Time for a Spring Contest - Name the Flower

Spring is Here

Hey, did you notice? It's SPRING! The calendar says so. Now if some of us can get Mother Nature to go along with the calendar, we'll be happy. Here things are beginning to look and sound like spring. The spring peepers are in full voice at night and in the morning, the birds are singing their spring songs. I haven't heard a mockingbird yet, but he'll show up soon. Maybe the mockingbirds are scouting out a new nest location and building their new home. 

A First Wildflower

I did actually see my first wildflower today. The flower up above wasn't it, but I did post its picture on my Facebook page. Usually that first flower is a dandelion, but so far I haven't spotted one of those. If you've read my book, The Blessed, you might remember how my character Lacey did a spring dance every year when she saw her first dandelion. Some springs it was harder for her to do that happy dance than other springs. 

Name the Flower Contest

But seeing the first little wildflower of spring gave me an idea for a new giveaway contest. This one won't be very hard, but I hope you'll have fun with it. Name the flower. As always, you don't have to be right. You just have to give it a try (and leave your e-mail so I can contact you should you be a winner.) That said, I know all of you will get all the flower names. Still, even if it isn't a hard to guess contest like some of my mystery puzzles, (well, some of them were hard to guess) maybe it will still be fun. 

Prizes

The prizes are guess what? Aww, you did guess. Books!! I'll draw three winners. And every time you name a new flower, you'll get a new entry. So be sure to come back and check on the next flower every new blog post. That's usually Wednesdays and Sundays if I don't forget what day it is. That has happened. :) The winners will get their choice of one of my books and a grab bag book by a different Christian author. I have several autographed books that I need to give away and some others that aren't signed but the story is still good. I'll figure out which ones are up for grabs and let you know in one of my posts. That's besides my books. You can check out which of mine you might like to read by checking the titles out on my website. There are sample chapters and more there on all my inspirational fiction books. 

The contest is open to USA and Canada for print books and e-books for international entries. That international postage is prohibitive. You must be 18 to enter. Deadline for entries is April 18, 2015 at 12 midnight EST. I'll announce the winners here on April 19. 

Get Ready, Set, Go

So I'm ready to hear what you know about this flower. For years I called it the wrong thing. Oh, and if you don't know the real name or even if you do, another fun thing to do is pretend you were the first person to ever see this flower and that you got to name it. So what would you have called it? 

Remember to leave a way to contact you if you want to be in the running to win a book. I can't respond directly to your comments. 

Need a Few Influencers for a New Shaker Book

"The people who influence you are the people who believe in you." 
    ~Henry Drummond





I am blessed by the influence of so many people who have believed in me through the years. My mother, first and foremost, always believed I could do whatever I set out to do. That's not to say she might not have been a little surprised when I had the dream to be a writer and actually publish books. 

Sometimes when I think about that, I'm a little surprised! Not that I wanted to write, but that I do have books published that people like you actually read. That is a blessing I don't take for granted. I'm grateful for every reader. I'm thankful every time any of you tell one of your reading friends about my books. I appreciate every time you read my this-and-that blog posts and when you leave comments here or play my guessing games. (I'm still smiling about finally getting a mystery photo that stumped you last time. I'm also trying to come up with something new that might be fun.) 


Many of you who read my blog are also faithful readers of my books and have followed me from Hollyhill to Harmony Hill to Rosey Corner and to 1855 Louisville. I love how you've been willing to read my different types of stories. 

This summer, I'm going back to my Harmony Hill Shaker village for a new book, The Innocent. That's why I posted this with a Shaker house picture. I really didn't think I'd write another Shaker book, but then these characters came to mind and it seemed like the thing to do. I guess I'll see if it really was come July when I find out if readers are ready to go back to Harmony Hill too. The book is already available for pre-order on Amazon. 

So now I'm looking for ten or twelve readers who might like to be what is called "influencers" in the publishing business. These people get a hot off the press copy of the book and in return perhaps talk about the book to their reading friends and suggest it to their book clubs or libraries. They might post reviews on internet sites or their own blogs if they have blogs or talk it up on other social media sites if the story is one the reader liked. Word of mouth really is the best advertisement a writer can get. These are just suggested things. There is no obligation to do anything if you don't want to other than receive the book and promise to give it a read. 

