels, God dipping down and touching Earth… We live in the sparkle of Christmas magic every single day!

That’s the true gift we receive during the Christmas season–a reminder that we are not alone, that Someone knows when we are sleeping, and when we’re awake. And cares.

Merry Christmas to all of you! May your Christmas be filled with sparkle and the possibility of miracles around every corner.

Buy links:

http://www.harlequin.com/storeitem.html?iid=28589

http://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Family-Mills-Boon-Inspired-ebook/dp/B00BK0XH0O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385398508&sr=8-1&keywords=His+unexpected+family 

 

 

An introduction to Patricia Johns

Tomorrow, Patricia Johns will be blogging here on Christmas.  Patricia is a writer for Love Inspired, the line that published four of my novels.   Because she’s a writer of inspirational romance, her blog will be. . . well. . . inspirational.   Today I want to intruduce you to Patrici and have her tell you about her  novel, HIS UNEXPECTED FAMILY

About the book

hisunexpectedfamilyWhen a baby is dropped into her life without warning, Emily Shaw is overjoyed. It’s a bit odd that her distant cousin named single Emily as guardian, but she’s thrilled all the same. She never thought she’d get to be a mom. Another unexpected blessing is that baby Cora arrives in the arms of police chief Greg Taylor. Despite all three of them instantly bonding, Greg has promised himself he’ll never be a father. And now Emily’s smooth-talking relative is challenging her right to raise Cora. Will Emily have to make an impossible decision between the child she already loves and the man who loves her?

About Patricia Johns

Patricia Johns lives in Alberta, Canada, where the winters are long and cold. She doesn’t complain, though, because it leaves her plenty of time to write, enjoying that winter wonderland from the warm side of the DSC01807window.

She has her BA in English Lit and has been writing seriously ever since. She has written numerous novels in other genres, but her true love is for romance writing, where she can be the unabashedly hopeless romantic she’s always been.

Buy links:

http://www.harlequin.com/storeitem.html?iid=28589

http://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Family-Mills-Boon-Inspired-ebook/dp/B00BK0XH0O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385398508&sr=8-1&keywords=His+unexpected+family 

 

Words are magic

This is a blog I wrote very early in my blogging but it’s also one of my favorites.   I hope those of you who haven’t read it before will enjoy it.  And, to you who read this long ago, I hope you’ll enjoy the rerun.

Words have always fascinated me.  From childhood,  I’ve’ve read 200px-Anne_Frankvoraciously.  I’ve taken courses on linguistics, and, in the classes I teach, I bore my students endlessly by showing them the history of words and how words are formed.

Words!  They are amazing.  The words I’m typing now have never before been put together in this way.  Even more amazing:  when you read these words at sometime in the future, you’ll know exactly what I was thinking at this moment.

It’s magic.

The most exciting example of the power of words I’ve been part of was from 1985-87, when I taught English in a school for pregnant teenagers.  The majority of the students were African-American, most lived in poverty and many had struggled in school.  But, with the coming of a baby, each courageous young woman came to this program to complete her education and give her child a better life.

In tenth-grade English, I taught The Diary of Anne Frank.  We’d read Shakespeare, Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom they enjoyed, but they really loved this play.  Even those who couldn’t read—and there were several–listened, spellbound.  The story of a Jewish girl who lived in the 1940’s and who hid from the Nazis in a tiny attic room spoke to my students like nothing else we’d read.

Through her words, Anne Frank, isolated in her ghetto created by prejudice, reached out over forty-five years, fromAmsterdamto these minority students shut up in a ghetto inLouisville,Kentucky.  My students understood Anne Frank and were astonished to discover that another young woman had suffered from the prejudice that surrounded them.  Anne Frank became one of them and they joined her in that attic.

This is what storytelling is:  reaching out over the years and through the differences and divisions between people to touch emotions and open the reader to new ideas.

And we are the storytellers, the ones who transmit the heritage, who transport our readers beyond the barriers of time and place, who deal with the truths of our experiences, who share and interpret the struggles we all face.

As writers, we are magicians.  We create worlds that have never existed before and populate them with characters that  spring from our imaginations.  We fiddle with our creation’s lives.  They get sick, suffer, fall in love–all with a few keystrokes on our computers.

