I have a confession to make . . .

Musings, , ,

I don’t like to spend money.  No, the problem goes even deeper.  More than just Scotch or parsimonious or frugal, I’m downright—an ugly word is coming up–cheap.   As the clichés go, I can squeeze a dollar until it screams.   See that picture below of the person burning a dollar?   That is not me!  I take gentle care of every bill.

How cheap am I?

I’m currently using a lipstick which is such a  terrible color it makes me look as if I have jaundice .  When I brush it on, it feels as if I’ve smeared grease on my lips.  In addition, that terrible blobby substance leaves hideous, oily magenta  stains on anything within five inches.  I keep using it because the tube cost nearly nine dollars.

I’ve used room spray that smells only slightly better than the odor it’s meant to mask and throws my sinuses into spasms.  I can’t stop using it.  I still have half a can left. 

Most days, you’ll see a bottle of something—hand lotion, laundry detergent, ketchup—on the counter with another bottle of the same substance on top of it upside down, the contents dripping into the first container.  I like to believe I’m saving the world one drip-drop at a time.

Do any of you take such drastic measures to save money?  Funny or helpful, give me your tips here.  AND, if they’re sound, I’ll use them either in my next newsletter or my website (janemyersperrine.com) and mention your name.  I’m looking for these tips because the people who populate Butternut Creek are a thrifty lot and Adam doesn’t have two pennies to rub together.  .

 

 

 

Love and Hope and writer Missy Tippens

Guest blogger, , , ,

The first guest on my blog is Missy Tippens whose new book  A House Full of Hope is available from Love Inspired right now!   She and I met on a writers’ site sxi or seven years ago and have cheered each other on and cheered each other up along the path to publication.    I’m delighted she’s visiting here today.

Missy, tell us about yourself.

I’m a wife and mom of three—one in college, two in high school. And when I’m not being a mom, I write. In life before kids, I was a clinical microbiologist. I also spent a few years teaching as an adjunct instructor at our local technical college.

You have a book available now.  What’s it about?

A House Full of Hope is the second book set in my fictional town of Corinthia, Georgia. I love creating small towns. I’ve lived in cities/towns of varying size all around the Atlanta area, and I draw on the best characteristics of each. I love a town where people know each other, where they support each other, and yes, where they sometimes get in each others’ business. In this story, former bad boy Mark Ryker returns to the town he fled during high school seeking   redemption. Only, he’s not prepared to run into pretty widowed mom of four, Hannah Hughes, the sister of his high school girlfriend. Hannah blames Mark for destroying her family, and she has no intention of ever forgiving him, no matter how much he’s changed or how hard he tries. But he’s so good with her kids…and they get attached to him—Hannah included…

How did you start writing?

I started writing when my middle child was a baby. I had been put on bed rest while pregnant with him, and while stuck on the couch, I read book after book. I decided I wanted to try to write one. Once he was born and we got our first computer, I jumped right in, typing with one hand, nursing him in the other. I wrote what I read at the time, secular romance novels. But as I started to plot a future book, a writer friend told me it sounded like an inspirational romance. I had no idea that’s where God was leading me. But I started to read more of them and joined the Faith, Hope and Love Chapter of RWA. I had found my niche!

Do you believe being a minister’s wife has been a help in writing?  How do congregations feel about your books?

I don’t think being a clergy spouse has necessarily helped my writing. But my church family (at all the churches we’ve been since I started writing) has definitely loved and supported me along the journey. They prayed for me as I was struggling through nearly 12 years before finally publishing. And they cheered for me when I finally got the call! They’ve even been wonderful to encourage me by reading my books. What a gift!

What are your writing secrets?

I wish I knew some writing secrets! I guess the main piece of advice I’d offer is to never give up. Like I mentioned, it took about 12 years of writing, re-writing, submitting, entering contests and getting rejections before I finally sold a full-length novel. If you have a dream of seeing your name on a cover, then be persistent. Keep learning and practicing. In fact, I still take several online writing classes a year. I know I’ll always need to improve!

What are you reading now?

I read just about everything, and that often includes inspirationals. I love them and stay pretty busy reading titles that my writer friends have written. I also love women’s fiction and young adult novels.   I’m finishing one of Janet Dean’s Love Inspired Historicals and I’m also reading a young adult novel by Sarah Dessen. Next on my list is Sarah’s Key that I’ll be reading for my book club. Oh, and in bits and snatches, I’ve been reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Today is Valentine’s Day.  What is your advice for people in love?

