Celebrating Work

 Work is no disgrace; the disgrace is idleness. ~ Greek proverb

Labor Day weekend - the last hurrah of summer. In some places it's when school starts although here in our community, school has been starting earlier and earlier, and now the kids have usually been in school several weeks by the time Labor Day comes around. Labor Day was originally conceived as a day to celebrate the laborers in our country and although it wasn't officially established as a national holiday until Grover Cleveland signed it into law in 1894, the idea of celebrating work and workers would surely have been one the Shakers would have found fitting. 

The Shakers believed a person should work, but then so did their neighbors in the "world." Most of us still believe a person needs useful work to do. Perhaps that's because few of us have the opportunity for a life a leisure. So we hunt jobs and celebrate when we find that perfect job or in this hard economic time, when we find any job we can do to help keep our families going.

The Shaker village near where I live is now a living history museum and it gives a number of people jobs as they demonstrate how the Shakers used to live. The picture above is of one of those workers demonstrating the way the Shakers made the wooden boxes they used for storage.

We visited the village yesterday. One of my granddaughters has been reading some of my Shaker books and she was anxious to see the place I use as the physical setting of my books. I expected my younger granddaughters, three and six, to maybe be bored with the visit, but they enjoyed watching the demonstrations and learning about the Shakers as much as the older grandkids. And of course, they enjoyed seeing the goats and meeting the turkey named Henry. It was a good trip to take on Labor Day weekend since it's a good place to celebrate work.

No great achievement is possible without persistent work. ~ Bertrand Russell

There is no substitute for hard work. ~ Thomas Edison

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.
~ Elbert Hubbard

Hope you have a great holiday. And a better one than I used to have when we were doing more farming. Then it seemed as if Labor Day weekend was always when work needed to be done to get in the crops. Now I'll simply need to "labor" to get some more of my new story written. Might be a good day for that since rain is in the forecast. Hope if you're planning picnics or cookouts or even some harvesting, that the weather will cooperate with you.

What does Labor Day mean to you? Do you celebrate work? Do you stop wearing white shoes and pants until spring? Labor Day used to be a fashion deadline on those. Most of us don't worry so much about that any more.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoy your day off work.

Tour Guide Ann

Everybody ought to try something new and challenging occasionally. Especially writers. While it's not likely I'd ever give skydiving a try unless somebody peeled my fingers off the airplane door and shoved me out, I am willing to try something new now and again. So Friday was one of those now and again days. This lovely bunch of ladies and a few others that my camera didn't capture asked me to give them a talk about writing Shaker books as they rode to a luncheon outing at the Shaker Village here in our area. They were part of a legal secretary group who were meeting in Georgetown.

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So I drove to Georgetown, found their hotel just as they were loading up the bus. Good thing I left a little early. I mean who would have thought a big hotel could hide. But this one did. But not good enough. I did find it. And got to meet a whole bus load of new friends. Of course then I had the challenge of turning into tour guide Ann. The organizer, Joe Ann, said I could sit down and talk, but how can you talk to a bunch of people without looking at them? I couldn't. At least I had to try to stand up and be a bonafide tour guide.

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It worked pretty good on the interstate. I didn't get motion sickness the way I had been afraid I might. My only problem was with my back to the road I couldn't tell when the bus driver was going to step on the brakes. A sudden stop can put a lot of emphasis on whatever you're saying. Trust me on that one. So I told the ladies to point and give me a heads up if something was about to happen. Believe it or not, we weren't far in the drive and I was talking away when one of the women gave a little gasp and pointed. A cow was walking along the opposite side of the interstate. The even funnier part is that it was when I was talking about how the Shakers improved the quality of the cattle in Kentucky by importing a breeding bull from England. I guess the good Lord was helping to illustrate my talk.

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So being tour guide Ann wasn't so bad. I got to meet a bus full of women having a good time out with friends. I got to talk about writing and eat a delicious lunch at the Shaker village. But that wasn't the only new thing I did this week. I spoke to the neighboring county's historical club the night before I was tour guide Ann. If I let myself think about it that was almost as challenging. These people love history and most of them probably knew way more history than me. I told them I always expect somebody to check my credentials at the door and then tell me that they are so sorry but there has been a terrible mistake. No way could anybody want me to speak. I'm just an old country girl who likes to tell stories. Well, write down stories. But amazingly enough, some people like to hear me talk about writing those stories and they laugh in the right places and carry home my books with them. Will wonders never cease.

