A New Chapter in Life

No one finishes this race, but everyone gets to pass a baton, and a good hand off means that you will not slow anyone down during the hand off, especially any one of the billions who will live after you. Everyone today is an accumulation of the 106 billion batons that have been passed forward for thousands of years. So make your baton count. 
(http://www.basicknowledge101.com/subjects/inspiringquotes.html)

Passing the Baton

Today, my husband, who has been singing with the Patriot Quartet since 1997 sang his last concert with them as their first  and only bass. It was a sad day for me because I hated for him to quit the group. I think they have always had a great sound. (You can check out their music at the Patriot Quartet's website or see some short video clips of their concert today on my Facebook page.) But Darrell felt strongly that the Lord was leading him to step aside and pass the bass singing baton on to a younger man who has a great voice and will be a fine addition to the Patriot Quartet. They will continue their ministry and Darrell will step into new ways to minister, still singing, but no longer with the Patriots. And so the year begins a new chapter for him as he moves forward. 

Singing Families

When a singing group has been together as long as the Patriots, the members and their families become something like extended families. That has been especially true with this group since for several year we traveled to concerts in a big old bus that gave us hours and hours to share stories and songs. In fact, it's partly because of that big old bus and all the rides on it that I wrote Angels at the Crossroads. That book, the only nonfiction book I've written, is the life testimony story of the first tenor in the group after Darrell began singing bass with them. 

Angels at the Crossroads - Jerry's Story

Jerry Shepherd has an amazing testimony. As a young man

he become involved in drugs and alcohol and eventually, at age nineteen, was sentenced to prison for murder. While he thought his life was over, the Lord wasn't through with Jerry. He gave him a second chance by putting people in his pathways to help him start making right choices and following the right roads. Jerry couldn't change what he'd done, but he could accept the Lord's forgiveness and try to live for Him going forward. Jerry always wanted to write his story and so when we were thrown together on the bus and I had recently had my first inspirational novel published, it seemed to be meant for me to write his story. I wasn't sure I could since I'd never written anything except fiction, but the words flowed so easily that it had to be the Lord helping me write Jerry's story. The book didn't find a traditional publisher, but it is available on Amazon and other internet sites. Here's a bit of a review just posted yesterday on Amazon. "Hope, forgiveness, and God's love is what helps us all through difficult times just as Jerry finds out. If you face a crossroads in your life, Shepherd's inspirational journey may help lead you down a new pathway to a life filled with compassion and love."

Jerry is now pastoring a church and doing solo appearances to share his story in song and words, but he will always be part of our singing family just as the members we said goodbye to today will be. Batons are passed and new chapters of life are begun. But that doesn't mean we forget the good times we've shared. Sometimes it's good to look back through some of those old chapters of our lives.

Authors - the Old and the Young 

One of those life chapters I've shared with all of you here on One Writer's Journal is that of my great-niece, Kaelyn, who was diagnosed with leukemia when she was five years old. The church where the Patriots sang today is pastored by Kaelyn's father, our nephew-in-law. After three long years of treatments, Kaelyn was released by St. Jude. She has to go back periodically to be sure all is still well, but she now has hair. She doesn't have to wear a mask when she comes to church the way she did the last time the Patriots sang at her church. She can go to public school without the fear that every cold germ will land her in the hospital with little way to fight off infection. On that hard journey of chemo treatments, she never let go of the Lord's hand. She is a special child with a big heart and a sweet spirit. I know many of you prayed for her and rejoiced when I posted about her "no more chemo" party last year. (Here's the link to that post if you missed it last year.) Anyway, I thought you might like to see her picture with her great smile and nice long hair. She told me today she'd just written a book with ten whole chapters for her little brother. He loves Ninjas, so she came up with that type characters and made it funny. Here's a photo of the new author with the old author. 

On to the Next Chapter

Chapters of life start fresh all the time. May your next chapter be a good one. 

Banana Croquettes, a KY Church Dinner Treat

Have you ever eaten banana croquettes? Chances are if you've been to a church dinner in Kentucky, you've had the opportunity to give them a try. 

My little country church had Homecoming Day today. Once a year we invite everybody who has spiritual roots in the church to come "home" for a special service. That can be a lot of roots since our church was celebrating 201 years. In years past, we've invited former pastors back to speak to us, but since we've now had the same pastor for around thirty years, we don't have a large pool of former pastors to pick from. So the last few years my husband's Southern Gospel group, the Patriot Quartet, have been delivering the Gospel in song during the morning service. 

My husband has been singing in groups for forty years. When he started singing, most all the country churches in the area had Homecomings. They'd have preaching in the morning and singing in the afternoon. Sometimes there would be four or five singing groups. That could get looonnnggg! Especially when you had three kids to make sit quietly the way I did then. Over the years, the attendance at afternoon services shrank and shrank until most churches quit having the singing services in the afternoons. Now the group generally sings in the mornings and then enjoys the church dinners. Oh, those wonderful church dinners. You can see a couple of our church youngsters loading up on desserts here and that was just one of the dessert tables!

