Focusing on a Dream

~~ I took this picture with Steve Ladd at the New Year's Eve Gospel Concert at Sand Spring Church. My husband's group, the Patriot Quartet, was singing that night along with several other groups and Steve. Until recently Steve was the tenor for the well known gospel group, Gold City. He gave that position up to start a solo ministry in order to be with his wife and two children more.
~~ The life of a gospel singer in a traveling group can be very difficult. The groups stay on the road much of the year and it makes family time difficult. That may be why so many of the gospel groups are family groups. Darrell didn't luck out about that when he married me. I can hum a good tune in the kitchen, but it's unlikely anybody will want to hum along with me. But Darrell has had the itch to sing gospel music all his life and has been singing with various groups for over 35 years. He and the other guys in the Patriot Quartet now are weekend warriors who travel all over for Saturday and Sunday concerts. You can check them out on their website and even listen to some of their songs. http://www.patriotquartet.com/
~~ But back to Steve Ladd and what I was planning to talk about tonight. Steve said that when he was eight years old his parents took him to hear Gold City in concert and he came home saying that someday he would sing tenor for that group. That's quite a goal for a kid of eight to focus in on. He was already singing with his family in churches. His dad was a traveling evangelist. So he knew about singing. Then he said when he was a young teen, people kept telling him that his voice was going to change, become deeper. So every night, he prayed that the Lord would let his voice stay high. Else how would he be able to do as he planned and sing tenor for Gold City. The Lord certainly honored his prayer and his dreams. He can sing some high notes and he did sing them with Gold City just as he began planning to do as a kid. You can tell by looking at him what a nice guy he is, so if you ever get a chance to go hear him, take it. You'll be blessed.
~~ His story made me think about how I had some of the same feelings when I was a kid. Not to sing for Gold City. That's for sure. Or anybody else. But to write. I knew when I was ten that I wanted to write. And not just write. I wanted to write stories that people would read. You can't imagine what a big dream that was for that little country girl who didn't know anything about anything and especially nothing about how to become a "Writer" with a captial W. Still, I never thought about it being something I couldn't do. I just took up my pen and began writing. Later I sought whatever avenues I could to figure out how to write better. That wasn't an easy thing for me as a young wife and mother with limited resources. Translation - no money for dreams. Yet I never put down my pen. At least not completely. I chiseled out time for my writing, sneaking minutes and hours when I could between my many other chores. I kept count of those hours and minutes in a writing journal. That helped keep me focused and accountable for my time.
~~ For years - even after I was published - I was hesitant to say out loud that I was a writer. It sounded presumptuous. Like I was claiming something I had no right to claim. Or maybe it simply meant so much to me to reach that goal that I didn't want to claim it too soon. Even now with nineteen books published and several more in the works to be published, I'm shy about telling people I'm a writer. And yet that's still my goal, my dream. To write books people will want to read. But in order to read your book, people have to know about your book. Nowadays, writers are supposed to do everything they can to collect reading friends. So you have to tell people about your books. I guess that's why I have this poem by Sir William Gilbert written on my desk calendar.
If you wish in this world to advance
Your merits you're bound to enhance.
You must stir it and stump it
And blow your own trumpet
Or trust me, you haven't a chance.
~~ I still don't blow a lot of trumpets. But I do talk about my writing and my books every time someone asks me to. And I talk to you. Thanks for listening. And reading.

So Many Books...

