Off to the ACFW Conference

Hi, everybody. No time for blogging this week with the National Quartet Convention and now I'm off to the ACFW Conference. Next week I'll be back on schedule - I hope. I'll tell you all about what's been going on. Have a great week.

Grandparents Day

Today is National Grandparents Day. President Carter proclaimed the first Sunday after Labor Day to be Grandparents Day in 1978. The history I read says the day originated with a Fayette County, WV housewife, Marian McQuade whose primary motivation was to promote the need to pay attention to lonely elderly people in nursing home. She also hoped having a special day of honor would persuade grandchildren to listen and learn from the years of wisdom of their grandparents. And wouldn't it be great if grandkids everywhere sat down beside a grandparent today and asked them to tell a story about back when the grandparent was a kid? Trouble is, most of us wait too late to want to hear those stories. Or to record them for the next generation.

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Yet, we need that family history, those connections to the past. Here I am with my granddad who was probably in his mid-eighties in this picture. I used to sit by him but he wasn't a story teller and I was too young to know what to ask. Or even to grasp that I might need to ask before it was too late. He passed on before I found those questions. The same with my father. I wish now I'd asked more about his growing up years and those trips he took on a motorcycle when he was in his early twenties. I heard bits and pieces but there was surely so much more if I'd only taken the time to ask and listen. I have listened to my mother's stories when I finally came to an age where I appreciated hearing about how things used to be. So whenever we were in a doctor's office or waiting for this or that, I'd get her to talking about how things were when she grew up. Angel Sister, my novel due out in February, is the result of those conversations. I was able to put myself back in my characters' time because of Mom's stories. The story isn't Mom's story, but the atmosphere of the book owes a lot to her.

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Some grandparents don't wait to be asked. They write down their stories for their families. Every person I know who has been given one of these written stories of youth and marriage by a parent or grandparent treasure every word. And it's not just the highlights of life that people find interesting, but also the little details. Ordinary days like blackberry picking or cutting firewood. A "this is how it was for me" story is certainly something all of us who love putting one word after another could do for his or her family. Maybe not only write your story, but listen to the older generation in your family and write that down too. Who knows? You might find a novel lurking in those memories the way I did.

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As most of you know I've written several books about the Shakers who believed in celibate living and thought living in small family units of mother, father and children caused too much stress and was against God's will. I can't agree with their thinking there. Today as I think about grandparents, I think how sad that those people who joined the Shakers lost those connections of family. They might have a few hundred sisters and brothers but would never be able to claim a grandparent. In my opinion, grandparenting is a blessed gift. It even says so in Proverbs 17:6. Children's children are a crown to the aged.

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I've been putting some favorite grandparent quotes on my Facebook author page this week. In case you didn't see them, here are some of my favorites.

• Grandmas hold our tiny hands for just a little while, but our hearts forever. ~Author unknown.
• Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children. ~ Alex Haley
• The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent. - Sam Levenson.
• To a small child, the perfect granddad is unafraid of big dogs and fierce storms but asolutely terrified of the word "boo." ~ Robert Brault

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Hope you have many good memories of times with your grandparents. I'll be having some good times this week as I spend a couple of days with my husband at the National Quartet Convention and then go to my first ever national writers conference, the ACFW Conference. Plus I'm going to get to celebrate getting older. I don't count the birthdays, but I sure do celebrate them. One way I celebrate is by giving away books. You can be one of the lucky winners of one of my books and a surprise by sending me a message from my website or leaving a comment here. You can check out details of my birthday giveaway on my events page on my website.

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Thanks for dropping by today.

Predictable Unhappy Endings

I just finished reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I love dogs so this seemed a natural for me. And I did enjoy the dog parts of the story. I liked lots of parts of the story. But some of it had me wondering not just about the story, but about me. Now if you're going to read this book, you'd better skip the rest of this post, so I won't spoil it for you by giving away some of what happens. But as I was reading along, a major character in the story dies with no warning. I like the character, but I don't shed the first tear. And we're talking about somebody - me - who can tear up at the drop of a handkerchief. But then later in the book, Edgar, the main character, gets upset with his dog and won't let her sleep beside him in his room the way the dog has ever since Edgar was born. Now just thinking about it, I'm wanting to tear up. I'm not sure if that says something about me or something about the way the writer got me more heavily invested in what happened to the dog than in what happened to Edgar's father.
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And it gets worse. Of course all the way through I'm thinking that things may not turn out well. Boy oh boy, they don't. I didn't cry about that either. I think that was because I was so disgusted that I'd spent so much of my reading time cheering on this character for him to come to such a bad end. Critics all loved the book. It is well written. You really like Edgar and the dogs. Or at least I did. You like Henry, a character that played a bit part. You wonder about Edgar's mother. How she could do some of the things she did. That is sort of explained toward the end of the book, but I kept thinking she really wouldn't have done this or that before the later explanation.
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But why is it that critics always love the books that have sad endings? Why is that not as predictable in a literary book as they usually claim a happy ending is in any other book? I'm beginning to think that what the critics label a literary book would be more unpredictable if it did have a happy ending. I don't expect everything to be sunshine and roses. If any of you have read any of my books, you know some of my characters run into trouble and some of them die. Life is that way. But come on. Don't have me rushing to find out what happens and then it ALL be bad. Bad things do happen, but so do good things. The sun comes up in the morning and with the sun I want to have some hope shining through. People do sometimes marry the person they love. People do sometimes avoid getting run down by a train of despair. People do sometimes realize they are on the wrong track and do some backtracking to find the right track.
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I realize not all so called "literary" books have unhappy endings and I've read books where the ending wasn't what you might call happy, but I was able to shut the book after reading the final sentences with a feeling of hope for the future even though everything didn't come out exactly the way I might have wished for the characters. The best endings leave a reader thinking, "Yes, that is what happened." With this book and some others I've read too, I want to rewrite the last chapters. Something else, something not so bad, could have just as easily happened. Might have even more probably happened.
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How about you? You ever feel that way about books you've read? Or that you've written?

