Seeding Time - A New Contest to Win Some Books

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." (George Eliot)

Do you love the season of autumn? What a great time to get outside and enjoy some sunshine. Maybe sit in a glider on your deck or porch and read a book. Now that sounds like a vacation and why not? A few mini-vacations now and again can keep us going. So if you think that sounds like something you might put on your agenda, how about a chance to win a book that you can read, if not out on the deck, in your favorite easy chair. 

A New Contest

Some of you have enjoyed the mystery photo contests I've had here in the past. And we will have more of them in the future, but this contest is not exactly that. Here the photo is right there. You can see it and what it is. No mystery about it. Blue berries on a bush. No, I'm not trying to come up with a tongue twister. Just some fun. For this contest, you have to try to guess what kind of bush berries those might be. Autumn is a season for seeds. The Lord made a way for each plant to continue coming up every year. So guess the seed. 

And how to enter --

As always with my contests, and this one is for blog only, you don't have to have a correct answer to enter the contest. Just make a guess, right or wrong, or simply say that you have no idea what kind of seed or bush it is. Also be sure to leave a way for me to contact you should you be a winner. And for those who say they have difficulty leaving comments here - I'd try to fix that if I knew what the problem was - you can send me a message at annhgabhart(at)hughesnet(dot)com. 

That will give you an entry and the chance to be a winner who will get his or her choice of one of my books plus a grab bag book, my choice, but a book by another inspirational genre writers. It might even be autographed. I'll get some books together and show the choices soon. 

We'll have more "seed" photos on my posts the rest of the month and you can let me know how much "country" runs through your veins by making some guesses. 

Each guess on a new photo this month gets you another entry in my drawing. As I said, if you know what the photo is, great. If not, make up something about the photo and get an entry. But make sure to leave a way to contact you. I'll be drawing for the winner on Halloween night. How spooky is that??? Now let's have some seed time fun. I took this week's photo back in August if that helps.  


Thanks for stopping by and wasn't Sandi's story hilarious last week?  I have four more days to be put on the "rack" and "radiated." Even better I won't have to fight that morning rush hour traffic and can go back to be being a work at home kind of person. 

Life's Simple Pleasures

 

Finding fun in simple ways makes the happiest days. (Unknown author)

Are you happy? I hear you. Some of you are out there saying nobody can be happy all the time, and of course, you're very right. But do you seek and find an underlying happiness that brings joy to life in many little ways? Like the fun of jumping into a pile of crunchy leaves with an abandon that doesn't worry about getting leaf crumbles down your shirt or landing on a spider or... Well, you get the idea. Maybe even more fun is being the grandmother raking up the leaves for the happy fun of watching the grandkids enjoy toys that only nature can make. I didn't jump in the leaves. I do realize that me landing on the ground in a pile of leaves is no longer one of life's simple pleasures. It would be a jarring ouch. I don't land as soft as the little grandkids. But I do get a lot of simple fun just walking through a layer of fallen leaves and seeing them stir around my feet, hearing their rustling crunch, and catching the scent of autumn. Simple pleasures.

The plaque above names over some other simple pleasures - all gifts of nature. Watching the sun set. The wind across a field of wheat or grass. The waves against the sand. The glitter of the stars when the city lights are far away. Sometimes we just need to get back to the basics of nature. 

At times nature can slam us with disasters the way the hurricane did last week and bring hard times that have no joy in them. So if you're suffering from the aftereffects of that, you might not be feeling too generous toward Mother Nature, but I hope there are still little blessings finding a way into your days. 

The real joy of life is in its play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty. It is the real joy of living.  ~Walter Rauschbusch

May life bring you joy this week. And go kick around a few leaves before you get out the rakes or the leaf blowers. We'll have to do something with our leaves this weekend - probably mulch them with the mower. But my husband did leave them for the kids to play in at least one time because a kid and a leaf pile is definitely one of life's simple pleasures.

I'm going to have a writer's simple (or not so simple) pleasure this weekend and get to meet and talk with readers and other writers at the Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort on Saturday. Over 150 authors and their books. A great place to do some Christmas shopping. If you're in the area and decide to come, please stop by my table and say hello. And then I can say, in person, thanks for reading!    

And So It Begins

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.  Albert Camus

Summer departed last week and autumn came into her own. When I walked last week, I found leaves beginning to show their colors. I like fall. I like seasons. I've never wanted to live where it was summer all through the year - although a year in Hawaii might be interesting - and I certainly wouldn't want to be where it was winter with no real summer.  A little winter is okay, but I never want it to linger. I like welcoming spring. But fall is a good season here in KY and perhaps even better to the north where the leaves show more vibrant color. We haven't had remarkable autumn color in the last couple of years. Too dry. So we'll see this year although I'm noticing a lot of oaks with brown leaves as if they're dying instead of changing colors. 

I like using seasons in my books. I pick summer to tell my stories a lot of the time. That's the easy season because you don't have to put coats and gloves on your characters to let them out the door. The Outsider went through summer and winter with the soldiers fighting the War of 1812 suffering first in the heat and then in the cold and snow. My Hollyhill books had a year's worth of weather, starting one June and ending the next. Angel Sister was set in the hot, dry summer of 1936. 

The weather can be a force in any book. A tornado blew through The Scent of Lilacs. A snowstorm stranded a visitor in Summer of Joy. Hannah made snow angels in The Believer. And the coming of spring played an important part in the plot of that story. Then of course, Lacey did her dandelion dance to welcome spring in The Blessed. Weather matters. I'm editing my fifth Shaker novel now. The Gifted will be released next summer. And the climatic scene is very stormy.

Do you notice the weather in the books you read? I try to make you feel it along with my characters. Of course I'm trying to make you feel everything along with my characters - love and joy, anger and despair. So why not rain and snow? Sunshine and shadows. 

Hope you're embracing whichever season is falling down on you right now wherever you are. Or in whatever book you might be reading. 

Oh yeah, if you haven't signed up for my giveaway - see the details of what you might win on my website News and Events page - you need to send me a message or leave a comment with a way to get in touch with you before the end of the week. But you can jump the gun on winning something before that. The Book Club Network is having a great giveaway Monday evening, September 26, at 9:30 p.m.  I'm giving away a couple of books. Several other authors are doing the same plus one author is giving away a Nook. You have to be present at the "live chat" to win. You can check it out at The Book Club Network. 

So great to have you come by.