Prayer - A Matter of Faith

Prayer is simply talking to God like a friend and should be the easiest thing we do each day. (Joyce Meyer)

Prayer - a Matter of Faith

Do you believe in prayer? I'd guess that most of you who stop by my blog here do. You've probably had plenty of times when your prayers were answered. Sometimes just as you hoped while other times you may have had to wait for an answer or accept an answer different from the one you sought.

On Facebook, we see plenty of requests for prayer when our friends or someone in their family has some sort of crisis - medical or emotional. You may wonder about whether our prayers in those cases really make a difference. But the Bible says prayers matter. That they not only matter to us, they matter to God. The Bible tells us He wants to hear from his people. 

Pray Always

In my book that releases this summer, The Innocent, prayer is one of the recurring faith themes. My character's mother has continually admonished her to pray in all situations as Corrie ten Boom suggests in the following quote. 

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden. (Corrie ten Boom)

Prayers Answered

In the last couple of weeks, I've seen prayers answered on Facebook and down here on the farm. On Facebook prayers were requested for two youngsters involved in accidents. One a near drowning. The other a child finding and swallowing prescriptioin medication. Both children were in dire conditions with worries they might not come out of the experience. Both children, on last report on-line, were playing and back to their normal selves. I didn't know either of these families or children, but along with other concerned friends of friends, I prayed. Prayers answered.

Pinpoint Prayers

I've been dipping into a book titled The Power of Praying Boldly by Will Davis, Jr. In one section, he advises not making general prayers asking to be blessed in a vague way, but to send up pinpoint petitions asking for just what you need or want. A good way to pray that helped my husband a week or so ago.

He had a problem here on the farm with his cattle. Nothing earth-shaking, but a definite concern. He needed to get his bull up but the animal refused to go into the barn. This went on for weeks. Either the bull would not go in the corral or if he did, he would calmly find a way to push out. My husband was frustrated to the point of arranging to tranquilize the bull. But then after pinpoint prayers from him and from me, the bull went in the barn. Problem solved. The Lord to be thanked.

Another prayer story from the last week is about my niece who is taking treatment for cancer. Things are often hard for her when she goes for the chemo. Last week, the technician wasn't able to get blood for a test before the chemo. It looked like Julie would have to go to a different part of the hospital, go through the process of registration again and have a perhaps more difficult procedure to get the necessary test results before her chemo. But she asked the technician to try one more time, that she had asked her friends, via Facebook, to pray. Friends had prayed. The hospital worker said she had prayed too and was willing to give it another try. Julie says the blood flowed easily. Prayers answered. 

Several years ago, I was in a low place with my writing. Nothing had sold. I wondered if I should quit. But I wrote one more book and prayed for the story. Prayed for myself as a writer. That book, Scent of Lilacs, found a publisher and gave me new hope and purpose as a writer. Prayers answered.

But if we have doubts about some of what we consider impossible prayers being answered, we are not alone. Think about the story where Peter's friends and family were have a prayer meeting for him because he was locked up in jail. And yet, when the Lord led Peter out of the prison and Peter went to his house where the people were praying, it took a while for his friends to believe the servant girl who told them Peter was at the door.

Powerful Prayers

Indeed, prayers are powerful. May we always be ready for the joy of the answers to those prayers.

Joy is prayer; joy is strength: joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. (Mother Teresa)

Have you had a time when a prayer was answered in an amazing or perhaps an everyday sort of way?

On the Hunt for Bargains

Bargain - a thing bought or offered for sale more cheaply than is usual or expected.

Folks all along US 127 have been either offering or looking for bargains all week. The worlds longest yard sale goes from Alabama to Michigan with Kentucky right in the middle. Last week, scenes like the one above were scattered all along the road that runs through the county where I live. People set up booths full of everything but the kitchen sink and I imagine there were even a few of those sinks for sale here and there. Landowners with an accessible piece of property rented out spaces with an eye to this new cash crop and the hope that it wouldn't rain too much so that the bargain hunters' wouldn't get stuck in their fields. And the bargain hunters came. 

I'm not a yard sale person. Not even much of a bargain hunter. I shop when I have to - food, grandkids' birthdays and Christmas. I have been to yard sales a few times in years past. My daughter and I explored a few when she was first renting an apartment to see if she could find some cheap dishes, etc. I've even bought a few things I really like at yard sales, but I didn't dip my shopping toes into the 127 Yard Sale this year. My husband did. He likes bargain hunting much more than I do. Of course the bargains he's hunting are way different than the bargains I'd be hunting if I decided to join the shopping fray.
 