~~ How tall is your "to read" stack? Or maybe your "already read" stack is the tallest? In this stack I've got a mix. Some I've read. Some I hope to read soon and some I've had a while that keep getting pushed to the bottom of the stack by new books. There are even some I might give away in a book giveaway in the weeks ahead. How do you decide what to read next? Do you make your stack with the most favored book next in line on top or do you like to shuffle through your stacks to see which book grabs your interest on any particular day? I'm definitely a shuffler.
~~ Another question - do you read only one book at a time or do you have several going at once? I used to read only one at a time, but then I decided I could dip into more than one book and manage to keep the stories straight. Usually one of the books is nonfiction or not as compelling a page turner as the other. Right now I'm finishing up Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Somehow it got pushed aside before I got to the end and I'm just now picking it back up. I finished Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier after the Christmas madness was over and now I'm about halfway through Brother Odd by Dean Koontz. In addition I have a couple of devotional books with bookmarks holding my place. And I've got dozens more books of all types I'm anxious to read. But I also have a book I'm anxious to write. That means I've got to read a research book or two. There's always a book to read and nearly always a chore to keep you away from that book you're dying to finish.
~~ Do you keep a list of the books you read so that at the end of the year you can count them up? I've seen some amazing reports of books read on Facebook. One reader said over 400 and another said over 600. Think about it. That's more than one a day for the first reader and almost two a day for the second reader. Even if I counted every time I read A Monster at the End of This Book starring sweet, lovable Grover and didn't just count it once, I wouldn't hit 400, much less 600. As you may have guessed, my grandkids love that book almost as much as I enjoy reading it aloud. But I do admire anyone who manages to read so many books. I don't only admire them, I'm amazed by them.
~~ Do you do book reviews for fun or for pay? I've done a few book reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I don't find it easy. You have to condense this several hundred page story down to a few sentences without putting in any spoilers. At least I wouldn't want to put spoilers in any review I did. Then you have to say what you liked or didn't like. Of course since any reviews I've done have been just for fun, I don't post reviews of books I don't like. Mostly because I know there are other people out there who like things I don't like, who enjoy stories I don't enjoy. I certainly wouldn't want them to be put off reading a book they would find entertaining by something I wrote. Plus since I'm a writer, I know how bad it feels to read a review that slams your book.
~~ You can get a dozen favorable, even gushing reviews and that one review that says you write like a kid who flunked kindergarten is the one that plays over and over in your head. Which is crazy. But then who ever said writers weren't crazy - at least some of the time. If we weren't crazy, we wouldn't read those reviews. We'd just trust our own instincts and bask in the loving words of our friends and relatives. Ahh, but we want the other pats on the back too. We want everybody to love our characters and their stories as much as we do. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.
~~ I'm doing edits again. This time on the book that will come out next January. It's got some great characters that surely everybody will love. You see hope is always alive in a writer's heart.
~~ One of those hopes is that you have a great rest of the week and some restful hours to make a dent in your "to read" stack.

You Know You Live in the Boonies when..

You know you live in the boonies when the only tracks on your road are from the mailman's car. You know their slogan. Neither rain nor snow, nor sleet nor dark of night or something like that will delay the mail. There have been a few times the mailman didn't make it back our road, but most of the time we can count on the mailman to show up.
~~We actually didn't have all that much snow. About three inches. Okay, you guys in the north, stop snickering. Three inches is a lot for us. Especially when it's so cold. Well, it didn't get as cold as they said it was going to, but we thought it was going to be extra cold. That the wind was going to blow and make huge drifts of our three inches.
~~That has happened around here. Not with three inches. We had maybe eighteen or twenty inches of snow that time, but our lane had drifts several feet high over it for weeks. It snowed in January and it was March before a vehicle made it up our lane. My husband pulled the car out through the field to the main road with the tractor so he could go to work. We either walked to the road or rode the tractor down if we had to go anywhere. The kids didn't go to school for a month and we took turns reading The Lord of the Rings books. Cabin fever was definitely going around that year. At that time we were the only people living back our little lane. Now there are several houses back here and one of the high banks on the side of the lane has been bulldozed away so the snow can't drift in there and stay now the way it did then. But that was a winter to remember. We had three of those type winters in a row, but lately three inches has been more the norm around here. Of course last winter it was three inches of ice. I'll take the snow and more of it any day over that ice.
~~Snowy days make good days to write. Or they should. But last week wasn't a good writing week for me. I typed words, but I think maybe all of them may give my delete key exercise. Nothing seemed to be going the way it should as I tried to get started back on my work in progress after I finished the edits for The Seeker. Or should I say work in the doldrums? And then I see on Facebook where this or that writer friend has written several thousand words in one day. Maybe before breakfast!
~~I know I'll work through this. I just have to keep on keeping on. Keep writing. Keep deleting what doesn't work and keep writing some more. I did get a little of a reprieve as I'm going to have to stop again to do some editing on my book scheduled for release next January. Maybe that will give my brain time to come up with some new exciting scenes and before you know it, I'll be the writer on Facebook saying how many words I got before breakfast. Well, probably not, but at least I'll be getting some words down and the story told. I love to tell stories, but sometimes I have to dig for the right words to do that.
~~Hope you're having a wonderful Sunday. That you're somewhere warm and if you have snow, you're enjoying the way it makes everything look so fresh and beautiful. I put this quote by that prolific Anonymous in the Sunday bulletin last week. "Kindness is like snow - it beautifies everything it covers." Wishing you much kindness. Thanks for reading.