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Oh yeah, and about that skydiving. I read this quote once and I don't have it in front of me so I don't know who said it, but it went something like this. "If at first you don't succeed..., don't try skydiving."

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Thanks for dropping by. Why don't you tell me some new thing you may have surprised yourself by doing?

Naming Characters - What's in a Name?

I know this picture doesn't have a thing to do with naming characters. Or then again maybe I need to look deeper. The open gate, the roads running together speak of possibilities. I took this picture last week at the Shaker village near me. My new characters might walk down these very roads in my story. They will be facing new vistas, new paths. But first they have to have names.

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In a little book I have called Craft & Technique by Paul Raymond Martin, he has a paragraph about "The Name Game." He says some writers think they can't proceed with a story until they name their main characters. His advice is to pick a name, any name, just so you can get started writing. I'm one of those writers who has to have her characters named. At least my lead characters. How can I know who they are until I know their names? And saying just any Tim, Jim or Sally isn't going to work for me. I have to know what their names are. That's not to say that a character I forced a wrong name on didn't look me in the eye a few pages later and tell me emphatically that if I thought that was her name, I'd better think again.

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I'm thinking names now for my new book. I'll have lots of names before I'm through. Many of them will be minor characters I'll name on the spot when they make their entrance onto my story page. I want those names to be right too, so their names get changed more often than my main characters. I keep a running list of every character I name in a book and every dog, horse or cat plus all the place names. Saves a lot of grief a few pages on down the story road when I meet that character again and think "Oops! What was his or her name?"

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A list keeps me from using pet names I like over and over. Each book needs fresh names unless I'm letting an old character appear in a new book. I did that in The Seeker. Those of you who read The Outsider first know which characters I'm talking about. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to let any of my former characters make a cameo appearance in my next book. That could happen or not.

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Before I can even consider that possibility, I have to come up with my names. And so I'm searching through name books and waiting for the right names to leap off the page into my imagination. Then I write the name down and try it out with a last name. It has to sound right. I usually end up with a whole page full of names and I keep trying them out in my imagination to see which one is going to fit my character.

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Sometimes when I come up with a name, the character pops up too like a jack-in-the box saying "Here I am. Here I am." That's how it was with Lacey, my main female character in my Shaker book, The Blessed that will be out next summer. Other times my character lingers back in the shadows of my mind and is reluctant to come out where I can see if the name fits and if she is going to let me get to know her well enough to tell her story.

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So I'm trying to get the possibilites for the new story to come into focus along with the names. I hope you are having a week where possibilities of good things are coming along and that the names of the characters you're reading about or writing about fit them. I used to think my name didn't fit me. But now I think Ann is a good name for me. I'm just who I am, and a simple name with no pretentions fits. But when I was a kid I wished for a glamorous name with more than one syllable. LOL