If any of you would like to give this influencing bit a try, just let me know. If I get more people who would like to be on my influencer list than the list can accomodate, I'll draw out twelve names. You can leave your e-mail information here in a comment or e-mail me directly at annhgabhart(at)yahoo(dot)com. 

And thanks so much. I am blessed to have you as reading friends.

A Scene from The Seeker

The Seeker, my Shaker book set during the first two years of the Civil War, is on special e-book sale this week for $1.99 or less on most e-book sites. It's fun having reduced price books to give readers a chance to try one of my stories. Of course, there is always the library too for those who prefer a physical, feel the pages type of book.

Which do you prefer? I like the paper book, but I've read some books on my Nook. It's not bad. Very convenient to carry several books with you. Even a hundred or more. Very easy to download books too. Maybe too easy. But at least that to be read shelf doesn't take up much room.  

So to celebrate the special sale, how about a scene from The Seeker tonight? I enjoyed getting to know my characters in this story. I liked Adam, the artist/illustrator. It was interesting finding out how reporters and illustrators followed the troops to record the battles in drawings. Photography was in its infant stage and while there are photos from the Civil War era, taking those pictures was not an easy process. It took a whole wagon load of equipment and the subjects of the photos had to sit perfectly still for fifteen or twenty minutes while their image was captured. And now we jerk out our phones and snap pictures right and left. Even videos that end up on the news or YouTube. I posted a video on Facebook today that had already been shared a zillion times, give or take a few. 

This is a scene from The Seeker after the first battle that Adam sees, the Battle of Bull Run where the Confederates won the day and the Union soldiers retreated in disarray.

   Long after Adam returned to his hotel room, the questions with no answers whirled in his head. He tried to push them aside so he could concentrate on getting his sketches ready before Sam Johnson's man knocked on his door at first light. He didn't have to have answers, only illustrations. But as he flipped through his sketches, the sounds of exploding shells and men dying echoed in his ears, and he wanted to rip the drawings into a thousand pieces. He shoved aside the scenes of death and pulled a writing tablet toward him.
   
Dear Charlotte,
     You won't mind if I don't call you Sister Charlotte, will you? Thinking of you as a Shaker sister will take some time. It appears that how that came to be will remain a puzzle at least for now. Tell me of your life there. It has to be very different from that of a Southern belle, but as I told you at Grayson, even then you were not like most young ladies I have had the pleasure of meeting in drawing rooms across the South.
   I realize you have probably not had time to receive my earlier letter, but this night as I sit in the capital city surrounded by a wounded army, I seem to need to put pen to paper again to you. To tell you of the first real battle of the war at a stream called Bull Run near the town of Manassas in Virginia. The Rebels won the day. It appears the Confederates aren't as ready to be beaten as the Union generals had hoped. I have a sketchbook full of the most horrible scenes of war. My pens seemed to be dripping blood on the paper. I will send you a couple of sketches, but you can see more in Harper's if the Shakers read such. And it sounded as if they might if they saw their stairways on those pages.
   Here in Washington, the generals will meet and the soldiers will be given new guns to replace those left behind on the field of battle. The armies will meet again and I must be there to draw more pictures. It is what I do.
   It is good you are in a place where peace can bloom undisturbed like roses in a garden. Tell me of your garden and I will let my hand trace the flowers you see and hope that once the battle smoke clears there will still be flowers to pick in our own personal gardens. 

Yours, Adam

   He folded a picture of the army lining up for battle and then one of the carriages of onlookers, wagons, and soldiers all vying for a place on the road north as they retreated. Last he picked up a small book where he sometimes jotted bits of scenes to keep the sights fresh in his mind. He drew the bench under the dogwood tree beside Grayson's veranda. The one where he was sitting when he first saw Charlotte. She would know. 