Editing The Seeker

~~After Christmas and New Year's, it's time to get back into a working routine. Not that I wasn't working during the holidays. I was working double duty - trying to get things done for Christmas and working on the galleys for my book, The Seeker, due out this summer.
~~I like editing and trying to make my story the best it can be. I want to catch all the awkward phrasing or places that are fuzzy and might not make sense to the reader. I appreciate editors who point things out that I sometimes miss. For instance in one of my Hollyhill books, I had a character reading a mystery writer whose books weren't published until after the time of my story. I should have checked that out, but I didn't. I'm glad the editor had a sharp eye.
~~Of course that's not all an editor notices. There are always places that can be written better. New ways to describe something or better words to bring a scene to life. The editor points out some of these, but I always see more and am glad for the chance to make my writing better. My goal as an author is to somehow write so smoothly and crisply that the words will disappear and the reader will be swept up into the story and live it along with the characters without thinking about the words he or she is reading. That's the way I like the books I read to be. I want to be totally absorbed in the story.
~~And so The Seeker is off back to the publishing company to go through the next phase of making its way to the stores' shelves. It's been available on Amazon and other internet sites for pre-sale for a couple of months now. I hope readers will like the characters, one a Southern belle and the other an illustrator for newspapers during the Civil War. Some interesting history with an extra generous helping of romance - even if part of the story takes place in my Shaker village, Harmony Hill, where such romance is strictly forbidden.
~~I also had to do a titling page for my book, tentatively titled Angel Sister, that is scheduled to release early in 2011. I'm excited about the story, but those titling pages are difficult for me. They always ask for a couple of snappy sentences to describe the book. I struggle trying to condense a novel down into a couple of sentences. Snappy sentences. I finally came up with two sentences. Not sure they snapped all that much. Here they are to see what you think.
~~"Nadine and Victor Merritt's love has survived their fathers' opposition and a World War, but the Great Depression is threatening to break their hearts. Their daughter, Kate, is determined to save her family and protect the little girl she found abandoned on the church steps even if it means defying her grandfathers, befriending the village odd woman, and being in the middle of a raging forest fire."
~~My editor would probably tell me that last sentence runs on a little too long, but I had so much to say. I always have so much to say. Guess if you've been reading these blog posts, you already knew that.
~~I plan to send out a newsletter soon, so if you'd like to sign up to be sure you get one, go to my website and click on the sign up for the newsletter link or send me a message. I'm trying to come up with a new giveaway that will make some of you smile even if the weather does turn frightful wherever you live.
~~I've been dwelling on happiness this last week, so here's a happiness quote to end tonight.

"Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad." Norm Papernick

~~Well, at least we're laughing and the Bible says laughter worketh good like a medicine.

Happiness is...

