Every Book Can be a Gift

Each day provides its own gifts. ~Marcus Aurelius



One of the daily or weekly gifts I receive are the comments you leave here and on my Facebook author's page. It's fun getting to know you and I really enjoy when you share stories from your lives. Take Joye's comment on my blizzard post Sunday about her dad having to crawl out the attic window to shovel out their door after a blizzard. She can tell us about snow. Others have also left bits about their lives and many of you leave encouraging words for me. You might be surprised to know how often writers need encouraging words. But then I suppose that's true for everybody no matter what work they do. We can all use a kind word and a smile.  I want everything I write whether it's a short Facebook comment, an e-mail, or a 100,000 word story to somehow be an encouragement to whoever reads them.

Cathy left me one of those kind and encouraging comments this week. In case you don't read the comments on posts, here is the part that had me smiling. "Just found a true treasure...one of your older books called "The Gifting". I absolutely LOVE this book. I think you should re-release it. Page 71..."Don't ruin a gifting by measuring it. Just enjoy."

So I am enjoying and remembering too. I don't remember writing those words on page 71, but I'm glad I did. It sounds like very good advice. I wrote that little book for young readers over twenty years ago, but the book lived up to its title for me. A gift. So I'm taking the liberty to change that quote at the beginning of my post a bit to say "Every book provides its own gift."   

You see when I wrote that book my father was dying with pancreatic cancer. During his illness, he became agitated and not himself and it was a very hard time for him and for all of us. The Gifting is about a young girl, Ginny and her recluse neighbor, Miss Nellie. I have to admit I'd forgotten my characters' names until I read the blurb on the cover. A lot of characters through the keyboard since then. But while I might not remember the names, I do remember the story and how thinking about those characters and what they might be going to do next helped me stop obsessively worrying about my dad and about Mom who was taking care of him. Worrying didn't help Dad or Mom either. So when the night pushed in on me and I couldn't sleep, I'd think about Ginny and Miss Nellie. The story was a gift to me.

Since then, I've been "gifted" with many other stories. Some of them have come at other hard times in my life. Right now is a hard time for me with my mother's struggle with dementia. Sometimes I wonder if I'll be able to get the next book written, but then the gift of a story will come. My last Shaker book, The Gifted, has a thread throughout about the blessing of gifts from the Lord and how we use those gifts. Like Jessamine in The Gifted, I think the Lord gave me a gift for words and intended for me to use that gift to tell stories. But at the same time that my books might turn out to be a gift to you, they can also be a gift to me while I'm writing them. But I do think I've probably used all the titles with gift in them that I can. But then you never know? I might be given another "gift" book. The Gift. His Gift. Her Gift. A Thousand Gifts. :)


Thanks for reading. And remember you can leave a comment here or on Jocie's Hollyhill blog to throw your name in the hat for the drawing for an autographed copy of Scent of Lilacs. Each comment on a new post gets you a new entry. I'll draw three winners on March 3 and let Jocie announce the winners on March 4. This drawing is open only to those of you who give me the gift of your comments here on my journals.

Words to Tickle an Author's Ears

What do you say to the author of a book you've just read? Well, if you like the book or even love the book, you might go to the writer's website (most writers have one these days) or find their page on Facebook and send them a message telling them how glad you were to read their book. Those messages are always fun for a writer to get. Or if you really want to share your excitement over a good story, you can post reviews in a blue zillion places on the internet. You can do that if you don't like the story too, but that's not nearly as much fun for the author. Us poor authors are needy when it comes to good words about our stories and wanting lots of stars on those reviews.

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It's hard for me not to click on all those stars for other writers if I'm reviewing a book because I know how hard that writer probably worked on the story and what hopes he or she had that everybody was going to love it. Some of us spend months, even years, digging the story out of our heads and then another year usually passes with edits, etc. from the publishers and finally the book will be out there in the hands of readers. We want you to read it. We want you to like it. We want you to more than like it. We want you to love it. Of course we know everybody in the whole world is not going to read our book and love it. Hey, if everybody in the whole world did read my book, I might be as rich as Bill Gates and not care if you liked it or not. Well, that's probably not true. I'd probably still want you to like it. Er, love it.

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So we're not talking about those books you don't like. We're talking about those books you do like. Maybe books where you actually know the author and will be telling him or her face to face what you thought of the book. I'm a hometown girl and a lot of the people around here have known me forever. So I'm always meeting people in churches or in the grocery store who know I'm a writer. They usually say something like "I love your books." Or "Are you still writing?" Or "When's the new book coming out?" Or (and no writer likes to hear this one) "I don't have time to read." But the best comments I get are the ones that tell me what they liked about the story or how they enjoyed the characters or that they sat up until the wee hours reading to find out what happened next. Or they cried over the sad parts and smiled during the happy parts. And were glad they took my book home to read.

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And now that's where I am with my new book, The Seeker, finding its way into readers' hands. I'm sitting back waiting for what people will have to say. My sisters. My kids. My friends. And hoping I'll hear some words that will tickle my ears. And see stars on Amazon or Christianbook.com or Barnes and Noble. I admit it. I'm needy. But I did like Adam and Charlotte and the story they had to tell and so it's only natural I want my reading friends to like the story, too.

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To celebrate the new book, I'm having a couple of book launches. The first one at Corinth Parable Bookstore in Frankfort, KY on Friday, July 2 at 7 p.m. and the second one at my hometown library, Anderson Co. Public Library in Lawrenceburg KY on Sunday, July 11 at 2 p.m. We always have fun talking books at these book launches. Before that I'm taking part in the Harrodsburg Book Festival this Saturday. If you're in the area any of these times, stop by and say hello. And if you've read one of my books, go ahead and say something nice. If nothing else you can say you liked the covers.

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Edna of Ohio was the winner on an autographed copy of The Seeker this week. You might be the winner next week if you've thrown your name in the hat by sending me a message or commenting here. Edna and Charmaine, your books are in the mail.