But there are other ways to find bargains besides on the 127 Yard Sale. Bargains pop up every day on the internet - especially if you are an e-book reader. Books show up free every day and sometimes are only free for a day so you have to grab them quick. Other times, they stay free for weeks, even months like my Hollyhill book, Scent of Lilacs. Still free on Amazon, Nook and Christianbook.com. 

But that's not the only bargain going on with my books right now. My story set in Louisville in 1855 that has more romance than some of my other books, Words Spoken True, has been at the reduced price of 99 cents at Amazon for a couple of weeks now. May end today. I don't know, but right now it's a bargain. 


And then there's the e-book version of Angels at the Crossroads, the only nonfiction book I've written, that stays at a bargain e-book price of around three bucks. That book is a friend's powerful life testimony of forgiveness and redemption that shows how the Lord never gives up on us no matter how we mess up. Instead he puts people in our paths to help us choose the right direction when we stand at those crossroads in life. 

You can even find bargains out there in print books. The internet has made bargain finding in books so much easier. Unfortunately, that has also made it hard for many brick and mortar stores to compete, but that's part of the free enterprise system. For months now, readers have had the opportunity to buy the print version of Small Town Girl at Christianbook.com for a low price. 


So the book bargains are out there. For my books and for many other writers' books too. The price per word of these bargains is almost too low to figure and free is free. Of course, they have to be words you want to read or the bargain isn't a bargain. But if you're a bargain hunter, you don't have to get out and fight the 127 traffic. You can just cruise around on the internet and find some book bargains and then settle down out on the swing or glider on your porch with a tall glass of sweet tea and enjoy some stories at a bargain price.

Grandma Camp and Book Clubs

Did you ever go to "grandma" camp? That's what I call it when the grandkids come to spend a few days. We don't worry too much about anything except food on the table at mealtimes, having plenty of Popsicles and doing something fun. One of the things we did with them this year was go fishing. I think my son had taken his twin boys fishing already but without fishing success. We picked the right day, the right pond, and the right bait. I don't do the fishing stuff. That's their Pa's expertise. But I went along to enjoy seeing them and to make sure nothing but fish got hooked or fell in the water or ... well, you know the drill. 

Thank goodness my other son was along to help with taking hooks out of the fish. They were catching and releasing, and as my son told his wife when she came, they weren't fishing they were "catching." Seven kids fishing and seven kids caught fish. Even my granddaughter who freaks at the sight of a bug, was putting worms on hooks and pulling fish out of the pond. I was amazed. But just take a look at this little guy's face when he looked at the big fish he pulled in. He told everybody after that about his "big mouth bass." 

They had fun. Grandma and Pa got tired but enjoyed getting to spend time with the kids. It was a rough week for us. Losing my mom last Saturday and her funeral this week. We had already planned the kids coming to stay while my son and his wife went on a business trip. Having the kids kept me hopping and didn't leave much time for thinking. That will come. I'll miss seeing Mom and hugging Mom, but she was ready to move on to glory. 

Another thing already planned was a visit to the Lexington Senior Citizen Book Club. I love book clubs and I like it when I'm able to visit with the club. This was a great group of readers. They read my book, Scent of Lilacs. (By the way, it's still a free download if you haven't grabbed it for your e-reader yet.) They had some great comments and then tried to stump me with questions about Hollyhill and Jocie and friends. It's always interesting to hear what other people think about the stories that I write. Are you part of a book club? I'd love to hear from you if you are. 

And it will be fun to know what memories you have of "grandma" camps when you were a kid or maybe you're the grandma making fun sleepovers for your grandkids. Share a story if you want. I love getting your comments here too.

Wednesday I may come up with another mystery picture contest. Meanwhile, if you're a member of the Book Club Network, you can come check out Revell Books giveaway there. 5 copies of Love Comes Home and 5 copies of several other authors' books too. Revell's Facebook page featured Love Comes Home on their Fiction Friday. If you see this before 10:30 a.m. Monday you can still hop over to their page and leave a comment to be in that drawing. 