~~Happy New Year! That's been the greeting of choice for the people I've met the last few days. Everybody is wishing everybody else a happy year. Then I heard a radio program this afternoon where a man about to be a daddy was saying that the question he would probably ask his daughter the most was "Are you happy?" We want the people around us to be happy. We want our children to grow up happy. We want to be happy. There are even lists that say what we need for happiness.

• Happiness is a warm puppy!


• Happiness is a hot cup of cocoa!


• Happiness is seeing a new book in print!


• Happiness is finding your true love!


• Happiness is curling up in front of a fire with a new book!


• Happiness is a good review or two!


• Happiness is winning the tournament - meeting a deadline - paying all the bills - gifts under the Christmas tree - a baby's laugh - going to the circus - hitting a homerun - blowing out all the candles on a birthday cake.
  

~~I could go on and on and I'm sure you could too. We could make lists of things that make us happy all day, but is that what happiness really is? Is that how we get happiness or do those things simply raise our happiness awareness?

~~When I researched the Shakers for my Shaker books, I came across a Shaker saying about happiness.

Happiness does not so much depend on circumstances as we think. Within our souls the foundations must abide.

~~While not all who went to the Shaker villages were able to find that happiness, many of the Shakers did seek it diligently and along the way they offered good advice on what was needed for happiness. They didn't think it was something we could bring to ourselves by getting more things, living in more comfort, or having an easy life. You know the saying - Money can't buy happiness. (Not a Shaker saying, by the way.) Few of us would argue with that although we might joke that we'd like to go shopping and give it a try. But the Shakers didn't think happiness was something we could get from other people or our individual circumstances. Not unless our own foundations of happiness are strong within us.

~~But how to go about establishing that foundation of happiness? The Shakers thought they could do it by separating themselves from the world and living as brothers and sisters with no familial stress to cause them to sin. Some people think they can do it by accumulating more things. Others think they can by getting rid of all things and living life at its most basic. There are times we look to others for our happiness and times when they look to us for the same. But I think our foundations of happiness has to be something independent of others and things. We have to build it within ourselves as we figure out who we are and what we believe. We certainly need others for happiness and a warm puppy doesn't hurt, but the foundation has to be there within us before we're able to consistently answer yes to that question, "Are you happy?"

~~Along with that warm puppy, a good review of my books always raises my happiness awareness. I was gifted with a few of those this week. You can check them out at http://virginiasmith.org/ (go to her journal and then book reviews) and http://tnchristianreader.blogspot.com/2010/01/shaker-series-by-ann-h-gabhart.html. It's such a boost to know that someone liked your book enough to share that news with others readers.

~~Hope your happiness foundation is solid and strong all through 2010. Happy New Year! Thank you for being a reading friend.

2010!! Can You Believe It?

