Birthday Stories and the Birthday Giveaway Winners!

This picture is a few years old. My grandson is taller than me now and I can't pick up both the little ones anymore, but this is the last birthday photo I have of me. Grandkids make a birthday fun, but now my birthday month has come to an end. It's October. That means it's time to pick winners in my Birthday Giveaway Contest. And in fine storytelling form - you know, where the writer makes you wait for the part of the story you most want to find out about - how about a couple more birthday stories before we close out the fun?

Here's Betty's birthday story. 

I am from a large family, 5 girls and 4 boys. I had a great childhood and learned about family and sharing through the examples of my parents. We never had a lot, but birthdays were always special. Mom let us choose what we wanted to eat for our birthday dinner and of course, there was always ice cream and cake for dessert. Two of my sisters' birthdays were problematic though as they were December 23rd and December 25th. There was always so much going on for the Christmas holiday that their birthdays seemed to be trivialized and not very special. One year my mother decided to bake two birthday cakes and celebrate each sister separately. Hopefully, they would feel special. One cake was round with bright red frosting and looked like a Christmas tree decoration. The other was green and shaped like a Christmas tree. The love and thought that went into the preparations were great...however, no one wanted red or green cake! All these years later, (over 50!) we all still refer to those "special" Christmas birthday cakes. So I think Mom actually did achieve her objective of making the birthdays special!

Do any of you have "Christmas" birthdays? I've always thought it might be a good idea to celebrate those a year and a half - in June or July. My daughter-in-law has a birthday close to Christmas and she says she was never happy to get a birthday gift combined with her Christmas gift or to get the birthday gift wrapped in Christmas paper. I try to remember that. :)

Tish shares a sweet story about her little boy's gift to his mom that has lasted through the years and still warms her heart.

When my son was a little boy, he bought me my first Peony bush. He went into Lowe's and saw the bush and asked his Daddy if he could buy it for my birthday. ...He was so happy to give me my gift. Every year it blooms and brings back memories of him as a little tot so proud of himself and the bush. 

Last Cheri tells how she gets back at her kids for deciding to be born in the middle of the night. 

My birthday story involves me calling all 4 of my adult children at the time of day that they were born on their birthday. And the best part is that they were all born in the middle of the night!! They actually seem to love it!

And now I've made you wait long enough. Drumroll please! The 1st prize winner is Imogene from KY. She gets the $50 gift card and picked Christmas at Harmony Hill. 2nd place winners are Carolyn J from FL and Tammy R from OR. They get the $25 gift cards and Carolyn picked Love Comes Home and Tammy picked Summer of Joy. 

Many thanks to the rest of you who took part in my birthday fun and shared wonderful stories with me. I'm always the biggest winner in these contests because I get to hear from you. Thank you so much and thank you for reading my books and for praying for me while I cared for my mother and then when I had surgery. The radiation treatments aren't bad and I will be through with them by the middle of the month. I am blessed by your prayers and your friendship. 

Oh, and stay tuned for a new contest here on One Writer's Journal very soon. Only book prizes this time but you guys like books, don't you? I'm working up something we maybe can have fun with for the giveaway. Not exactly mystery photos but something similar. And now you'll have to wait and see what. There I go again. Making you wait.    

Winners, Deadlines and Notebooks

A pen and a notebook still work. Years and years ago, when I first began writing, that was the way I started – with a wirebound notebook and an ink pen.  Not a ballpoint like this, but a real fountain pen that I filled up out of a little glass jar of ink. The jar had a little well at the top where I dipped my pen point in. Then I had to pull out this little lever that pushed in the rubber ink holder inside the pen. When you let the lever go, the ink was sucked up in the pen. I loved filling up that pen even if I did get ink on my fingers nearly every time. You know, that might have just made it better. Ink stained fingers surely meant I was a writer. Do you remember those kinds of pens? How about those that had little replacement cartridges of ink. I guess they were all replaced by gel pens.

