It was my youngest son's birthday today. He has a family of his own now to be daddy to and he's a wonderful daddy. But I'm not sure he ever taught his kids to eat the peanut butter and pancake syrup on biscuits that his dad taught him to eat when he was just a little tyke. He could never talk the other kids into giving it a try, but he had success here with a little "open wide and take a bite" demonstration encouragement.
My son loved riding bikes, camping out, and climbing trees when he was a kid. Sometimes I'd look up and he and a neighbor friend would be perched way above my head. How I kept from going to fetch a ladder, I don't know. But the limbs always held them and I never had to call the fire department to come get them down.
He hit a few bumpy places in the road going through adolescence and I had some sleepless nights waiting up for him to get home from wherever. Some kids struggle a little more trying out their wings and some mothers get a few more gray hairs watching them chasing independence.
But he made it through and fell in love with a hometown girl. What a blessing it has been to see his family grow and what a gift his children have been to this grandmother.
Now sometimes when he visits, we go "exploring" with the grandkids. He's ready to look at the rocks and trees and point out nature's wonders to his kids. And to me.
Jessamine had that kind of curiosity in my Shaker book, The Gifted. She wanted to know about everything which made her life in the Shaker community difficult at times. Here's what a reviewer on Amazon had to say about her. "Dear, sweet Jessamine was such a beautiful character - both inwardly and outwardly. She had such an innocence and complete joy about her. I easily fell in love with her.... And seeing the world through her eyes, when she leaves the Shakers, gives you a different, new perspective of things we take for granted."
I did enjoy writing about Jessamine. I think she's been the only main character in any of my stories that I let have blonde hair. Generally my characters are sensible, capable, determined even if things don't always go right for them. But not Jessamine. She had childlike joy in life and was ready to let her imagination take wing and embrace whatever came her way without considering what obstacles might await her.
Monday is the last day to grab the e-book for $1.99 at Amazon or Barnes & Noble before the price goes back up.
Tweet: A little curiosity can make life more fun. http://ctt.ec/7cegL+
What do you think of Jessamine here? I don't often let my heroines have blonde hair. Mostly I want them to have dark hair or auburn hair. It goes back to when I was a kid and everybody was always talking about how cute the blue-eyed, blonde girls were. Me, I wasn't blonde. Me, I had eyes that couldn't make up their mind if they were green or gray or, as my son told me once when he was very young, yellow. I preferred to think of them as having flecks of gold. :)
So when I started making up stories, my characters, especially the girls, weren't blonde. My heroines might be blue-eyed brunettes or redheads, but definitely not blondes. That is, until Jessamine. Jessamine is beautiful with hair like spun gold and eyes the color of cornflowers. But that's not the best thing about Jessamine. The best thing is her spirit.
I've been editing The Gifted all week. I don't mind editing. Well, maybe I should "edit" that a bit. I don't mind editing - I even like editing - when it's my idea. Actually, I've been blessed with wonderful editors at Revell for all my inspirational novels and I've not resisted their suggestions to make the stories better except once or twice. Even then, after sleeping on the editor's suggestions, I began to see the light - the editor's light. An editor simply wants to make the story the best it can be. That's what I want too, so I start editing.
Most of the time, after thinking there's absolutely no way I can do whatever the editors want without having to rewrite the whole thing completely, I figure out a way to make the changes without that much angst. I usually end up agreeing that the editor was right. Sometimes that's almost like admitting your husband is right about something you've insisted he was wrong about for a week. Let's just say, it ain't always easy.
I didn't have that trouble with these edits. They were fairly simple and I found myself writing "Okay" in a lot of the comment boxes to indicate whatever the editor suggested worked. My editors have nudged me toward being a better writer, more aware of the mistakes I often make while writing. Like that pet word I seem to always bring along to every new manuscript. It's gotten so that every time I type the word "just" or "still," I start hitting the delete key. You'll never believe what my pet word or I guess I should say words were in this book. "Of course." Of course, it was. I'm through with the edits but I'll have to do a search for those of courses. I caught a few, but my eyes must have slid right over the others. My sweet editor counted them for me. You know, this technology stuff is too handy at finding a writer's props and knocking them out from under her.
Thanks
It was my youngest son's birthday today. He has a family of his own now to be daddy to and he's a wonderful daddy. But I'm not sure he ever taught his kids to eat the peanut butter and pancake syrup on biscuits that his dad taught him to eat when he was just a little tyke. He could never talk the other kids into giving it a try, but he had success here with a little "open wide and take a bite" demonstration encouragement. 