Thanks for reading and if you're interested in grabbing The Seeker, here are some links. 
Amazon
Christianbook.com 
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Always be sure to double check the price before you download to make sure the sale price is still in effect.  

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. 

Books Are Still In Demand

Books are a uniquely portable magic. ~Stephen King

 

That's obviously a magic a lot of readers are still looking for as they came out to the Kentucky Book Fair in large numbers yesterday to find some of those magical stories. And most of them did carry a book made of paper out the door with them. I did have a few are your books on Kindle questions, but I also had a great time signing books for readers to carry away with them. Some were buying them as Christmas gifts. Sometimes for themselves. Books are great gifts to buy for yourself.

I had a great time sharing a table with fellow Anderson Countian, Jennifer Johnson. Jennifer and I are here posing for a picture, but we both have some to learn about publicity photos. :) Note that neither one of us thought about making sure our hands weren't covering up the titles of our books. I took another photo with Virginia Smith and Allie Pleiter that was posted on Facebook. They carefully held their books so that their hands weren't covering up the titles or the cover. So live and learn. This was Jennifer's first Kentucky Book Fair even though she's been writing and publishing for a number of years. She enjoyed meeting readers and talking to her students and former students when they stopped by her table. She teaches seventh grade and actually has one of my granddaughters in her class this year. She was a great table companion. You can check out her books at her website.

 

 

I love Book Fair. I love meeting readers and talking to other book lovers like me. I like seeing the kids carrying around new books like they've been given a prize. I like how there are so many different kinds of books at the Book Fair. There were histories and mysteries. Travel books, calendars and kids' books. Inspirational fiction like mine and Jennifer's. Then you could take home some spooky stories by my buddies, Roberta Simpson Brown and Lonnie Brown, and ghost stories by storyteller and friend, Thomas Freese.

 

Thomas is also an artist with wood. Check out the neat pins he's wearing. Here's a close up of them for you. I love the mini-tombstone that reads, "I told you my feet were killing me." Thomas is always smiling and someday I'm going to get to hear him tell those stories in person. Here's his website link if you want to check out more about him. 

 

 

But back to the fair. Santa Claus was there and so was bestselling author, Sue Grafton. Coaches Rick Pitino and Joe B. Hall showed up to sign books. And of course there were UK books for the Big Blue fans. Dave Shuffett was there with his golden retriever. My grandkids, along with a few hundred others, got to give the sweet dog a pat. And then Woody, the dachshund writer who has a little help from his friend, Leigh Ann Florence, was signing books with his paw. I got to take a photo with Woody and it's on my Facebook page. I posted one of me with Santa too. I could have given him a long list from all the books I'd have liked to take home from the Fair.

 

So, from all appearances yesterday, it seems that books and readers are still doing fine in the state of Kentucky at the Book Fair.

"I don't believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book." ~J.K. Rowling 

Jan Watson was at the Fair yesterday too. Remember, you can be in a drawing to win autographed copies of her latest releases, Skip Rock Shallows and Tattler's Branch by leaving a comment on a post here before November 27. Those are the books Jan had at the Fair yesterday and the people who carried them home are in for some good reads.

 

Romance with Books

 "Books in a home with growing children is one of the most important things you can put in a house." ~ Thomas D. Clark (Kentucky historian and friend)

I was a guest blogger over on The Romance Dish this week with a post about "The Romance of Writing." Lots of good comments came in about what readers liked in the books they read. Then this afternoon while I was walking, I thought about what a romance I've had with words and books almost all my life. These two books, Black Beauty and Little Women were probably two of the very first "big" books I owned. They were Christmas gifts and treasured ones at that. I got a lot of my books from the library on loan, but these I could put my name on the inside cover. And I did. These words made a horse and a family of sisters come to life in my head. I was officially in love with books. 

Before I go on chattering, what do you notice about these books? Besides the worn spines. I'll tell you what I notice at the end of this post. And since I've been all over giving books away on other blogs, I think it's time I gave away a couple of books here on One Writer's Journal. If you leave a comment before the post next Wednesday, you'll be entered in the drawing. Two winners chosen by random will get an autographed copy of The Gifted. And let's make it fun. Tell me the first book you remember reading and if you can't remember that one, tell me a favorite book or the last book you've read. 