But those dinners have changed too. Now you see a lot more dishes cooked at Kroger and the chicken nearly always is Famous Recipe or Colonel Sanders or sometimes Kroger too. But when I first got introduced to Homecoming dinners, the chicken was skillet fried before church on Sunday morning and the cakes and pies were homemade. Country cooking - yum!! 

One of the dishes you could always find at a church dinner was banana croquettes. I love banana croquettes. I used to make them, but making banana croquettes is a lot of trouble and messy. Now I skip the salad dressing and just dip my banana in peanuts in an individual serving just for me. But at a church dinner you can sometimes find the real thing. Some people make a fancy salad dressing, but most people just slice the banana into sections. Sometimes lengthwise too. Then they coat the banana in salad dressing. (That's the messy part.) Last, they roll them in chopped or crushed peanuts. (More messy part.) They don't keep well, so you have to eat them all right away. I'm usually up to the challenge if I make it through the dinner line in time to snag any of them. We have a member now who always makes banana croquettes for our dinners. But today her dish got mistakenly put on the dessert table and most people missed it. But a couple of those peanut covered bananas were the perfect dessert for me. 

Have you ever made or eaten banana croquettes? Been to a country church dinner? If so, what was the dish you liked best? We had some great desserts, besides those banana croquettes. One an old fashioned chess pie. That's what my son ate and he told his kids it had no food value, just sweet and good. But the value of food is not always nutrious. At a country church dinner, sometimes the food makes you remember. Like the wonderful lady gone on to celebrate homecoming in heaven now who used to always make two chess pies every homecoming day. 


Ahh, the memories food can give us. Hope my grandkids will have some good memories of Goshen Homecomings when they get older. My oldest granddaughter here did try a piece of cake that she said was the best chocolate cake she'd ever eaten. So there's one good memory! 

The Lighthouse - A 7 Minute Gift

Darrell, Eugene, Ronnie Hinson, and David singing "The Lighthouse"

One of the most beloved songs in Southern Gospel music is "The Lighthouse." Ronnie Hinson wrote it when he was just a teenager. He and his brothers and sisters were singing in church out of hymnals when he had the chance to hear the Speer family, a well known gospel singing group. That night, he says he fell in love with the Southern gospel sound. He took all the money he had and bought tickets for his family group to go to the Speers' next concert 150 miles away. Ronnie's family lived in California and most Southern Gospel groups were on the East Coast, but Ronnie had friends who sent him the new music on 8 tracks. That lets you know it's been a few years ago. The big groups started letting the Hinsons open up concerts for them when they came to California. The kids would sing some of those groups' top songs since, as Ronnie says, they didn't know any better. The groups had to politely ask them not to so that they could sell some of their own music to be able to pay for their travel out west. 

So the young Hinsons had a concert coming up opening for some of their favorite singers, and they were trying to find original songs or songs out of the hymn book they could recreate and that wouldn't be a copy of any of the groups. Nothing was working and it was around 2 a.m. on the day they needed to sing. Ronnie told the others he was going to the boys' room and that when he came back he would have a new song. The other kids laughed at him and laughed even harder when he came back with some words scribbled on a piece of toilet tissue. One of them wadded it up and threw it in the trashcan. They went back to searching through hymn books, but it got later and later. Then Kenny, Ronnie's little brother, pulled the crumpled toilet tissue out of the waste basket and sang Ronnie's song. Ronnie said it was just before daylight, but that the presence of the Lord filled the church where they were practicing and made it seem as light as noon. That song was "The Lighthouse." It has gone on to be one of the most beloved songs in all Gospel music. Ronnie says nearly every group has sung it and that at one time it occupied several spots on the Top Twenty list where different groups were performing it. 

Now comes the most amazing part. Ronnie Hinson had never actually seen a lighthouse when he wrote that song. He says he couldn't figure out why the song resonated with so many singers and listeners, and so he got on his bicycle and rode 30 miles to the California coast to see a lighthouse. He says the ocean was gray that day, and the area desolate, but there stood the lighthouse. Hope in the midst of dreary hopelessness. And he knew that the song came from God because he didn't even know what a lighthouse was when he wrote the song. 

If you want to read more about Ronnie and his story of writing "The Lighthouse" you can go to Southern-Gospel-Music-Lyrics.com where I got most of this information. At the National Quartet Convention last week, Ronnie had the booth across the aisle from the Patriot Quartet's booth. Several years ago the Patriot Quartet recorded "The Lighthouse" for a very special reason. Joe White, who sings lead in the group, had just found out his mother had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. "The Lighthouse" had long been Mrs. White's favorite song and had helped her through some difficult years in her life. She had asked Joe to have the quartet sing it numerous times, but Joe always told her that the song had been sung by every other group and there was no way the Patriots could improve on the versions already out there. But when his mother became ill, the group made a special recording of that one song just for her. But then others began asking for them to sing it and so they put it on their next recording project. Since then, "The Lighthouse" is one of their most requested songs. It doesn't matter how many groups sing it. The message of the song still touches hearts every time it's heard. 