A Day at Shaker Village

I met a writing friend for lunch at the Pleasant Hill Shaker Village near here last week. And as always I was drawn to the beautiful curving stairways in the Trustee's House. I made those stairways a reason for Adam to go to the village in my book, The Seeker. It's fun to use places in the real Shaker village in my fictional Harmony Hill Shaker village. But I am writing fiction so at times I have to find a new place that will work in my scene.
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I bring that up because my writer friend asked me about the pool of water in The Believer. She wondered where it was in the village, and I had to admit I invented that particular spot. I thought there could be a pool of water like that on the extensive Shaker property, especially with the river on one side, but I hadn't actually seen one like it or read about one like it. I made it up because I needed a way to get Elizabeth and Ethan together in a scene. That can be difficult in a Shaker village where the leaders are determined to keep the men and women separate.
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My friend was a little surprised by my admission, but a writer does what a writer has to do to make her story work. That's not to say that I play fast and loose with the village setting. I don't. I like staying true to the layout of the village buildings and to the village's history. But a pool of water in the middle of the woods seemed to be an okay invention.
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It was a stressful day for my friend. She had an auto accident on the way to Shaker Village and had to have her car towed. Her phone wouldn't work, but the deputy sheriff was kind enough to bring her on out to Shaker village to meet me. (I posted a picture of her getting out of the sheriff's car on Facebook. She was a real sport and kept her million dollar smile on her face.) Our meal wasn't nearly as relaxing as she'd hoped since she had to keep thinking about what she was going to do next and how to get a rental to get home and where and how to get her car to a repair shop in Louisville where she lives. Her cell phone wasn't getting a signal so she had to borrow mine or the village's to make the necessary calls. Then we look at the beautiful staircases and she gets ready to take a picture and her new camera won't turn on. I know about then she's thinking what else can go wrong while she was wishing she'd stayed home and never ventured out to meet me. But she put on a brave face. We ate our lunch, strolled around the grounds, met the oxen, Star and Moon, in training, and then headed for the car rental agency. We had to go all the way to Frankfort for that because the one in nearby Danville didn't have a car to rent. We get to Frankfort and all they have in a gold colored truck. Mary decided gold would work.
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But the village was beautiful as always, or perhaps even more so because of the beautiful fall colors and being with a friend. Mary's hoping to write an article about the Shaker village and maybe about a writing friend who likes to write stories about the village. Or one very like it.
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Hope you have a good beginning to an even better week.

Modern Blog Tours and Old Shaker Buildings

It's been an interesting week so far for me with my new book, The Believer, making a blog tour. That's where lots of bloggers agree to read and then post reviews of a new book. Most of the reviewers have been kind. While one or two haven't embraced the Shaker background, others have been fascinated and have enjoyed learning about the Shakers. And while I've researched and read and tried to keep in my head lots of Shaker traditions, etc., I'm still learning too.

Wendy, Lonnie and I went to the Shaker Village near here on Monday to eat lunch and get a bit of the Shaker atmosphere. And then we talked and chatted so much, we really didn't have a lot of time to look around. But we were fortunate enough to hear a young woman with a beautiful voice give a demonstration of many of the Shaker songs while she gave a brief history of how they worshiped. We also got to take a good look at the Meeting House that figures prominently in all my books. I even climbed up in the attic. It was very hot up there, but seeing the huge beams and rafters was worth a little sweat.

The architecture is amazing. The Shakers cut and prepared those huge beams and rafters about three miles from where the Meeting House now stands. They assembled them there and then marked each beam or rafter with Roman numerals and took the building apart. They hauled the finished logs to the Meeting House's present location and put them back together by numbers the way some log houses are done today. But this was in 1825.

They had to figure out a way to support the wide expanse of roof without support beams in the middle of the floor where they labored their dances. If they'd had support beams in the middle of the floor the way most buildings that size did then, a lot of Shakers would have been banging into those posts when they were taken over by the spirit and began their free spirited whirls and shaking dances. Also the acoustics are amazing. The lady telling us about the songs said you could get on opposite sides of the room and whisper and the sound would carry clearly.

Anyway I enjoyed walking the paths and being in the Meeting House and feeling my characters peeking over my shoulder to see if I'd gotten it right. While I may have taken a bit of poetic license here and there, most of the historical background of my books is very authentic. I took a bunch of pictures and will try to do a page on my website soon so you can share in seeing what I'm seeing when I'm imagining my characters and where they are living and working. I have a few photos of buildings on my gallery of photos on the website now, but I hope to add more soon.
One reason we didn't get to see as much as we would have liked is that we went on the riverboat ride down the river. It was hot and humid, but a breeze blowing off the river kept us from completely melting. We did enjoy seeing the palisades and the birds and turtles. Wendy was a little worried about the winding road down to Shaker Landing, but we made it fine. She might have had reason to worry since a policeman had pulled us over before we got there to warn me that I might have "axle" trouble. Not exactly what you want to hear. Speeding might have been better. More expensive, but less worrisome - especially for my passengers. But we didn't have any trouble. Other than Wendy wanting to bash me on the head after she mentioned the scraped looking lines in the middle of the winding road, and I told her that was probably where somebody's wheel had fallen off. Next time she'll want to drive her car.