Back to chattering.  Once I discovered reading, I was never far from a book. Books were my friends, my entertainment, my teachers. The words soaked deep into my mind and filled me with the desire to spill my own words out on paper. The beauty of words transported this little farm girl into thousands of different settings to live thousands of different lives. I've fallen in love with countless handsome heroes. I've mourned too many sad deaths to number - even the death of a spider in Charlotte's Web. Who could have ever imagined crying over a dead spider? But oh, the magic of words that can lead us down a fictional path into a make believe world that swallows us up.

So come on and share the first book you remember reading. Any comment will get you into the drawing next Wednesday, but we might as well have fun remembering favorite books. That will be a little bonus fun for those of you like me who rarely win these kind of drawings. 

Thanks again for reading. Oh, and did you figure out what I was noticing on those books in the picture? No author's names on the front covers. The author's names might have been on the spines that fell off the books long ago. Of course, these books were packaged especially for young readers like I was then. Maybe that's why the companies didn't think the author's name mattered. Maybe the author's name still doesn't matter. The story - that's what matters.

More Than Gold at Ft. Knox

The closest I'll ever get to the big screen!

As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every moment of time. ~ John Mason


Can you believe I let Wednesday slip past me again? And this time I went to church and everything. But it was a busy day and not the best day for part of the day. Many of you know that my mother is suffering from dementia. Yesterday was a bad day for her. She was angry and unhappy for much of the afternoon. Some of you who have experienced this with your loved ones understand. It is difficult to see someone you love sliding into confusion. It is difficult for the loved one too. 

So that's one reason Wednesday slid past unblogged. Another reason is that I am working hard to get my goal of so many words each day on my work in progress. That means that every extra minute I'm staring at the computer screen trying to get the scenes in my head to show up there on that blank screen.

Today was better for Mom. So better for us, her daughters. It was fun for me too in a different way because I got to go to Ft. Knox. Where the gold is. I didn't get anywhere near the gold depository, but I was in a place where they had a different kind of gold - books, books and more books. The Ft. Knox Barr Library. If I had to ever make a choice between books and gold, I wouldn't have a bit of trouble choosing. Books, of course. 

The library there is hosting author events once a month through October. What fun for the authors and readers and librarians! I was the launch author and look at me up there on the big screen. Good thing I couldn't see that or I would have probably freaked. I did know they were televising it on their closed circuit out in the main  library in case the room was too full and they had an overflow crowd. When they tell me that while showing me I can't get out of this little square behind the podium, I'm going, yeah sure, but then people kept coming in. Of course, it helped when a church's book club showed up seven strong. Then a teacher at the local school gave her students extra credit for coming. That filled up the back of the room. It might have also helped that the library was offering a great incentive for their series of author visits. They had cards they were punching for the attendees and anybody who makes it to all the events will have a chance to win an e-reader. 

But whether they came for school credit or a chance to win a Nook, it was still fun to talk to a room full of people. And I didn't see anybody dozing off on me. However, it is true that I couldn't see those sitting on the floor in the back. But I didn't hear them snoring! 

Now I can say I've been to Ft. Knox. A great place to be made aware of the many soldiers ready to stand in the gap for freedom. 

Somebody poke me next week and remind me when it's Wednesday. I always enjoy hearing from you. You can tell me what you know about Ft. Knox or if you have a family member serving our country. The lady at the library said they were getting ready to send some troops off to Afghanistan very soon.  May our prayers go with them.

Thanks for reading!

Sunday Traditions

Don't you just love Sundays? There's even something about the word that sounds good - Sunday. What did you do on Sundays when you were a kid? We visited with family most every Sunday. One Sunday my cousins and their parents would be at our house. The next Sunday we'd go to theirs. We had so much fun. Then when I got married we tended just to go to Mom's house or my Mom-in-law's house every Sunday. And my kids got to play with their cousins.

