Meet Me in St Louis

One of the fun things about writing in the Christian market is the writer friends you get to meet. Here I am with Laura Frantz. Laura published her first book, The Frontiersman's Daughter, a few years ago. She lives in Washington state but she has Ky roots and is published by the same company as I am. So she e-mailed me with some questions about the publishing process. She learned well and has published several books since then that have proven very popular with readers and are always up for awards. 

Her latest, Love's Reckoning, is up for a Christy this year. The Christy is a prestigious Christian book award and I've dreamed of one of my books maybe someday being a finalist. So far that hasn't happened, but I'm happy for Laura and the others who are up for the awards. Guess I need to let Laura teach me a thing or two now about writing award winning books. :)

So I'm going to be meeting writing friends here in St Louis. And making new friends too. Do you think anyone will send me flowers? Actually Laura surprised me with flowers after I'd answered her questions about what next on the publishing process for that first book. So I'm still on theme with my flower stories. And you can still jump in and throw your name in my hat for my Small Town Girl Celebration Giveaway. Fun prizes. You can check out details on my website, www.annhgabhart.com.

  

I'm doing this on my iPhone so if weird words show up, it's all the phone's fault. 

People Watching at Book Fests

~~Here I am with my table sharers at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest, Jan Watson (Sweetwater Run) and Virginia Smith (Third Time's Charm). I'm in the middle with Jan on the left and Ginny on the right. See us smile. That's what you do when you go to a Book Festival. You smile and smile and smile some more. Mostly because we want to. We like talking to readers and we hope if we smile readers will like talking to us. And then of course sometimes we're smiling because a reading friend we made the year before comes back to our table to buy another book since she enjoyed the first read so much. The Christian market was well represented at the Book Fest with not only us but also Eric Wilson (Fireproof), Patti Lacy (What the Bayou Saw), and Travis Thrasher (Ghostwriter) and others.

~~Around one hundred fifty authors were at the Book Fest with all sorts of fiction and nonfiction books. You could find mysteries, romances, young adult books, histories, memoirs, cook books, picture books, and poetry collections. That's one of the fun things about going to a book fair - seeing the variety of books. And authors. The same as books, authors come in all sizes, styles and attitudes. Some authors smile and try to engage the readers with conversation or entice them to their tables with chocolate. The cake doctor, Anne Byrne, even had cake for people to eat along with plenty of napkins. Other writers sit quietly and wait for readers to approach them. Some writers desert their stacks of books to explore the other aisles of books. A few writers spend the time reading or writing notes. Some even bring editing work. Nearly all of us enjoy comparing writing stories with the writers sitting next to us.

~~Many of us admire with just a wee bit of envy the long lines that form for the more famous writers' autographs on their books. The longest lines this fair were for Laura Numeroff who wrote If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and for mystery writer, Lisa Scottoline. Actually it was fun seeing all the kids clutching books that had been signed especially to them. Their parents and grandparents were giving them a great gift helping them along the road to a life long love of reading.

~~Of course the readers on the other side of the tables come in all shapes and sizes and reading tastes too. I met a woman long haul truck driver pushing her grandson in a stroller and a retired doctor who used to go to church with Julia Neal. Neal wrote one of the Shaker books I use in my research. I met a little girl of about seven or eight who had written and illustrated her own little picture book and with mom's help had it published. I met a couple of young women who were writers - as yet unpublished but working toward that goal. I met school teachers and librarians and other book lovers. I remembered some faces from previous book fests who come every year to go fishing for a few good books to read. People who connect with books are easy to talk to and that makes a writer like me smile.

~~Hope you have a lovely week ahead and that sometime in the weeks and months ahead you'll have the opportunity to go book fishing at a book festival near you. Or if you're a writer that you'll get a chance to try to catch some new readers. Your best bait is a great book. And a smile.