Hmmm, let’s see. I’ll be married 26 years in June, so I guess I might have a little wisdom to offer. I’d say communication is key. It’s something I continually have to work on. Be honest and share how you really feel. Speak up and tell your loved one what you need. Don’t expect him/her to read your mind! And pray that God will help you love that person better.

So good to have you drop by.  Hope you’ll come back and keep us up-to-date on what you’re writing.

Jane, thank you for having me today! And happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!

Bio:   Missy Tippens, 2006 Golden Heart finalist, made her first sale to Harlequin Love Inspired in 2007. Her books have since been finalists for the Booksellers Best, ACFW Carol Award and the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence.   Visit Missy at www.missytippens.com.

What happens on February 13 when it’s not a Friday?

Holidays, , ,

President Abraham Lincoln was born on Febuary 12,

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, February 14th AND Love Inspired writer Missy Tippens will be guest blogging right here.

So, what happened on this day in history?  Thanks to historyorb.com   here are a few of the events that took place on February 13.

1633 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before Inquisition for professing belief that earth revolves around the Sun

1837 – Riot in New York due to a combination of poverty and increase in the cost of flour

1861 – US President Abraham Lincoln1861 – Abraham Lincoln declared president 1866

1867 – Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube” waltz premieres in Vienna

1907 – English suffragettes storm British Parliament & 60 women are arrested

1945 – Allied planes bomb Dresden Germany; 135,000 die

1972 – “Grease” opens on Broadway

1981 – A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.  I used this one because we lived in Louisville at the time and I remember this.

1996 – Rock musical “Rent,” by Jonathan Larson, opens off-Broadway

2000 – The last original “Peanuts” comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.

Happy February 13th!

 

What’s coming up

Coming up, , , ,

Tuesday, Valentine’s Day,  I’m delighted to welcome my first interview on the blog.  Missy Tippens and I’ve been on-line friends for seven years.  She writes for Love Inspired and has a terrific new book available now!

On Thursday, I’m going to confess one of my deepest secrets. one that only my husband knows.  One I share with no one.  I’m cheap.  Not just frugal or stingy.  Cheap.  If you drop by the blog and give me a good, acceptable way to save money, I might include that on my web site or in a newsletter.  Adam Jordan, the hero of the Butternut Creek series, has very little money.  He could use your help stretching every dollar.

Anne Frank and The Magic of Words

Writing, , ,

Words have always fascinated me.  From childhood, I’ve read voraciously.  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.

Twittering and tweeting

Technology,

I just realized I haven’t posted here for a while. I have started to tweet, an experience I really dreaded but have found to be lots of fun, keeping up with old friends, meeting new people, learning stuff. I’m @perrinejane Please stop by if you’re tweeting.

Do you like to tweet? What other social media do you use. I’m on  facebook, too. Are you there?  Please drop by.

A social media idiot

A question, , , ,

With my first seven books, I did little promotion. I  had a website and visited a few blogs. Because this three-book series from FaithWords is so exciting, I’ve decided to leap into social media–not struggling and fighting but a little apprehensive.

My first experience with facebook was intimidating.  I  wanted to look at a map only available on facebook so had to sign up.  Within a day, I had a lot of people who wanted to be my friend–all of whom I liked, all of whom were my friends in the real world–but I was overwhelmed and left facebook because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feeling by rejecting them.  My husband had a similar experience.  When he started to hear more about a friend’s pregnancy than he wanted to know, he, too, left. When my beloved (and I really do mean this) sister-in-law visited, she told me she spent only a few seconds every day on facebook–and yet she sat at the dining room table with her laptop for hours reading and writing messages.

So–here’s my question–actually,questions. What do you think about facebook? How much time do you spend there? Are you likely to read a book if an author leaves a message? I’d really appreciate your answers. Thanks!

My first blog

Welcome, ,

Actually, the title isn’t really true. For several years, I’ve blogged on the Avalon writers’ blog. Now, however, I’ve decided to attempt a weekly entry on my own blog. I say “attempt” because I get so wrapped up in my Butternut Creek world that I forget what day it is in real time.

So, welcome. Pull up a chair and chat a while.  And while you’re here, please leave a message.  I’d love to hear from you.