I'm a little sad to say that tradition didn't carry over with my kids. Two of them moved out of state after they got out of college and can't very well come spend Sunday afternoon with Mom and Dad. Even a good home-cooked meal can't entice them to make that kind of trip very often. My youngest lives close enough, but then my husband is in a gospel quartet and is gone most Sundays singing in this or that church. So they come sometimes but Sundays are more family days for them. And that's good. So I still go to see my mom when I'm not tagging along with the quartet.

Today I had my sisters out for Mom's birthday dinner. I got up and cooked and cooked all this delicious food. Then they brought some delicious food. We had way too much, but we enjoyed. Maybe the best thing is that having company always motivates me to clear away some of the clutter that accumulates way too fast. My desk is breathing a sigh of relief and so am I. I'm hoping I'll be able to work better with some of that paperwork filed away. I'm a hundred pages in on my new book and thinking there is no way in my fictional world I'll ever be able to tell the story I want to tell in the proper number of pages. I've even considered coming up with a whole new story, but then I think this one might work. I just need to get it written and then I can worry about the length and cutting out parts of it then.

Of course getting it written is sometimes the hard part. Especially with all the distractions like cleaning off that desk or shopping for a suitable dress to wear to that dinner is Texas. I looked for a red one, but red must not be in this spring. (I tried, Susie.) I did get red earrings, and I don't even wear earrings. Normally. But somebody said I had to have earrings with my hair short like it is.

And talk about distractions. Now it's tax time. Yuck! But I can't put that off much longer. I actually made myself start gathering the bad news yesterday. I have to keep reminding myself that it's a blessing to have a reason to pay taxes. In this economy that's to the good. And while I'm hoping the economy improves for everyone, I'm also hoping it's true that a down economy doesn't keep people from reading books.

Books are a cheap form of entertainment. They can take you traveling when you can't afford the gas or the plane fare. They can make you smile when you weren't sure you could find any reason to smile. They can take you on adventures you would never even consider trying. I've climbed mountains, shot rapids, been in the middle of battles, lived through car chases, and any number of other exciting scenes. But the best part is being in that favorite character's skin throughout the story and living it with him or her.

So enjoy your Sunday. Hope you have a few hours for a good book. And I'll talk to you again Wednesday before I fly off to Dallas.

The different types of books I've written

January is speeding along. I'm busy working on edits for my novel, The Outsider, that is scheduled for publication in August. It's a bit of a departure from my Hollyhill books and is more the traditional historical romance. My Hollyhill books are family dramas with lots of different characters while in The Outsider the story centers around the heroine and hero in the book.

I've written lots of different books. The first book I wrote way back when was a Gothic. It never saw the light of day because gothics were going out of style before I got it off to an agent. I hadn't noticed that in my little corner of the world, and really I was too young to know I needed to pay attention to market demands. I may still be too young. Well, I can't say actually young although I still feel young most of the time. Except after I've run after the grandkids all day. Just saying I have grandkids proves I'm not so young. Right? But grandkids are worth having a few gray hairs and aching joints.

But back to the different kinds of books I've written. After the gothic, I tried historical romance and published a couple of those. I enjoyed the historical romance genre and might have stuck to writing those if the editors had cooperated. So then I tried young adult novels. Published eleven of those for young adults and middle readers. Really enjoyed writing those too. It's fun getting fan letters from readers just discovering the magic of books. But alas, the editors stopped cooperating again. I wrote a couple of mysteries. Tried some other things, but then decided to do as the writing experts say and write what I knew. And that was small town country life. So I came up with Jocie and her family and friends and now I'm enjoying writing these family stories where people live and love, laugh and cry, and do their best to be the kind of person the Lord wants them to be.



That's sort of me. I'm just trying to write the best stories I can and hoping people will be glad they picked up my books to read. And of course, I'm a work in progress as a Christian as all of us are.



Next time I'll share some of the ways I actually put all those words on paper over the years.



It tried to snow here today, but it didn't last. Snow your way? Or are you in the sunny south?



See you next time.



Ann