But back to the blogging tour - I did a guest blog at http://mybookaddictionandmore.wordpress.com/ if any of you are interested in going out to read it. I asked "Do you dare?" Then I talked about having the courage to write. If you make a comment, you'll get to be in a drawing to win my book.

I'm off tomorrow to talk to about eighty fifth-graders. That should be interesting. I used to do a lot of school visits, but haven't done one for years. But I love talking to kids and seeing their fresh faces. That is as long as the teachers are there to keep them sitting still.

And then Saturday is my local book event for The Believer at the Anderson Public Library here in town at 1 p.m. If you're in the area, come on down and we'll talk. I'll be giving away some doorprizes and a few books. And I'm trying to think of something interesting to say. Maybe I will before then.

As always, thanks for reading. Hope you have a great rest of the week.

Cookies and Kool Aid

We're still going strong at Bible School. At least the kids are. They can get a lot more mileage out of those cookies and Kool Aid than us older folks can. I usually teach the teenagers, but this year the teens must have had other things going and nobody showed up for my class. So I've been helping with the Beginners. That's ages two to five. Very challenging when a couple of them keep crying for their mamas and daddies. I think those two aren't really ready for Bible School, but the pastor's wife and I are giving it our best try. And without the cookies and popcorn I don't know if we'd make it.

But I really do love Bible School and getting to know the kids better and hearing what they tell you. In one class the teacher was impressing on the children how they could pray and God would always be listening. This little girl pipes up and says, "I prayed I wouldn't have to stay at the babysitter's and I did. I don't think He was listening that day." That makes us smile, but you know a lot of us might have felt something the same at this or that time. But as Br. Fred often says, there are more than one way for the Lord to answer our prayers. There's yes. There's no. There's wait. There's not yet. There's trust Me. The Lord sees the whole picture and we sometimes only see the part right in front of our eyes.

Just take my Shaker book, The Outsider. I came up with the original idea over thirty years ago. Wrote the book. Had it rejected over and over as too religious. Got a really nice letter from Harlequins, but it was still a thanks, but no thanks letter. Then all these years later I dug it out of my closet, rewrote it for the inspirational market and Revell published it. Best of all readers read it. So maybe the answer that I thought was no way back then was really wait. Not yet. This story's time will come.

The Believer didn't have such a wait time. Now I can only hope the time is right for Elizabeth's and Ethan's story. I think you're going to like them as characters and that you will like reading their story. Some of you have already pre-ordered the book and I certainly appreciate that. In fact so many people did that when I called Baker Books to order more copies for myself, they didn't have any. I couldn't complain about that although I did ask the lady I was talking to if they'd printed any copies. She assured me they had and that they would be printing some more. That was good news.

And thank goodness, she did some switching around and found some copies for me. It might not be good to try a book event or signing without books. I'm planning a local book event at the Anderson County Library on Saturday afternoon, August 22. I'll have door prizes and other fun things that day. But first I'll be having the book's coming out party at Shaker Village in Mercer County this coming Saturday morning. I'm looking forward to that. There will be a traditional Shaker breakfast. Well, the food anyway will be traditional. We'll be breaking their traditions by talking. The Shakers didn't allow talking during meals in what they called their "biting rooms." That would be difficult for me this Saturday morning. I plan to do some talking and sharing with my friends. If you can't be there, I'll let you know how things went on Sunday.

Hope you have some fun things planned for this weekend. Summer is zooming past. They're starting school here week after next. Seems way too early. Kids are supposed to go swimming in August. Not go back to school.

Another Winner!

Hey, everybody! It's a July Sunday - even if it does feel more like a September Sunday. We had record lows here on Friday night. Very pleasant today. I could have probably picked beans without working up too much of a sweat, but the beans had to wait for tomorrow. Anyway it is Sunday and it is July so we have a new winner of an autographed copy of my about to be released book, The Believer. And the winner is another Stephanie. The last winner was Stefanie from Kentucky. I'm not sure where this week's winning Stephanie is from, but I'll be contacting her for a mailing address to send her the book. There's still another Sunday in July and then I'll be drawing for a winner the first weekend of August, so send me a message from my website and I'll add your name to the pot. Who knows? You might win. Nearly everyone who has won a book in my giveaways has said, "I never win anything!" But that time they did.