Thanks for dropping by and don't forget to tell me about your memories of "grandma" camp.

Countdown to Rosey Corner #3

Are you ready to go back to Rosey Corner and see what's going on with the Merritt sisters? I hope so because my new Rosey Corner book, Love Comes Home, will be releasing soon. (Available for pre-sale now on Amazon and other sites.) 

In fact, reviews are already popping up. The first one right off the bat was a nice one that had my editors sending me congrats. I told my family maybe I just wouldn't read any more. You know, sort of like stopping playing ball after you hit a homerun. A starred review in Publishers' Weekly is sort of like a writer's home run. Here is an excerpt: 

In a return to Rosey Corner, Ky., Gabhart revisits the inspiring beloved characters introduced in her historical Angel Sister and continued in Small Town Girl. ....This beautifully written story has a timely resonance, uplifting and filled with hope even as it addresses painful topics. Masterful storytelling blends with a written love story about sisters everywhere, resulting in a novel tailor made for book clubs that can be treasured and shared with all who appreciate the beauty of love and family and the value of struggle. 

Now that's nice. Like getting a hug from a reviewer. Then to top that off, the next day a review came in from RT Magazine. And of course, I did read it. Another hug.

“Gabhart gives readers a fantastic gift of another visit to Rosey Corner and the Merritt sisters, who are more like a real family than a family in a book. The author captures readers' attention and absorbs them into the concerns of a town that is seeing the return of its sons after WW II. You'll want to share the Rosey Corner series with friends and family, and this installment will leave your mouth watering for homemade brown sugar pie - and the recipe is included.”

And I do include the recipe for Jay's favorite pie at the end. That brown sugar pie made its first appearance in Angel Sister. 

Of course, the very best reviews are the ones I get from you, my reading friends. I always enjoy hearing what you think. 

I got my first copy of Love Comes Home Friday. The official release date is July 1. So that gives me a month to celebrate in lots of different ways. First off, just in case you haven't already visited Rosey Corner and you have an e-reader, the publisher is reducing the price to $1.99 or lower for the e-book versions of Angel Sister and Small Town Girl. The price won't last long, but if you want to check them out, here are some links:

Angel Sister - Christianbook.com

Small Town Girl - Christianbook.com

Angel Sister - Amazon

Small Town Girl - Amazon

Angel Sister - B&N Nook

Small Town Girl - B&N

For those you who want that paper book, Christianbook.com, has the paper copy of Small Town Girl for a super low price right now. Plus, you can still get that e-book version of Scent of Lilacs free at all the above internet sites too. Here's Amazon's link. 306 reader reviews and counting. Most of them reader hugs. :)

If you get my newsletter, keep an eye out for it. I'll have details of my Love Comes Home Giveaway Celebration. Still pondering about what kind of stories I might ask you to share with me. If you don't get the newsletter, you can sign up for it here. Or come on back here Wednesday for all the details and a special blog giveaway too. I'll do my best to think of something fun. 

Thanks for reading. 

Note: If you are leaving a comment to be entered in my giveaway, please leave a way to contact you. You can leave your e-mail as (name)at(emailserver)dot(etc) if you are concerned about leaving the e-mail address as it is normally written for mail. Without a way to contact you, I won't be able to reach you should you be the lucky winner. Thanks. 

A Writer Sees Stars

As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next. (Rachel Cusk)

Book reviews have been around as long as writers have been writing books. I'm guessing that even before books were printed, storytellers around the fire pits got reviews, and they probably weren't any happier with listeners spitting in their fire to show they didn't like a story than writers today are with bad reviews. Even famous writers don't like bad reviews.  Danielle Steele says, "A bad review is like baking a cake with all the best ingredients and having someone sit on it."

I've gotten bad reviews and I try to be like Rachel Cusk and let them slide off me. As much as I want to, I can't write a book every reader is going to love. But that sure would be nice. When I first began writing, any review a book received was a printed review in a magazine or newspaper. The average book didn't get many reviews. Now the internet has changed all that. Reviews are everywhere and anybody can write a review. Amazon and Barnes & Noble e-mail you and ask you to write reviews of the books you buy or download. And of everything else you buy too! A reader can join up with Goodreads and review every book she or he has ever read. On there you don't have to say anything. You can just click on a few stars and either make a writer jubilant with five stars or be in despair over the one star slams. 