Joe had already gone home at that last hour of the Quartet Convention Saturday night, but the other three guys were still there. While everybody was packing up, Ronnie was kind enough to agree to come over to sing a bit of "The Lighthouse" with them. The treat of the week for them and all the people still around that night. Ronnie told them that he wrote the song in about seven minutes and that it was a good thing he was so young at the time. That now he'd probably mess it up trying to use all he's learned about song writing over the years.

Have you ever heard the song "The Lighthouse" and if so, did it speak to your heart?
   

A Week of Songs

That's a big gift when people say to you that a song helped them or brought them to some place in their life where they needed to be.  ~ Lenny Kavitz

 

 

The National Quartet Convention is in Louisville this week. The Patriot Quartet, the group my husband sings bass with, will be singing on a showcase Monday afternoon, so I have worked it out to go listen. At least I hope I’ve worked it out. My mother is not doing very well right now. We had a really odd night, but then oddness is part of dementia. Oddness and sadness and all the patience one can gather. So perhaps tomorrow if I get to go hear some of the songs the gospel groups will be sharing, I’ll get that gift of a song that will bring me to a place I need to be. A place of continuing patience and a little touch of wisdom. When you’re dealing with someone with confused thinking, you feel like if you could just find the right answer, then maybe things would be easier. But I’m not sure there is a right answer.
 

The Patriots are going to be singing their new radio release “On the Right Road Now” and a patriotic song “One Nation Under God.” At least I think that’s the plan. Then they will be meeting and greeting people in the Exhibition Hall. I enjoy meeting people at their booth and will have my books for anybody who might want to get an autographed copy. Last year I met a couple from Scotland and they went home with a heavier suitcase because they packed some of my books into it. It was fun talking to them. It’s fun talking to everyone who comes by, and especially fun when they are like me and love books. Of course they wouldn’t be at the Quartet Convention if they didn’t love Gospel music.
 

We’ve been going to the Quartet Convention for years now. For years, we went as fans. Well, Darrell was the big fan. I went along for the ride and usually ended up liking some of the songs. The songs that speak to me are generally ones with words that I relate to. If they also have a great melody, that’s a plus, but it’s the words that mean the most to me. Sometimes just a phrase in a song will touch my heart. The Patriots sing one “I Can Feel the Touch of His Hand” that borrows a lot of the beautiful ideas of the 23^rd Psalm and I love the line “surely goodness and mercy will follow me.” It’s a line that other people respond to also, because sometimes they will come to the product table and ask for that “goodness and mercy” song. That’s one song I never get tired of hearing.

 

It’s interesting how people are touched by different songs. Songs that I don’t like all that much are often favorites of other people. I suppose that's true with books too. Actually, there’s no supposing to it. You can tell that's so by reading the reviews on Amazon or other sites where readers leave their thoughts on books. One person might love a story and give it many stars and great words while another person will totally pan the same story and think it’s awful. That’s what makes the world go around and opens the publishing door for many different types of writers. Thank goodness. Who would want to have only one kind of book or one type of song? That’s why we say “different strokes for different folks” or “to each his own.” 

 

I’m just glad some of you like the words I come up with. So thanks for reading, and if you happen to be at the Quartet Convention this week, come by the Patriots booth in the Exhibition Hall this week and say hello to me or Darrell. One of us will probably be there. 

Birthdays and Other Blessings at NQC

Meet the Southern Gospel group, the Patriot Quartet. My husband, Darrell sings bass with them. That's not him up on the big screen. That's the lead singer, Joe White. Darrell's the one on the far right. The shot I took of him up on the screen was fuzzy, fuzzy. I never claimed to be a professional photographer. If I had been I'd have taken a lot more shots and then maybe had more good ones. The other guys are tenor, Eugene Hoffman and baritone, David Combs.

The guys are at the National Quartet Convention in Louisville this week. They sang in a showcase on Monday, but don't get to sing on the "big stage" as all the singers call it. They do have a booth in the exhibition hall where they meet and greet fans and try to schedule concerts at new churches or singing venues. They love to sing, but they also feel called to share the gospel in song. And they do a great job.

The guys let me set up my books on their product table and so I get to have a little book signing and talk books with people from all over the country. Texas won out on Monday. All those people were trying to get away from the heat and dry weather. Most of them said they'd been seeing smoke from the wild fires. Later in the week, the tour buses start pulling in from all over. I've been having my books at the Patriots' booth ever since The Scent of Lilacs came out in 2005. And so I've made some reading friends over the years. On Monday I got to share my new books with several of them. Readers like Fonda who hunts me up every year. I'm going to use her name in a book one of these days.

Darrell and I have been going to the Quartet Convention for years. I talked to a man from Texas (of course) on Monday who said he'd been to the first Quartet Convention held in Memphis 53 years ago and had been to almost all of them since except for a few years when their children were very small. So I tried to think how many years straight Darrell and I have been going. We started going when they held the Convention in Nashville. We didn't get to go for the whole week, but would go for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They moved the Convention to Louisville 17 years ago and I know we've been every year they've had it there. So I'm guessing 21 or 22 years, maybe more, maybe less.