2010 sounds like a title of a sci-fi book. Maybe it has been the title of a sci-fi book. And you know if you had written a book twenty or thirty years ago about all the things we do in 2009 it would have sounded like a sci-fi book. We have Facebook friends we talk to via computers. We want to find out about something, we "google" it. There's not much demand for door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen these days. Drone aircraft drop bombs on our enemies without the need for a pilot to be aboard. Robots build our cars. We drive up to square piggy bank machines that spit out cash when we insert a little card into them and punch some buttons. We can hold a little book shaped gizmo in our hands and read a book without every turning a page. We put our music on something smaller than a deck of cards. We walk around with a phone to our ears or if we're of the younger generation, type out messages on a tiny screen without having to say a word. And check the weather forecast on those phones or the movie times. We take kidneys, hearts and various other parts from one person and put them in another without the first thought of that being strange. We can make puppy dogs that glow and sheep and cats that are clones. The DNA from a hair or drop of blood can tie someone to a crime or prove he's innocent after fifteen years.
~~Twenty ten. Two thousand ten. Ten. We're entering the second decade in the Twenty-first Century. I had to get up and find a piece of chocolate to keep that from being too depressing. Not really. The chocolate, yes. Any excuse for chocolate. The depressing, no. I have a calendar of daily quotes and one of them reads, "Life is like an exciting book, and every year starts a new chapter." I like starting new chapters in exciting books, don't you? So 2010 here we come.
~~And on the way are you going to make any New Year's resolutions? I've got some I could make. Use my time more wisely. Grow as a person (spiritually, not in the waistline!) and grow as a writer. Write more. Write better. Write right.
~~Write right - that's what I'm trying to do now as I finish up the edits on my new book, The Seeker. I think I could work it over a hundred times and still see some things I might do better. So I'm trying to vary my words, make them flow smooth and easy so that anyone who reads my story won't notice the words at all. Only the story I'm trying to tell about Charlotte and Adam. Most people don't realize how much a story has be polished and worked over before it ever makes it out onto a bookstore shelf. So I'm doing some of that polishing now. Not a bad way to finish out a year. Then next year I can dive back into my work in progress and figure out what happens next to those characters.
~~Hope your year ahead is chock full and overflowing with all the best blessings and that you'll find lots of good books to read as we head out through the teen decade toward 2020. Talk about a sci-fi title!! But we've got a few exciting chapters to go before we get there. Enjoy! And thanks for reading.

Hanging on to the Christmas Spirit

~~Do you think it's possible to hang on to the Christmas Spirit once all the wrapping has been pulled off the gifts? When you think if you ever see another piece of candy it will be too soon and the Christmas punch has turned sour. When the thought of another ham sandwich makes you cringe while pizza is sounding like your favorite dish. When the tree starts shedding needles like a dog shaking off raindrops and (this one's the worst of all) the bills start coming in the mail. Christmas is over and we're looking January square in the eye.

~~Ahh January!! A time for looking forward with new hope and plans and determination. And also the time when the Christmas Spirit can slip away from us as we face the grim gray days of winter and wait for the violets to bloom. And yet if we can only carry along a handful or two, maybe even a couple of pinches of that Christmas Spirit that helped you keep smiling even when you had a million things to do and the lines at the grocery store were ten deep at every check-out counter, then the winter days, every day will be brighter.

~~What is Christmas Spirit? Is it two spoons of starlight and a shake or two of angels singing in the night? Is it a cupful of rejoicing and a generous measure of love? Let's throw in several generous measures of love. We need them.

~~The week after Christmas is a good time for those generous measures of love. Especially when bad news seems to keep knocking on our door. That seems to happen often. We get so high up as we anticipate and try to prepare for a perfect Christmas with our families. And of course a perfect Christmas isn't possible. When you look at it, Mary and Joseph probably wouldn't have called that first Christmas in Bethlehem perfect. Far from it. Having to be miles from home just as you're about to have a baby. Sleeping in a manger with the cattle and donkeys. And oh yeah, while you're having a baby. Strangers intruding on your little family circle. Again right after you had a baby and because angels told them to come. How many of us would believe that one? Of course, Mary had an advantage on us there since she'd been visited by one of those angels. And she pondered all those things in her heart.

~~Maybe that's how we can carry forth the Christmas spirit. By pondering in our hearts why we celebrate Christmas. By dwelling on the love that makes Christmas glow. By knowing the Lord will walk with us through the valleys ahead and rejoice with us on all our mountain tops.

~~So take a handful or two of that Christmas spirit and stick it in your pocket to carry into the new year with you so that you can pull out a smidgen now and again to remind yourself of the power of love. John 3:16 - love in its purest form.

~~And if that Christmas spirit leads you to, say a prayer for our little niece, Kaelyn, who was diagnosed with acute leukemia four days before Christmas and is now undergoing aggressive treatment at St. Jude's. She's had a couple of better nights according to her mother. The treatments have been making Kaelyn very sick and also causing her a great deal of pain. So your prayers for her and her family are appreciated and coveted.

~~Thanks for reading. I'm thankful for each and every one of you.