All this to say that my free book, Scent of Lilacs, has been getting a lot of new reviews on Amazon. (By the way, it's still free if you haven't downloaded it yet or know an e-reading friend who might enjoy the story.) The reviews have all been surprisingly positive which is great. Sometimes with free books, the readers can slam the book because it isn't the type of story they would normally buy. I had one reviewer say about one of my Shaker books when it was offered free a while back that "free was too much to pay for this book." The very fact I remember that points out the problem with reading reviews. I can get a dozen glowing reviews and not remember a word of any of them, except maybe those lovely works "I couldn't put it down." But let me read one of those one star reviews and the words flash like a neon sign inside my head. 

But tonight, I'm going to share bits of some of the 5-star remarks about Scent of Lilacs with you. 

"A beautiful heartwarming story. I loved it. It is so human and full of love. Some beautiful lessons about God's love for all of us." (E Carlson)

"I loved the voice of Jocie, the thirteen year old pastor's daughter who tells most of the story."  (Breiann)

"Loved, loved, loved this book! I laughed and cried. I'm so glad I read it." (Cindy)

"It is clean, funny and good. I enjoyed it so much I bought the next book..." (Dianne)

(I love those that say my story made them smile or laugh. I've always wanted to be funny. Always!)

"...a moving mystery of life including narrative arcs for each of the characters." (IJ Palmer)

"Lots of unusual, imperfect characters add to the great story line." (Book Addict)

I could pull out lots more excerpts. To date, Amazon has 185 reviews for the title, including the one where the reader said she "tried and tried" to read the story but just couldn't it was so dull. Had to throw that bad one in to balance the  others. But most of the reviews have been kind, even enthusiastic and lighting up all five stars to make this writer happy to see stars.    

 

A good, sympathetic review is always a wonderful surprise. (Joyce Carol Oates)

It's enormously cheering to get a good review by someone who seems to understand your work. (Kenneth Koch)

I am glad to get good reviews, but I try not to dwell on those any more than on the ones that aren't so good. I just have to try to write the next book better. 

If you wrote one of the reviews on my books, thank you. Reviews matter. On the internet a review is sort of like word of mouth and everybody knows that having a friend recommend a book is the very best advertising a writer can get. 

Have you ever written a review online? Or told a friend about a book you've read?

Free Download News & Walking Down TV Memory Lane

Television Memory Lane

On my Facebook page today, I posted a picture of Don Knotts as Barney on the Andy Griffith Show and asked my friends to share their favorite TV shows from back when most of the television sets were black and white and the shows were a half hour of fun. Except the Westerns. They usually got an hour to entertain us. Matt Dillion and Kitty in Gunsmoke. The bachelor brothers on Bonanza. It was dangerous having one of those boys fall in love with you because before the hour was over, you would be gone, often dead. Poor Pa, Lorne Greene, had zero chance of ever getting to be a grandpa.

When Laughs Came Easy

Most of the shows mentioned on my FB page were situation comedies. I Love Lucy. F Troop. Hogan’s Heroes. The Dick Van Dyke Show. The Beverly Hillbillies. I bet there’s hardly a person of a certain age who can’t sing that song. “Shooting at some food and up from the ground came a bubbling pool. Oil, that is. Black gold.” And do you remember how Jethro could cipher. Of course, he sometimes had to take off his shoes so he could count on his toes too if the problem was difficult. LOL. Then there was that little sea excursion that ended up stranded on Gilligan’s Island. Somehow they could build or come up with everything except a boat.

And how about Petticoat Junction? Those three girls needed to take a trip to Bonanza. We could have had some TV weddings. What I remember best about that show was they didn’t bother to send the characters off to school or kill them off when one of the actresses decided to quit. They just moved another actress in and let them take over the role. They figured we knew it was all a show and they were acting anyway. And we did.

Of course, father always knew best. That was true not only in Father Knows Best but in My Three Sons and Leave it to Beaver as well as others. I liked fathers knowing best and mothers too. Somewhere along the way the shows started making the parents out as more than a little nutty and hardly fit to be parents of the really smart, and often smart aleck, children. But you know what? There’s something comforting to a kid to know that adults have a few things figured out and that they are dependable people in control of their world.