One thing I do remember is that I've had a terrible cold on at least half of those years. Probably more. NQC, tissues and cough drops - they go together. But at least I've never wanted to sing at the NQC.  Good thing because most years I've barely been able to talk. This year I'm okay. I can talk and shake hands with people without thinking I might be "Typhoid Mary." Thank goodness!

Another thing about the Quartet Convention is that it swallows up my birthday. Every year I spend my birthday at the NQC. No parties. No cakes. No presents. Well, last year I did go shopping and bought my own present - a gorgeous Gospel Singer outfit to wear to the fancy ACFW dinner I attended the week or so after the NQC. I said I was going to wear it one night this year, but if I do, everybody will think I'm one of the singers. And what if they ask me to prove it? I'd be in trouble then. Of course I did teach my little granddaughter the song "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" today, so I could sing that. She was very cute singing the song. Only she said the bear didn't see the other side of the mountain. She sang the bear saw "me." (A grandmother has to sneak in a grandkid story every once in a while.)

I do enjoy the NQC and I'm old enough now that the day I celebrate doesn't matter all that much. Sometimes I celebrate a new year for a couple of weeks. And why not? A new year is worth celebrating. I'm looking forward to the year ahead. I'll have another couple of books out there for readers. I'll be sure to get to talk books with a bunch of new reading friends and some old reading friends too. I'll get to tell some more grandma stories and share some of those special grandkid moments as they celebrate birthdays and other special events in their lives. I'll get to count blessings until I run out of numbers.

Each of you reading this is a blessing to me. Thank you so much for giving me a few moments of your time. And don't forget to enter my birthday giveaway if you haven't already. Details are on my News and Events page on my website, but you can throw your name in the hat by leaving a comment here. As long as you leave a way for me to get in touch with you in case you win. I'll be drawing for winners the last of September. One of the winners will get that beautiful grandmother's Bible and others will get books and more. 

I put this quote in my birthday newsletter, but I love it. So seeing as how it's almost my birthday, I'm going to use it again. Don't birthday people get to some extra privileges? And for sure I wouldn't be the age my birth certificate assures me I am.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were? (Leroy Satchel Paige)

The Grassroots of Patriotism

"The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage." Thucydides (Ancient Greek Historian and Author 460-404 B.C.)

~~~

We went to our grandson's elementary school musical program last week. Their teacher chose a patriotic theme and here in this picture they are singing a song about the red, white and blue of the American flag - the symbol of our country and the flag that many soldiers have followed into battle. The kids led all of us in the Pledge to the Flag and then they recited the Preamble to the Constitution. "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union..."

~~~

Some things just give a citizen chills and bring tears to the eyes no matter how many times you hear it, and hearing it from a group of fourth and fifth graders made it even more touching as it was easy to see their enthusiasm and pride in being American. At the end of the program the teacher asked the veterans to stand to be recognized. We did that this morning in church and more than half the men in our church were standing. These men served their country and came home to continue their lives. Others did not. Others gave their all in service to their country and tomorrow is a day set aside to remember those men and women.

~~~~

My father didn't serve in World War II. He was exempted because he was a farmer. Two uncles were in the war. A cousin served in Vietnam and a brother-in-law worked on airplanes in the Phillipines during the Vietnam War. I'm sure all of you have veterans in your family you're proud of or perhaps you served in the armed forces yourself. If so, thank you. My husband sings in a Southern Gospel group called The Patriot Quartet and they have a song out on the radio "I'm Proud to Be an American Christian." In nearly all their concerts the song gets people on their feet and many times it's the veterans who are first to stand. They've put their lives on hold and stood for America before. And that's why I get teared up when I hear patriotic songs. Because being an American matters.

~~~~

How do you feel when you say the Pledge to the Flag or hear the National Anthem?

October Sundays in November

We had a great weekend weatherwise here in Kentucky. And in West Virginia where we were keeping the grandkids while Mom and Dad took some R & R time. Looks like the twins are auditioning to join their grandpa's gospel group. A little duet piano playing would certainly add to the fun, I'm sure.

This is our second weekend in a row to have sunshine and warm temperatures. It was picnic weather in November. Some people were out putting up Christmas decorations. I don't know how they did it in seventy degree weather, but then I'm not much of a decorator. I don't decorate my yard in any degree weather for any holiday.

Guess my yard's decorated right now with the neighbor puppies. I actually gave one of them away. Yaay! To be a little three-year-old girl's puppy. The little dog will feel right at home after the way the grandkids carried her around and loved on her. Anyway all this great sunshine makes me think we must be getting the October weather we so sorely missed out on last month this month. And I'm glad. I love the warm, sunshiny days of fall when you just want to sit down and let the sun soak into your bones to tide you over until spring.

