This Old House - Saying Goodbye

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery." ~Harold Wilson

Things change. That's the one thing in life you can be sure will happen. Maybe not every day, but then again maybe every day. Sometimes we want to hold time in a bottle and keep the world from changing for a little while, but we can't. The sun comes up and goes down. The seasons change. Children become adults. New babies are born. To everything there is a season and throughout it all the one everlasting constant is that things change. 

The top picture is the homeplace being torn down - its logs showing for the first time in well over a hundred years. I don't know how old the original house is. The second picture is the way the house looked in I'm guessing the 1930's or 40's, with some of my great aunts in the yard. You can see the front porch behind them where many afternoons were spent visiting, perhaps breaking beans or shelling peas. My grandfather sat on this porch during his last years, a flyswatter in his hand to kill the pesky flies. My children swung on the porch swing "high as the moon" and sometimes off to dreamland. Inside are even more memories. Overnight visits almost every Friday with my beloved aunt. Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners with little salt cellars at every plate. It's where I first touched the keys of a typewriter. It's where my children came later to spend the nights with their beloved granny and granddad after my aunt passed on. A memory not only in every room, but in every board of every wall, every wooden step. And now the house has been sold. The new owners had it inspected. The house was condemned and is being torn down. Change can make a person's heart hurt.  

I stopped the other night to ask the new owners if I could take some pictures. So even though seeing the house meeting its end is sad for me, I also found the log structure that had been revealed fascinating. Look at the rows of rocks carefully placed between the logs like a miniature rock fence before the builders added the chinking. I can imagine the men building this, sawing down the trees that surely were growing so majestically in this place before the settlers came and began clearing them away to grow crops and build houses like this one. This house was bigger than many I have seen in history books, and it would have taken several men to get the logs in place. It was built with care and skill and has lasted maybe two centuries or near to it. But all things change. 

"Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress." ~Bruce Barton

Progress can't be stopped. The new owners deserve a nice house on their property. The house being gone won't make the memories disappear. It'll just make the family, at least those of us left, who lived there and made those memories a little sad. 

Does change sometimes make you sad? 

Free Download - Words Spoken True

The price is right - free! Today, May 9 and tomorrow, May 10, those who have e-readers or an app on their phone or PC or whatever device in order to download books can download my newest book, Words Spoken True for the cost of $0.00. This picture of the cover is from Amazon. But it's free for Nooks from Barnes & Noble and for other e-readers on Christianbook.com as well as other e-book sites. 


I don't have an e-reader yet, but I've heard great things about them from some and "please, just let me have a real book" from others. There are so many different ways to read now. Did you ever think that someday we might have to say "paper book" or "print book" when we talked about a book? The same with bookstores. Now we say "bricks and mortar" bookstores. You know, there is one constant in life and that is everything changes. Maybe not spiritual things. The Bible does promise us the Lord is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. But the physical realm is in constant motion. 


When I started writing, I dreamed of having a typewriter. Then it was an electric typewriter. Then an electric typewriter that had a correction ribbon on it. That's when I thought I had it made! Those of you who never had to roll up the typing paper to make an erasure before rolling it back down and hoping the paper hadn't slipped have no idea how much I loved that correction ribbon. Add to that places where you could go get copies for a few cents a sheet and throw away that carbon paper. I was in writer heaven. Some of you are probably frowning and saying "What's carbon paper?" I don't even want to think about it long enough to explain. Google it. :)


Not long after that, computers began to filter out of offices into homes. I got a rebuilt one and the way I wrote changed once more. On and on the changes come. Now there are devices for reading books. With a few clicks you can bring a book right to your fingertips. Most of them even have sound effects so you can hear the page turning - electronically. 


You can get free books all the time. So much so that some people with e-readers have probably never actually bought an e-book. How about you? If you have an e-reader, have you bought books or do you just track down the free ones? Free is an excellent price and a great incentive to try a new writer. 


That's why the publishers offer the free books from time to time. They hope to find a writer new readers. Angel Sister was free Monday and Tuesday and is at a reduced price until the end of May. Now Words Spoken True is free until the end of Thursday, May 10, and then its price will also be reduced until the end of May. It's been fun having the free downloads available. Angel Sister even topped Amazon's free list. Words Spoken True hasn't climbed that high. Right now it's at number 25. 


You might wonder why an author would want her books to be given away free. After all, writing these books is my work. But it's also my passion and I want somebody, actually a lot of somebodies, to read my stories. In most of my books on the acknowledgement page, I thank you readers for adding your imagination to mine in order to make my characters come to life in your minds and heart. As this quote from Lawrence Clark Powell very clearly says, "Unless their use by readers bring them to life, books are indeed dead things." 


So we have a partnership - you and me. And this week I hope I've gained some new partners. You can download Words Spoken True too if you have one of the reading devices, but you'll have to hurry. The free ends tomorrow. If you're old fashioned like me and don't have an e-reader, you can throw your name in the hat for a "print" book. I'm picking five winners at the end of May and the winner can choose which of my books he or she wants. Just leave a comment with your e-mail or send me an e-mail from my website.   

I also sent out a couple of newsletters about the free books and other things. If you want to be on my newsletter list, let me know. As always, thanks for reading.

Frost on the Pumpkin

--At least there would be frost on the pumpkin if we had any pumpkins in the garden this year. The grass was white this morning. So I hunted up a last year's picture of my angel trumpet plant because this year's plant got frosted last night before it had a chance to bloom. I should have covered it up, but who can remember everything? Well, some people but not me.

--But the frost is a chilly reminder that makes us pay attention to the change of the seasons. We need to take a little time to enjoy the spectacle of red and gold leaves before they all drift down. Some of us will have to get out the rakes or leaf blowers and others of us will just enjoy walking through the leaves in the woods in the fresh, crisp October air. At night the stars look brighter in the night sky and in a few weeks there'll be a harvest moon. My dad used to go out on those moonlit nights in the fall and pick corn by hand all night long. Now farmers have machines that pick whole fields of corn in the same time as he might have picked a few rows.

--Just as the seasons change, so do things in our lives. People move to new houses or towns. Kids have to change schools. We start new jobs or learn new operations at our old jobs. Babies come along to change couples into families. New people come into our churches. Sometimes so many that the churches have to build new buildings.

--Change comes to writers too as they craft their stories. They live with a story for months, even years and then finally manage to write the words "The End." Sometimes it's hard to leave behind the characters you've lived with so long. But you change worlds in your minds as you leave one set of characters behind and go out into your imaginations to seek new people and new stories. A writer needs to embrace change. Not just from one story to the next, but within each story. Without change we wouldn't have much of a story since change is what keeps the readers turning pages to find out what happens on the next page or in the next chapter.

--I read a writing advice piece once that posed the question, "What changes in your story?" And that person's advice was "Everything." At least your characters have to show some changes. That's where I am right now. Figuring out my characters and wondering about the changes they are going to see and what the results of those changes might be. Is it going to cost them happiness? Or love? Maybe it will bring them love. That sounds like a happier ending. But for sure they aren't going to be the same people who stepped up on my stage in the first scene. Nor will I be the same by the time I write "The End" one more time. Months will have passed. Life is a hands on experience. That's the way the Lord surely meant it to be. The Bible promises us He is the same yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever more, but we are continually learning and thus changing. It's how we're designed.

--Hope you have some great life experiences this week and that your flowers escaped the frost so they can keep blooming a few more weeks. Looking out the window I can see my poor angel trumpet lily frozen and ruined. But I raise my eyes and the sun is lighting up the red and gold in the trees down the way. There's beauty to each season.