The words we write make people we’ve never met laugh and cry and think and sometimes get angry.  What tremendous power words have.  What an amazing, awesome craft this is.  To be magicians.  To work miracles.

Macho and kind? Is that possible?

Luke kneeling wiht KevinIn 2012, during the next-to-the-last weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament, University of Louisville player Kevin Ware went down with a horrific injury, a compound fracture of the right leg.    His team mates fell on the floor in horror.  They cried and wrapped their arms around each other.   Players from both teams said they nearly threw up.  The crowd gasped and sobbed and turned away.

Except Luke Hancock.  After a few motionless moments, he realized Kevin lay on the floor in pain and alone.  Luke hurdled the courtside railing to reach and kneel next to Kevin, to hold his hand, and ask Kevin if he’d like to pray.  He calmed Kevin and all who watched even as the medical team arrived and took over.do justice love kindness

I’m still amazed at the maturity of Luke Hancock.  Even at my advanced age, I doubt I’d have recognized the need of Kevin Ware and responded so quickly and so perfectly.     The Cards won the NCCA championship the next weekend and Luke was named MVP of the Final Four, but that one moment made me respect Luke more than anything, that outpouring of kindness that defines him as a man.    

Yes, kindness.    One of my favorite verses of the Bible is from Micah:  “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love  kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Now we’re hearing about hazing and racism in professional football.    A player  admits he made racists remarks against a young player as well as threatening horrifying acts toward family members of that player.   Even worse, team members back up the bullying with the excuse that’s what happens in the testosterone-heavy atmosphere of pro-football and that’s how a real man acts.  The player who left the team is being called a wimp, a pansy, and words I cannot (and would not) write here. 

Is bullying ever acceptable?   Do athletes need to toughen up  rookies?  I have a feeling I know how you’d answer.   But in our society, which is more admired?    I’m going with Luke Hancock.   

 

 

 

Pity the poor writer

cookiesWhen I was a little girl—a Brownie—I had to sell Girl Scout cookies.   Back then, we’d go from door to door in our neighborhoods.  I couldn’t do it.   I was shy and timid—yes, I was!–and the idea of asking someone to buy something from me really frightened me.   For that reason, my mother gave a contribution to the troop.  I truly believe I would have hidden in a closet if she told me to go out and knock on doors.

Years later a group I belonged to in high school sold donuts for a fund raiser, once or twice a semester.  Again, I couldn’t do that.  This time, my mother frozen the box of a dozen we had to purchase.

This part of my personality makes book promotion very difficult for me.   I have to turn into another person to push myself, to ask people to buy my books.  I do but I’m never comfortable.   The best example of that distress pops up during book signings.signing

During some signing, lots of friends show up—and I appreciate those friends greatly.   When they don’t, however, I’m left alone at the table in the front of the store , attempting to sell myself and my books.    o lure people to my table, I sprinkle chocolate candy across it.   People will sidle up to my place, refuse to make eye contact, grab a piece of candy, and dash away.    Others run past me so fast that I can’t make a pitch or make eye contact.   My table is often mistaken for an information booth and I’m asked where the rest rooms are or where the delivery man should put the boxes he’s delivering.

Then I force myself into my salesperson role, smiling broadly and chirping about the wonderful book I’m signing.   One afternoon, I sold eight books to people I’d never met and consider that a great success.  More often, I sell none or one and most of the shoppers treat me as if I had a terrible and easily communicable disease  or I’m a raving, chirping Matchmakers cover 2idiot from whom their children must be protected.

I end this blog with a plea.  If you are in a book store and you see an author sitting at a table—all alone—in the front of the store, please don’t run.   If you don’t want to buy a book, at least smile at the poor soul.    We would all really appreciate it.     And we’ll give you candy.

Release day for THE WEDDING PLANNERS!

Matchmakers cover 2The third book in the Butternut Creek series is out today!   When I signed the contract  for the series in 2010, I didn’t believe this date would arrive.

Because it’s release day, I’m blogging twice this week on other sites.   Today’s blog is over on Savvy Authors.  It’s for writers but all are invited to read it.   ttp://savvyauthors.com/blog/index.php/dont-i-know-you-writing-characters-who-come-to-life-by-jane-myers-perrine/

Tomorrow’s blog is about how are love birds kept George’s and my marriage together.  It’s a funny story for everyone.  I’ll put up that link tomorrow.

Celebrate!