The twin boys along with their big sisters kept both Darrell and me hopping to keep them happy and out of trouble this weekend. The boys have inherited a good dose of stubborn from their grandma and once they thought about doing something, they were bound and determined to see it through, especially if it was to open doors or cabinets or head for the end of the driveway. All the kids were fun to be with and "far away grandma" as the three year old calls me had a good time chasing after them all.

Tonight I went with the Patriot Quartet to their concert. I was sitting out in the entranceway of the church before the service started when a couple came in and I caught this scrap of the conversation. "And then she kind of just quit coming." I don't know who they were talking about or what they were saying she kind of quit coming to. But the phrase rang a bell. "Just kind of quit." I figured they were talking about a person who had fallen away from their church fellowship, but that wouldn't have to be the case. She could have just kind of quit going to the gym to exercise. She might have just kind of quit going to visit her family. Who knows?

Hope there's nothing you've "kind of quit" doing that you enjoy doing in this November October. I've "kind of got started" on my new book. Kind of. So that's better than kind of quitting, right?

Sunday Down on the Farm with Friends

It's been a busy Sunday. My editor and agent came to visit me and we must be kindred spirits because we talked non-stop all day long. I've been looking forward to their visit for several weeks. I even cleaned up my desk! Now that was really something. I should do it more often because I really don't like working at a messy desk, but paper just seems to accumulate. Any of you guys have that problem? I think it must breed and reproduce and grow. Quickly. Especially for a writer like me who is always hanging on to this or that quote or note or letter or whatever. I like having stuff written down on paper and not just in my head. That's because I'm not as young as I used to be. Sometimes when I try to record stuff just in my head, I must use invisible ink because it often as not disappears and I don't get what needs to be remembered remembered. At least not when it should be remembered.

So the desk is moderately straightened. A lot of stuff went into File 13. That's the round file or trash can for you people who have never worked in an office setting. I need to file a lot of other stuff there, but I'm always worried that I'll end up wanting to chase down the garbage truck to retrieve that very important note I pitched that I should have hung on to.

Anyway, I'm sure my guests were suitably impressed with my almost neat working space. I do have a great office with windows looking out over the outside world. I love windows and have always wanted a window by my desk although I worked for years in my kitchen without a window close by. Now I am blessed with four windows. But my agent made a wise comment after she admired my view of the birdfeeders in the tree and the hayfield where deer sometimes come sneaking along to steal my apples and eat my rosebushes. She said that I probably don't see any of it once I get into my story. And she's right. Once a writer gets into her scene, then her setting, her stage if you will, suddenly replaces everything else. I remember once writing a scene where my character was in a terrible rainstorm and when I came up for air it was odd seeing the sunshine. I felt like my hair should be wet from all the rain.

We all went to hear Darrell and the guys (the Patriot Quartet) sing tonight and they enjoyed hearing Darrell hit those low-down notes. They will have his head so swelled he won't be able to get through the door. He does do a great job singing and the quartet sounded fabulous tonight. I hadn't planned to have my new book on the product table tonight because I'm doing my book event at the Anderson Public Library next Saturday. I was planning to wait until then to have my book available. But they announced it and people wanted it. So I had some in the car and no writer wants to disappoint an eager reader. It was great seeing so many wonderful friends and laughing and talking with them. Not to mention signing a few books. Some of them even said they might still come to my library event next Saturday. It's at one p.m. if you are in the area and would like to come hear me talking about writing The Believer. There will be door prizes and Q & A time and maybe we'll do some sort of fun writing game. We came up with a character at my last event at the library. That's always a fun exercise with a group. But this time we may talk about how we can find a story in history - ours or our nation's.

I'm taking my guests to Shaker Village tomorrow. I'm hoping we won't have to dodge showers there. But even if we do, I know we'll find a spot under the roof and keep having a good time. I hope all of you can look forward to some good times next week and that you know joy in your hearts.

A Weekend on the Singing Trail

Just got home from a weekend with Darrell and the guys as they went to California - California, Kentucky that is. I had no idea there was a California, Kentucky until Darrell started singing with the Patriot Quartet. That's where the lead singer grew up. It's up in Northern Kentucky close to Alexandria. Actually we were at Beech Grove and Silver Springs this weekend.

In Kentucky we like to give every broad place in the road a name and then start up a couple of churches on opposite sides of the road. Makes for a lot of good places for the guys to sing and fun place names for me to try to remember. Here in my county we have Stringtown, Birdie, Rutherford, Alton, Glensboro, Avenstoke, Sinai, Ripyville - just to name a few. There are a lot of very interesting place names in the state. I used Grundy in my Hollyhill books just because I liked thinking about somebody from Grundy. The newspaper has been running a series of articles where they go out to a neat sounding community name and try to dig up the roots of the name. Sometimes they have a challenge just digging up the community because the one general store, church and perhaps one-room schoolhouse have long disappeared from the memory of most of the people who live in the area now. But they still have their dot on the map. What names of towns make you smile? Maybe you grew up in a community with an unusual name.