So Many Great Shows

 

But there were action shows too. Zorro. The Lone Ranger. Superman. Dragnet. Help me out. I know I’m forgetting lots of them. Then we had Carol Burnett. Perry Como. The Ed Sullivan Show. Hee Haw. The Smothers Brothers. So much fun entertainment that you never had to worry about letting your kids watch.

It could be I’m romanticizing a little here. After all, I watched Bugs Bunny and now many parents think those cartoons are too violent for kids. But I knew it was all just silly stuff on television. I never once thought I could pop my sister on the head with a stick and not get in a pile of trouble.

How about you? What shows do you remember best and which ones made you smile?  

Free Download of Scent of Lilacs

FREE! FREE! If you have an e-reader, you can download my book, Scent of Lilacs, for free at your favorite place to grab e-books.

Amazon 

Christianbook.com 

Barnes & Noble 

If you haven't already visited Hollyhill and gotten to know Jocie and friends, I hope you will give the book a try. Free's a great price. And if you have read the books and enjoyed your visit, tell your e-reading friends about the free download. It's only for a limited time, but the time's not up yet.

Thanks a bunch for reading. I'm a day late this week, but I don't have to worry about that dollar short since my book is free!

The Mystery of Ideas

A New Mystery Photo

Are you ready for a new mystery photo? Here it is to the left. Leave a guess to have an entry in my book giveaway. If you've guessed on the other posts, guessing here will give you another entry. You don't have to guess right. Just guess. I've really enjoyed all your comments and guesses. 

Sunday's Mystery Photo

And for those of you who haven't guessed on Sunday's mystery photo, here it is again. Take one last look and guess before I reveal the rest of the photo below. I will tell you that I've tricked most of you on that picture, many more of you than I expected to. I'll post one more mystery photo Sunday and then on Wednesday, the 19th, I'll draw for winners (2) of my book, Summer of Joy (or winners can choose one of my other titles) and a grab bag book by a different Christian author. I'll offer the winners a choice of several titles. Maybe one by Dani Pettrey or Julie Klassen. 

The Mystery of Ideas

Do you ever wonder where writers come up with ideas? That is one of my most asked questions when I'm giving a book talk. Where do I get my ideas? It's a hard question to answer since sometimes I don't know exactly where the ideas come from. When I'm beginning a new story, I start with just the germ of an idea. Usually a "what if" question. 

The Heart of Hollyhill's What If Question

The Heart of Hollyhill series started with a question something like this "What if I had a young girl whose father was a preacher and whose mother had deserted the family years earlier?" Of course that was just the beginning. But from that question, all the other questions about what happened next came - through three books. 

Some parts of the idea can be tracked down to their origins. The part about David, my preacher character, not being able to get a church after his wife left him came from my own pastor's experience. He lost his pastorate at a church when his wife left him and for several years was unable to find a church that would let him preach even though his wife had been unfaithful to him and insisted on the divorce. 

Then I pulled a lot of the setting for the books from what I remembered my little town being like in the 1960s. If you take part in the The Book Club Network, www.bookfun.org, you can check out a special giveaway about Summer of Joy there beginning March 25. I just finished doing a piece that will be posted by Nora on TBCN about how I based the setting for my Hollyhill books on my own small town and my own country church. 

But there were also things that either grew out of the story and just suddenly came to mind in a way that's a mystery to me. Wes from Jupiter for one. I didn't plan Wes when I was trying to come up with the plot of the book, but I'm certainly glad his spaceship hit that air bump and he landed in Hollyhill. That probably sounds really crazy if you haven't read Scent of Lilacs, but Wes tells Jocie Jupiter stories to keep from revealing his past. Other story events are equally as hard to explain, but it's just what happened when my character came to life in my imagination. 


The Mystery Revealed

You are all going to be surprised, but there was only one correct answer and she was sure she was going to be wrong. So Donna, you can laugh, but because you were right and not wrong. Popcorn, cotton, and cotton candy were what most of you guessed. But here's the rest of the picture so you can see. Baby chicks waiting to be sold at Tractor Supply. A very springtime photo. Can't you almost hear them cheeping? 

Thanks for reading and for guessing. Don't forget to guess on the new photo and come back Sunday for one last mystery photo. I haven't figured out what that one is going to be. It's a mystery even to me. Remember if you guess and want to be in the drawing for the books, you have to leave a way for me to contact you. Thanks.

Do you ever wonder where writers get their ideas?