We started Bible School at my little country church this week. Now that I've got a better hookup to the internet, I'll try to start posting some pictures here on the blog and I thought tonight that a picture of the church might be something you'd like to see. Especially those of you who read some of the Hollyhill books since I based my Mt. Pleasant Church in the books on Goshen's building. Or at least the way it looked back in the sixties. And yes, I do remember those olden days before some of you discovered America. That's what our pastor says happened when you were born. Besides, you missed out. The Sixties were some interesting years. Just think about the music. We went from Elvis to the Beatles and beyond.

Of course my mom has even more to remember and celebrate. She grew up during the Depression, got married right before WW II started, enjoyed the peaceful Fifties and has been on a roller coaster ride ever since. So much has changed in her lifetime. So much has changed in mine. But isn't that what they say is the one thing you can count on? Change. At least about everything but the Lord who is the same today and yesterday and all the tomorrows. The Bible tells us so.

And that's what we're teaching at Bible School this week. The B-i-b-l-e. I'm guessing a lot of you sang that song at Bible School when you were kids. I've certainly sung it a lot since I've taught Bible School at Goshen every year since 1967. I sometimes think I should retire, but I enjoy being around the kids too much. If you want a fresh outlook on life just go find some kids and don't talk. Just listen.

I did get that wireless stuff hooked up finally here in the house. My son figured out why I was pulling my hair out. I had the wrong kind of network cards. As I said on Facebook, I was trying to make a goose be a swan. It wasn't going to work no matter how many times I tried. So I went out to the store. Got the right stuff and had it up and running in half an hour or less. Easy as pie. Only one problem, the satellite company put me in the internet corner for 24 hours because I exceeded my download quota. I'd forgotten I even had a quota. Worse, I didn't know I'd downloaded anything. Updates perhaps for Windows or so their site suggested. But finally they let me out of the corner and I'm trying to behave and not exceed my allowed allotment. That way I won't have to try to break out of internet jail or sit and stew for a day while the internet moves slower than dial-up ever did.

I won't have much time for internetting or facebooking this week with VBS going on. I've plenty of writing publicity odds and ends to take care of. The Believer will be on Chapter-A-Week in August. I'll post the link here on Wednesday. Then it might be good to think about what I'm going to say on Saturday morning at my booklaunch at Shaker Village. (If any of you are local, you can check out details on my website if you think you might like to be there Saturday morning. It will be fun to launch the book at the Shaker Village I based Harmony Hill on.) And I'm beginning to want to be back immersed in a new story. Can't stay away from writing playing with grandkids and painting walls and canning beans too long. Believe me, the playing with the grandkids was the most fun in that list.

Hope you're having a great week. I'll tell you about the grandkids and me trekking down to Panter Rock another time. Smile - everybody will wonder what you're up to.

Something New

Hi, everybody. I jumped feet first into the electronic social pool this week and joined up with Facebook and Goodreads. I'd been talking about doing Facebook for months but had to meet that July 1 deadline first. Once the new book was off, I had to carry through on my resolve to put a presence out there on Facebook. I have a few Facebook friends already. Thanks to you who may have befriended me. I'm amazed at the speed of the network. And I'm still feeling my way and trying to decide the best way for me to do Facebook settings, etc. Appreciate any advice you old hands at Facebook want to offer a newbie.

Then a publicity person at my publisher, Baker Books, got in touch and asked me to join up with Goodreads. That's something similar to Facebook except on there the friends/members just talk about books. They list books they've read and rate them with stars as well as write reviews if they want. A lot of my books are listed on there already and have been rated over a hundred times. Some good ratings and some not as good ratings. One thing that's true about any author is that your book can't be everybody's favorite - even if you want it to be.