Anyway the quartet had a good singing weekend. They sang right here at home on Friday night outside for a church who had rented out lots for the 127 Yard sale and were giving everybody a free supper and entertainment. The Yard Sale had loads of cars all along the roads and most of us homebodies are glad they've all gone home. It makes driving very interesting when people slam on their brakes to make a sudden yard sale turn or decide your yard is the best place to park or turn around whether you're actually having a yard sale or not. I'm too far off the beaten path to have that problem, but I've heard others complaining.

Saturday the guys went north to sing at Beech Grove - again outside for a camp meeting gathering of churches in the area. This morning they were at the Silver Springs Church and boy, can those people cook. That's one of the advantages of riding along with the quartet. I get to eat those delicious church dinners right along with them without cooking a thing. Tonight the guys sang at Crestwood in Frankfort. Had a great reception to their new release "American Christian" everywhere they sang. Hope if you hear it on the radio you'll enjoy it too.

Some kind people have already bought my new book, The Believer, and read it. And the sweet comments have warmed this writer's heart. Thank you. Don't forget. If you're in the area and want to hear some writer stories, come on out to the Anderson County Public Library on Saturday, August 22 at 1 p.m. I'm going to be celebrating the new book with a booktalk, maybe a reading, lots of back and forth discussion time and some door prizes. For those of you who aren't in the area, I'll post a new giveaway on that weekend so you can join in the giveaway fun.

Thanks for reading. And being reading friends.

The Dancing Room

Another Sunday. Another day to enjoy life. I had a lot of life to enjoy around here on Saturday with both sets of grandbabies (nine of them, but sometimes it seems like a dozen or more) here to give the new room a test run. Since I don't have any new furniture and only an entertainment center and side table and rocking chair out there, there was plenty of room for the grandkids to play. I sort of like the wide open spaces and they liked playing on that new hardwood floor. It looks great. And it looked even better with circles of grandkids playing with each other on it. Katie, my three and a half year old granddaughter, told me she wanted to go out and play in the "dancing room."

Maybe that's what Darrell and I should do tonight to celebrate his birthday. Dance in our new "dancing" room. Only trouble is neither one of us is much of a dancer. Even as a teenager when the twist and such dances were all the craze, I never had the nerve to actually try doing any of them anywhere except in the privacy of my own room. Too self-conscious at the time. Too awkward now. So we'll probably just celebrate without fanfare by thinking about how cute all our grandkids are while enjoying the peace and quiet now that they've gone home. I used to always make him a pecan pie, but now he's continually on some kind of diet. So it's not fair to cook something to tempt him off it. Guess I can wash some celery sticks for him. Or make him something sugar-free. Won't be good, but I could make it.

Anyway with my WV son and his family here Thursday to leave the twin boys and go on to Kings Island on Friday and my close-by son and his family coming over on Saturday to help celebrate Dad's birthday early, I ran out of writing time to find those elusive two words. I told everybody I was just going to say they (my characters) rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after. The reader won't know how they got up on those horses to ride off or even when the sun started going down, but the story will be finished. Then my younger son said he hated books where it seemed like the writer did just that. Just ended without letting the reader in on what happened. But then he also said he hated just as much the writer who wrote an extra fifty pages after the characters should have ridden off into the sunset. I really don't want to be guilty of either thing. I want to nail the ending. Make it perfect.

Some of you know Darrell is in a gospel quartet, The Patriot Quartet, and you know it's that ending on a Southern Gospel song that really packs an emotional punch for the listeners. If a group can nail the ending, then the audience will sit up and notice. So I'm thinking the ending of a book is some the same. It has to be done right. It has to be emotionally satisfying. It has to come at the right time and make the reader nod and say, yes, that's what happened. And that's what I'm trying to do. What I've been trying to do for at least a week. Get to that perfect ending and nail it.

I think I've nailed a few endings in my stories in the past. I liked the way Summer of Joy ended with Wes and Jocie talking since their relationship had been such a fun part of all the Hollyhill books. The Outsider had a very dramatic ending. The Believer has an emotional ending that I hope will be satisfying to readers. And that's what I'm trying to find with this new book, The Seeker. The right ending. Tomorrow for sure. Even if I have to stay up all night. And then I'll have to do some fast editing. Gee, how did May and June zoom by so fast? Don't you think we need to put some speed limits on these summer days?

Hope all your days are speeding by with happiness in every mile. Talk to you Wednesday.

Writing That First Draft

Hi everybody. How do you like my new look? On the blog page, that is. I was tired of that brown wallpaper. You're probably thinking that's just like a woman to want to rearrange furniture. Not me. I set a piece of furniture down it stays there forever unless I'm having company and have to move it to clean the rugs.