Time went on. I got a typewriter and since with three kids, writing time was precious, I told myself I had to learn to write using a typewriter. I did. More time passed and I entered the computer age. The keyboard became an essential piece of my creative equipment. I still journaled in a wirebound notebook with any pen handy as long as it had black ink.  I hadn’t written any fiction in longhand for too many years to count. But deadlines can make a person desperate. So with a deadline looming for my work in progress and a long airplane flight to and from California, I stuffed a wirebound notebook in my purse. I sat next to people on the long flights who had no interest in talking. So I went back in time and started scribbling words. Lots of scratch outs and inserts, but I found out the pen still works. Words came that when I did get to a keyboard weren’t all that bad and I got through several scenes that helped me almost meet my deadline. I only had to beg a couple of extra days and that was for reviewing and editing. But without that notebook and pen, I would have never made it across the finish line.

Am I going to keep writing in a notebook? No. I like my keyboard and my backspace key when I think up a better word. The delete key comes in handy too. Of course, a black line or scribble through a few sentences works too.

After I finally got that deadline met, I drew for my winners in my birthday giveaway. Sorry I’m a few days late, but had to get that story written. So drum roll please. Wanda S of Iowa won the first prize of the NIV Bible and she picked my book, Summer of Joy. Ann H of Pennsylvania won second prize of the prayer journal and she choose, Orchard of Hope. Jayne R of Ontario, CA was the never won before winner of Liz Curtis Higgs book, Mine is the Night, and she picked my book, Angels at the Crossroads. Then I chose a bonus winner out of the never won before entrants. So Tisha of Indiana won a copy of her choice of one of my books, and she picked Angels at the Crossroads, too. Thanks to all of you who entered. I enjoy giving away books and I’ll be doing another book giveaway soon.

Thanks for reading. Hope you have a good week.

Dementia - The Memory Thief

Me and Mom 

“In Alzheimer's [disease] the mind dies first: Names, dates, places-the interior scrapbook of an entire life-fade into mists of nonrecognition.” - Matt Clark

My mother has dementia. Perhaps not quite the same as Alzheimer's but definitely closely related like fraternal twins. I haven't studied up on any of it, but I have seen the memory thieves in action. My uncle was diagnosed with Alzheimer's while he was still an active, healthy man. He began to escape from whatever was stealing his thoughts by walking. He'd walk for miles. I saw him once while he was walking and he had the expression of a little boy who has gotten away from his parents and is out looking for something. He didn't know what - but something. My mother-in-law had dementia, but she never really suffered from it. She was blissfully unaware of how forgetful she was. In fact, she was a diabetic who lived in great fear of having her feet amputated. She did end up having her leg amputated above the knee but never realized it due to the advancement of her dementia.

I learned a lot while walking down the dementia road with her, but none of that prepared me for my own mother's walk down that same road now. Mom is not blissfully unaware. She knows she can't do what she wants to do, but she also can't remember her age - 91 - and so somewhat accept the forgetfulness and inability to think clearly as a natural part of aging. 

A sad part. I know one woman who had been through the dementia trials with her mother. At the end when her mother was dying, she said she just wanted her mother to speak her name. To remember. You know what? I think her mother was speaking her name in her spirit's heart, shouting it as loud as she could, but the rest of her body failed her and didn't allow the sound out to her daughter's ears. 

The loss of memory is not a natural part of aging for everyone, but I do think it is more prevalent now because people are living to older ages. I suppose our brains age the same as our joints, but there are those fortunate older people who never lose their ability to think clearly. What a blessing that is for them and for their families!

I partly started thinking about this today because I forgot that it was Wednesday last night and so forgot to do my Wednesday posting. That's another thing children of dementia sufferers worry about. Is it beginning with me? That name slipping my mind or that roll of stamps I hid away somewhere and now can't find. That call I promised to make and totally forgot. That Wednesday I forgot to post here on One Writer's Journal. Uh-oh! Actually I'm not too worried about forgetting that. I think my circuits just get overloaded at times and I have to rest them for a while. Not enough of that rest time lately. But someday I may face the same trials of ill health and dementia, but for now I'll just hold my mother's hand and try not to worry about a future I can't know.

And I'll remember something fun. The picture here is me when I published my first book in 1978. It was a historical romance for the general market about the settling of Kentucky. I got my picture in several newspapers. I was so young and I sound it in my quotes in the articles. A lot of years since then. A lot of stories and more books that I was able to share with readers. But one thing I said then that's still just as true. I always wanted to be a writer. I still do. Sunday - if I don't forget what day it is - I'm going to write about beginning a new book.