Celebrating Release Day

My new book, The Believer, was officially released by the publishers for sale yesterday. Actually it was already out in stores, or so I've been told. I haven't personally seen it on any store shelves yet, but then the only shelves I've been seeing are the ones where I've been setting my newly canned jars of green beans. Trust me. Bookstore shelves are more exciting. But last week was too hectic to go bookstore hopping although I do have to admit I love to browse in bookstores whether I have a new book releasing or not. Bookstores are about the only place I truly like to shop which is why my family has to like getting books as presents. Although antique malls can be fun if you have a friend along. And if they have a book section. :-)

I haven't gotten much feedback yet from the new story. I don't think the readers in my family realize how needy writers can be when we have a new book out. We need to hear positive things that we can hope are not just made up to stroke our egos. But we want to know if our story was okay. Plus a few things that maybe made it okay. Well, actually we want to hear things like "It was great." Or "I couldn't put it down." Or "I stayed up way too late to find out what happened." You know, that sort of thing. Sounds like I'm begging for ego stroking comments, doesn't it?

But it is fun having a new book out, and it is fun hearing readers' reactions. Of course it's more fun when they are good reactions, but writers can't always expect that. In fact this one writers' bunch I know even have a contest to pick the most terrible review when they have a meeting . So they all bring their bad reviews and compete to see who has the worst one. I guess the idea is that it's better to laugh about them than to cry about them. One thing sure, once the book is out there in readers' hands, there's nothing you can do to change what you wrote. Plus even if you changed things to suit one reader then another reader would probably think that change messed things up.

A writer has to trust her inner ear and tell the story as best she can. Then she has to turn it loose. Let it go out into the world and find readers. If those readers find fault or even if she herself looks over her words once they are between the covers of a book and finds fault, she just has to file that away as experience and hope to do better on the next story. That's what I try to do, but I still hope for good reviews and good comments. Everybody, no matter what they do, can use some encouraging words.

I drew for my final book winner for this giveaway yesterday on release day and it's Linda. I'll be sending her an e-mail to let her know she's a winner. And a newsletter will go out this week. If you're not signed up for my occasional newsletter and want to be, just click on the newsletter link on my webpage. Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway. I'll have to think up something new to give away next month.

Hope you hear nothing but encouraging words this week. And nobody says, "The beans need picking." A bountiful harvest is a blessing, but there are only so many hours in a day. I've promised myself I'm getting back to writing next week even if all the closets aren't cleaned out and I still need to paint the back hall. I've got to remember that writing is what I do. Housekeeping chores are secondary.

Thanks for reading.

Bumpy Sledding and Writing

Hope all of you had a very good Wednesday. Halfway through the work week and on the downhill slide to Friday. I often wish I had an extra day especially when I'm getting started on a new book. Of course I took today off to spend a snow day with a couple of my grandkids. We haven't had a lot of snow, just flurries spread out over several days that has kept a skiff of snow on the ground. My daughter-in-law said it was like we were in a giant snow globe that somebody kept turning over to make it snow. Anyway, the little snow we had is almost gone except in the shade, but with those plastic smooth bottomed sleds, you can still do some sledding even when the snow is disappearing. So we walked all over the farm looking for enough snow cover to take a ride downhill. The two and a half year old was quite happy to let me pull her down those hills and then back up. Needless to say, this gramma is dragging tonight after a lot of trips up and down. At least I was smart enough to pick very short hills. The nine year old just had fun sliding although he did admit that the frozen ground with only a bare skiff of snow made for some pretty bumpy sledding.

I'm feeling as if I'm having some "bumpy sledding" as I try to get my new story off the ground, but I'm hanging on and absorbing the bumps because I think the story is there. I just have to find the best way to tell it. So here are some quotes to encourage you if you're a writer and help you understand some of what writers struggle with if you're a reader.