Now words, that's different. I rearrange words all the time. Sometimes to better places and sometimes just to throw them out. I'm beginning to think I need to throw some of my current words out the window in my new book. But I need to keep my finger mostly off the delete key right now. That comes after I get the story down the first time. Then I can figure out what I need to slice and dice. I read an article by a writer the other day in one of the writers' magazines. She wrote her first draft by hand and just let whatever she was thinking come out with arrows pointing here and there and every direction. She said she needed to spill her story out as fast as she could to begin with. I'm all for that. I've read about other writers who say they rework as they go and by the time they're finished with the first draft then they're mostly finished with the story without having to do a lot of rewriting. I'm somewhere in between that, I suppose. I do some rewriting as I go, but mostly I want to push the story out of my head onto the paper. Well, okay electronic paper. Then I can rework and polish and make it better. At least that's always my plan.

Oh, yeah, and about those words I wonder if I should throw out, I have to tell myself not yet. I nearly always go through a spell in every story where the doubts begin to crowd in. That old saying that you don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water is certainly true for writers. You want to hang onto the baby of your story and help it grow with lots of tender loving care and pen (or key) strokes. I'm ready for my story to be at least toddling along now or even better, mature enough to be skipping and running. I don't care if it runs so fast I get out of breath trying to keep up. That would keep my writing muscles in shape.

I'm blogging early this weekend because I'm supposed to go with The Patriots to their gospel singing concerts tomorrow. Of course it is s-n-o-w-i-n-g! Can you believe that? And there was ice hitting the window earlier. Looks like March is going to come in like a lion. Anyway the guys have a new tenor and tomorrow is his debut singing with the group. I've heard a CD they made at practice. They've definitely got a new sound, but it's a good sound. If you want to know how their old sound was you can go to their website http://www.patriotquartet.com/ and listen to some of their songs. You can even order their music from there as well as an autographed copy of my book, Angels at the Crossroads. That's the true life story of their first tenor, Jerry Shepherd. Jerry is singing with them on all their CDs except "Standing for God and Country" and "Classics 2."

Jerry has an amazing testimony of God's grace in his life after he made some very bad choices and ended up in a Georgia penitentiary at the age of 19. Even before he got out of prison, he promised to tell his story every time the Lord gave him the opportunity in the prayerful hope that hearing his story might encourage others not make the kind of mistakes he made. That's why the Lord put us on that old quartet traveling bus at just the right moment in time so that I could write his story down for him. His testimony of grace and forgiveness has inspired a lot of listeners and readers.

Anyway, back to the Patriots. They're pretty good. The low down guy is my husband, Darrell. He's been singing bass in gospel groups for over 35 years now. He loves singing in a group with that old time four-part harmony. So I'm skipping church to go hear their new sound in person.

Hope it doesn't snow and ice us out. After the nasty ice storm we had to start February, I'm sure everybody in Kentucky was cringing at the sound of ice hitting the windows today, but it's supposed to change to snow and not be as bad as that storm was. All of us and especially the electric linemen are hoping that turns out to be true. Those workers did a heck of a job in some terrible working conditions. In some places they'd get a new pole set to replace one broken by the ice and before they could move away from that location, they'd watch another pole further down the line snap and break. The ice was so heavy on the lines that in places people said they saw poles falling across the fields like dominoes. A lot of us are appreciating electricity more these days and what it takes to keep it lighting up our houses.

Till next time, I hope you have sunshine and joy in your lives - no matter what the weather outside is like.

Homecoming Day

Tomorrow Goshen, my little country church, will celebrate 196 years of keeping the doors open at our annual Homecoming Day. Visitors and former members will come "home" and remember growing up in the church. They'll talk about going to Bible School and Sunday School there A few of them will even remember when the church was heated by a stove on each side of the sanctuary and when the men sat on one side of the church and the women and children on the other side. Nearly all of us will remember the great "eating" to be found at a Homecoming dinner on the grounds. While now a lot of us busy members let Kroger do the cooking, back then the ladies had country cooking down to an art. On Homecoming Day, they cooked everything they could find and a lot of it was straight out of their gardens or off their pantry shelves. I don't know that it's ever been a competition, but I've known preachers who had to load down their plates to keep from favoring one lady's food over another's.

Banana croquettes are my favorite church dinner food. Don't know what that is? Then you must not be southern although I met a preacher's wife from Alabama once who had never seen bananas coated with salad dressing and then rolled in crushed peanuts. Yum! Yum! As Granpa used to say on Hee-Haw. So I'm hoping somebody will make them for tomorrow. It's never me. It's just too messy and I can dump a jar or two of my homegrown greenbeans in a pan a lot easier. But I'll be sure to brag on anybody who does put in the work to make the banana croquettes. And don't ask me where the name comes from. I might not even have the name right, but that's what I heard when I was a kid growing up. Nobody, but nobody had a holiday dinner without banana croquettes, mashed potatoes, and some kind of gelatin salad. Pink cloud salad was popular for a while, and do you remember watergate salad? Was that after the Watergate mess? And did it have any connection? I just remember it was green jello and whipped topping and marshmallows. I don't know how it was made. I never fixed it and at the dinners I just headed straight for the bananas and peanuts.

Enough about food. I might get us all hungry. And probably half of you are trying to diet. That seems to be the American past time. Putting on the weight and then trying to take it off.