I celebrated my birthday all month, but the month is over. So I drew the winners for my birthday giveaway. Drum roll please. Here they are. Marci of Washington was the grand prize winner of the Grandmother's Bible and she picked my book, The Blessed. I wish all of you who told me such great reasons for wanting to win the Grandmother's Bible could have won it, but I only had the one Bible to give away. Jill of Iowa won the assortment of books plus my book, The Outsider (her choice). Debbie of Kentucky won the audio version of The Believer and picked my book Angels at the Crossroads because she already had all my other books. (Debbie, you rock!) Last was the Never Won winner and that's Teresa, also of Kentucky. She gets the surprise which turns out to be a Shaker cookbook from the Pleasant Hill Shaker village near me and a copy of one of my books. (Teresa, you have to let me know which one you want.) Thanks to everyone who entered. The chance to win the Grandmother's Bible made it a popular giveaway. Now I'll have to think up something new to give away to start the fun again and have some new winners.

Thanks for reading and hang onto those memories as long as you can. I know I hope to even while I twist and turn some of them to sneak them into my stories.

A Blank Page Full of Possibilities

A leaf covered wagon road through a woods can be a path of possibilities to a hiker. Who knows what might be around the bend? Deer or a hawk whistling a warning to the woods inhabitants below or a beautifully decked out maple tree. Perhaps there will be nothing but more of the same, but in this case the same is enough if I'm the hiker hearing the crunch of the autumn leaves underfoot with the autumn scent in my nose.
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"We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize." (Thich Nhat Hanh)
That's true not only for a path through the woods, but also when a writer like me sits down in front of a computer and faces that blank page/screen. So many possibilities. So many directions to take. Is this the story road or perhaps only a detour? A pleasant detour perhaps, but one that doesn't lead to the possibilities of our story.
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That's where I am now. Staring at the blank screen and considering the possibilities. I've written four Shaker books. All my characters made their way to my Shaker village by different roads. And now I must find another new road to travel for this next journey to my Harmony Hill. I am going to write my "what if" question this week. I am going to find a road to start down even if I have to chop down the trees of blocked thoughts to make my new road. Another quote I came across when I was looking for inspiration is this one from Jeri Ryan. "Impossible is a word humans use far too often."
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I'm not saying impossible. I know I can find my right characters. I have many times before. One character already is in my thoughts - a Shaker sister who has a rich history, but she's not the main character. I see that girl, my main character, vaguely the way one might spot movement out of the corner of one's eyes. She's there, but she's not yet playing out her story in my mind. She has no name, no age, no desires. Well, that last is not exactly true. Even with her playing just outside the comfortable range of my eyes (mind) I know a few of her desires. But are they story making desires?
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That is the question I will have to answer, and when I answer it I will have to keep in mind this Mark Twain quote. "Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." I have to make my story believable. If my readers say (as I wanted to say in a book I read recently) that what I wrote could have never happened, then I've lost them. The magic aura of story over their minds has been shattered. It doesn't matter that every bit of the book is not true from Chapter one, word one. The story has to read as if it is true. Truer than truth, because amazing things can happen in real life. Amazing things can happen in fiction, but if they do, the writer better write about those amazing things in such a way that the reader is ready to say, "Okay, maybe it could happen this one time."
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What about you? Have you ever walked down the magic roads of possibilities as a writer or reader and had the magic fade? Or did each new bend in the road just make the possibilities more enchanting?
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Here are the winners in my birthday book giveaway. Linda of PA chose my book The Outsider and also gets The Carousel Painter by Judith Miller. Dee of VA picks my book, The Believer, (and plans to give the copy she already has to a friend, bless her!) and gets a Shaker bookmark. Sylvia of Nova Scotia wants The Seeker and also gets The Shunning by Beverly Lewis, Jo right here in KY picked Summer of Joy and will get an autographed copy of A Daughter's Legacy by Virginia Smith. Amy of MO and Marilyn M haven't let me know yet which books they want. So Amy and Marilyn if you're reading this and didn't get my "you're a winner" e-mail, get in touch. Thanks so much to all of you who joined in the fun of my birthday giveaway. For sure I'll be doing something new around Thanksgiving or Christmas. So stay tuned. Thanks for reading.