Anyway Baker wanted to post a giveaway on Goodreads for my new book, The Believer, and in order to give away a few early copies I had to be a Goodread member. So now I've signed up with them and I'm trying to remember the books I've read so I can add them to my list. There are people on there with hundreds of books listed. I may have read hundreds of books, but I probably - no I won't remember all the titles. Now my sister could do a better job of this. She's been keeping a list of the books she reads for years. I do that now too along with a short personal review about whether I liked the book and why or why not, but I wish I had started years ago the way she did. I'll have to tell her to join up with Goodreads so she can brag on the many books she's read.

I haven't really gone out fishing for friends at either site. I guess I'm hoping friends will just swim on over and jump into my net. And some already have. Isn't that amazing? But if you're a member of Goodreads, you can go to their book giveaway page and sign up to win an early copy of The Believer. A bunch of people already have. There are lots of other books on there to be given away too. Of course, you can still send me an e-mail and get in on my July drawings where the odds are sure to be lower than on Goodreads.

Thanks to all of you who have said you'd like to go to the "Brunch with Ann" at 10 a.m. on July 25 at Shaker Village in Mercer County, KY sponsored by Corinth Christian Bookstore. Of course some of you have said it might be a little too far to drive. I understand, but I do wish you could all be there. And you at least will get the highlights on here or in my newsletter after the event.

I'm looking forward to that traditional Shaker breakfast which is the reason you have to buy tickets. My talk will be on the house, but we'll have fun. I'll leave time for Q & A because that's my favorite part of any talk I do about writing. I never know where the questions might take us or whether I'll be able to come up with an answer. So far I always manage to answer something. I think the Lord has give me a gift for gab after making me so painfully shy when I was a child. In my next blog on Sunday, I plan to write about the different gifts the Lord blesses us with and how sometimes those gifts are surprising.

Again, as always, thanks for dropping by. Hope your week is the best you've ever had and that you are feeling loved and appreciated. And if you're on Facebook or Goodreads, come on over and we can be friends there too.

Off into the Sunset - Finally

The End. Finis. Th-th-that's all, folks. Over and done. That's all she wrote, dear John. Enough's enough. Cut, print. That's a take. Finished. Complete. Ended. Riding off into the sunset. The fat lady's singing because it's over. The credit's are running. Close the book on that one. And so we have come to the end of the story.

Guess you've figured out I finally got my characters to ride off into the sunset so I could write those two magic words for my book, The Seeker. The End. I'd been looking for them for about two weeks now. And I finally found them. So I'm doing my happy dance or would be if I hadn't caught a cold from one of my grandbabies when they were here last weekend. But loving on them was worth a few sneezes.

And cold or no cold, I found the end of my story. Even better, I've read through it and it read okay. A few minor problems here and there, but nothing major. It was the story I wanted to tell and the thread stayed true all the way through. Now after a bit more spit and polish I'll have to sit back and see what my editor thinks and then if she likes it, then I'll have to wait a lot longer to see what my readers think. I liked the romance in it. And the historical part came through better than I thought it was going to.

So I'm excited this week. I'm even going to meet my deadline instead of having to beg for mercy. At least I think I am. Maybe I shouldn't get too carried away. I haven't actually printed off the book yet and sent it to anybody yet. Something could happen to delay me, but I'm hoping not. And you can believe I'm saying some thank you prayers because that ride off into the sunset had been hard to find. Actually there wasn't a sun or a ride, but there was an end.

I'm also getting excited about The Believer being out there for readers in about six weeks now. I usually have a book launch at Corinth Christian Bookstore in Frankfort, but this year they're doing something extra special for me. They're sponsoring a Brunch for me at Shaker Village in Mercer County on Saturday, July 25th at 10 a.m. They will be selling tickets at their store for $15.00 which will cover the traditional Shaker breakfast. Listening to me talk will be absolutely free. What a deal! ;-) Space is limited so if you're interested, you need to call Corinth. I'll put the info on how to contact them for tickets on my web page schedule in the next few days. I really appreciate, Steve and Bonnie and Mickey for all their support. They have a great store, one of those places you can go in and you just know you're going to have a good, peaceful shopping experience where everything is beautiful and even better can be used to spread the good news of the Lord.

Hope all of your have a lot of reasons to do your happy dances this week. Talk to you Sunday.