I finally got pictures of my new twin babies up on my website along with plenty of other photos. Even some of me when I was a little girl. So go check it out if you get a chance. The babies are so cute as well as the rest of my grandbabies.

Entries are still coming in for my new book give-away. I'll be drawing the winner the end of October, so if you haven't entered the contest yet, you still have time. Just send me a message saying you'd like to be entered into the drawing.

The Patriots were at Renfro Valley today. It was a beautiful day weatherwise and the guys did a great job singing, too. I enjoyed meeting Bev from New York and Sharon from Chicago and their husbands. They were both sweet enough to say they enjoyed reading my books and even brought their books along with them for me to sign. It's always fun for an author to meet a reader. Thanks for checking my website schedule and coming by to talk to me, Bev. I've got some other signings and such coming up. Hope if you are in the area wherever I am, you'll come out and say hi.

I'm sort of in the doldrums writing. I sent off my book, The Believer, for the editor to look over, and it's time to think about the next book. But I need a little time to let the characters of the last book fade out a little. Plus I'm supposed to be doing some other kinds of writing work. I'm scheduled to speak in WV next Saturday. It's good to have something in mind when you step to the podium. Rambling is okay for a blog, but not so okay for a presentation. I'm going to be talking about "Writing about Shakers... and Other Odd Characters." I'm excited about meeting new reading friends in West Virginia. And then Virginia Smith and I are having the signing at Joseph-Beth's bookstore the week after that and I need to get some postcards sent. Maybe if you're in the central Kentucky area you'll get a card. Or just come on down to hear us talking and reading. It's going to be fun sharing the floor with Ginny.

Still, even though I'm busy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, I miss writing a story. Address labels and speeches aren't the same. So it won't be long until I lift my sails so I can try to catch a little breeze of creativity and get back into a new story.

Maybe I'll talk more about the doldrums of writing next time. Hope you all have a wonderful week and that you stay out of the doldrums.

Independence Day Weekend - God Bless America!

Hi everybody. Hope you had a great Fourth of July with picnics and fireworks and fun as you celebrated our nation's freedom. In our church bulletin today I put a quote from Pearl S. Buck "None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascination power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free." And that's right. We're so free that we never think about it. Not really. Not the way those who don't have our freedoms surely think about freedom.

We can do and say whatever we want - within the limits of the law, of course. We can choose our own professions. We can quit one job and find another. We can move to whatever community we want to. We can complain about the government without fear of reprisal. And boy, do we ever do that - complain about the government. But maybe that's good. Maybe that means we will never be satisfied with things as they are. We will always be growing as a people, as a nation.

But we can't forget that freedom is not free. Many men and women have given their lives in service to our country to keep our freedoms and to help people in other countries keep their freedoms. We have soldiers right now in harm's way who need our prayers as they serve our country. What better time than Independence Day to recognize and honor our veterans and those who are serving now. So don't be ashamed of that tear in your eye when you hear the "Star Spangled Banner." Let's wave the flag and count our blessings as an American. God bless America!

My husband's Southern Gospel Quartet is called the Patriot Quartet, and since they chose that name, they have made it a practice to sing some patriotic songs in all their concerts as they do their best to stand for God and country. They even titled one of their recordings that - "Standing for God and Country." Their patriotic songs celebrate our freedom as Americans and also our freedom as Christians. You can check out their songs on their website, http://www.patriotquartet.com/. They have some good ones.

They were singing at Fort Harrod in Harrodsburg, Kentucky last night and had a great crowd come out to hear some of those patriotic songs. But there were some unexpected guests that weren't as thrilled with their music while they were warming up and setting the sound system prior to the concert. Bats kept falling out of the upper reaches. I guess the high tenor notes were getting to them. Or maybe it was my husband's low notes. I'm not sure what frequency bats are on, but whatever these were on, the guys' singing was messing it up. Thank goodness and the Lord no bats came down to visit after the people started coming in. We might have heard some high tenor notes from some people besides the Patriot's tenor singer.

The quartet had three really good concerts this weekend and enjoyed singing on a weekend when they could showcase their patriotism and their patriotic songs.

I'm back to work tomorrow on my next Shaker book. The words were coming hard last week. I keep telling myself I need to make the turn for home. Nobody likes a book that goes on and on and forgets to end. So I think I'm turning for home. I hope I'm turning for home because if I'm not I'm going to have to weed out some of these words that I'm struggling so hard to plant on the paper or computer screen. Of course it's way easy to delete words on the computer. Hit a couple of keys and oops! It's all gone. And that's always when you don't want it to be all gone. Of course you can recover it. Can't you? Oh, not if you hit that other wrong key. I did a little of that last week. Just a paragraph's worth, but it was a good paragraph. I'm sure it was. But I couldn't find its echo in my head, so I just had to write a new one. I tried to imagine it was better. You know, writer's are supposed to have good imaginations.

Hope you have a great week with imaginings that bring you smiles and wonders.