• A writer and nothing else: a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. --John K. Hutchens (A woman alone in a room, too. I do work much better when I'm alone.)
• Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself-it is the occurring which is difficult. -Stephen Leacock
• I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. -Norman Mailer (I couldn't agree more. I simply cannot talk about my story in progress. One author I read suggested that if a writer tells her story, there's no need for her to write it.)
• Make 'em laugh; make 'em cry; make 'em wait. - Charles Reade

That last one is advice I want to follow. I think I'll write those words in red on my desk calendar where I can see it every day when I start writing. I'll put it right beside the Proverb about how laughter works good for us like a medicine. Hope you have good days and good nights along with much laughter and good stories.

A Story's Beginning and Dog Adventures

We had a cold few days around this neck of the woods last week. Got down to 3 below, but actually didn't feel all that bad because the wind didn't blow much and the sun was shining brightly. The next day when it was 20 something degrees, I actually got colder when I went walking. No sun that day and major wind.

We had an interesting week dogwise. My big chocolate lab decided to take a wander and was gone overnight. Turned up beside the parkway about a mile and a half away as the crow flies and six or so miles by car. Somebody had called the animal shelter about a chocolate lab being hit beside the road but said he was still moving. I had called earlier hunting Dub and so they called me. I said that can't be my dog. He wouldn't go that far. I guess I should never say never. We get in the car to go check it out and there's Dub laying up on the rise beside the parkway. I get out thinking, "Poor dog." And he stands up and wags his tail. He hadn't been hit. He'd just been doing his "stretch out and sleep in the sunshine" routine that has fooled others into calling me to ask if he was still breathing. So he comes down the hill wagging his tail and looking at me as if to say, "Good, my ride home is here." A neighborhood female is courting and even though Dub is supposed to be neutered, he's still twitter-pated and had followed her off. We gave her a ride home too along with the other two neighborhood dogs that were with her. You should have seen us trying to get those dogs in our van and shut the door without any of them escaping. All while the traffic was whizzing by. We would have gotten our time on Funniest Videos for sure. Anyway, Dub's been confined to the house ever since. He's hating that - being inside in the warm - getting lots of attention. I'll never keep him on the farm after he's found out the perks of running off!!!

I've begun my next Shaker book. My deadline is looming out there and getting me worried so I'm back to the 'make your fingers touch the keyboard and crank out some pages every day and hope the words make sense' mode. I think maybe the hardest thing about writing a book is the beginning. At least I think that until I get about a hundred pages in and then I think the hardest thing about writing a book is trusting my story through the middle. So far the endings of any of my stories haven't put me into a panic but there's always the first time for everything. I like my new characters, but I would have liked to have had a few more months to absorb some more history. I want to be true to the time of the story and get the atmosphere right.

The hard thing about writing a book in half the time it usually takes me is all the other things going on at the same time. Just because I'm writing a book doesn't mean the laundry doesn't need doing or the grandkids don't need visiting (they don't stay young long) or the dog doesn't need chasing or I could name a hundred things that can get in the way. Even writing stuff can get in the way of getting a new book out of my head onto paper or the computer. I'll be getting the pages of The Believer soon and have to do edits, etc. I want to make more personal appearances and bookstore visits. I want to do more research reading. I want to keep writing my blog. I need to go to the Shaker Village and walk around and let the buildings speak to me.

I've always thought I ought to be able to do it all, but sometimes I can't. And ouch! It's hard to admit that to myself. What I need to remember is that I have the time the Lord has given me and ask Him to help me use it wisely and well. And not to spin in place worrying about doing this or that. Just do it! Five pages a day. I can do that. Lots of writers spill out many more words a day than that. But you know, none of us are 'lots of writers.' We are unique individual writers with our own abilities and talents, and we have to figure out what works best for us. Not what works best for those other writers. And if the five pages I write aren't the right words, then I can work them over the next day and keep trucking.

Now I'd better go see about my dog, Dub. You know, make sure he's comfy and has plenty of fresh water and a nice warm bed. That dog thinks he's hit the jackpot for sure.

I hope you all have great weeks and stay warm while you're reading (or writing) some great stories. Enjoy!