Crossroads in Writing

I've been thinking about crossroads since I'm trying redo my cover for Angels at the Crossroads. So I've been looking at pictures of crossroads and road signs while trying to decide what's best for Jerry's story. Someone suggested a new title might be best, but some things can't be redone. Too many people have already bought the book titled as is and I wouldn't want them to see a new title and think it was a new book. The new cover art will be enough of a confusion for people who already have the book. I've seen books that were re-issued with new covers and I'm never absolutely sure it's the book I've already read or not. The cover often times brings up a clearer memory than the title. Of course I have picked up books I've already read years before and when I started reading them again, I wasn't sure what happened in the story but it all seemed to echo in my head. I'm not one to read novels over. Too many books out there I want to read and too little time.

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But the idea of crossroads in writing has been playing around in my head. Maybe because I'm at one of those crossroads right now. It's time to decide what road I'm going to follow for my next story. I've got to pick a time. I have the place since I'm writing another book set in my Shaker village of Harmony Hill. I have one name for a Shaker sister and I see this character or rather I'm reading her journal entries in my mind. But that's all I have. And I need a lot more than that. I need to stand at the crossroads of story possibilities and decide which road I want to wander down.

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That doesn't mean my creating feet will stay on that road. Backtracks are certainly allowed in writing. If an idea isn't working, I can go back and take off down another path. But I need to give the path a chance and not let the wilderness area in front of me make me too timid to keep going. Wilderness area, you ask. That's the part ahead where I might not have the foggiest idea of what's going to happen or who might pop out of the trees alongside the road. I do usually have a direction in my stories. In the book I just finished, I knew this one thing was going to happen but I didn't know how. And I thought it would happen much earlier in the story. And that event was a crossroads in my story. Because of that happening the direction of my characters' lives was changed forever. There was no going back for them to try a different path.

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Writers face many crossroads. Not only in plotting but in character development and writing and even revising. This word or that word. This character or that character. And if a writer isn't careful or perhaps confident would be a better word (see those choices), then she might stand too long in the crossroad of creation and let the story slip completely away from her.

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One way I make those crossroad choices is by reading history books about whatever era I'm writing about. So guess it's time to crack open some history books and get my feet moving down a new path. Hope you are walking down some interesting paths yourself this week. Thanks for reading.

TTYL and other Text Letter Mysteries

I'm a little nervous about doing this post. SIMB (Shaking in my boots) because I think I've had TMB (too many birthdays) to come up with all these shortcuts in the world of texting. See the picture. That's where I am. Using quills and paper. Actually I've advanced all the way up to ballpoint pens and paper. You know the kind of pens you pick up at the bank and carry home until you can't stuff one more pen in that cup on your desk and you have to get a new pen holding cup.


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But texters don't have to worry about pens. They have their fancy little phones in their pockets. And then they type in shortcut words and phrases. Like LOL. I know what that one means although the first time I saw it I thought maybe it meant Lots of Love. But the writers kept throwing in expressions of love at the oddest times. Finally somebody let me know they were laughing. Probably at me! Of course ROTFL is even funnier. And somehow I always doubt if the person is actually rolling on the floor laughing. Have you ever seen anyone over the age of five roll on the floor laughing? Especially while typing. But perhaps you can ROTFL and text at the same time.
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What got me started on this is I got a message from a friend and she ended it with TTYL. I have no idea what TTYL stands for and so I've been trying to figure it out. It came at the end of her message so I thought it might be some kind of Yours truly. Truly truly you live. Text till you're loved. Tomorrow take your leave. Take that you louse. That's the yellow lemon. Obviously, as you can see I'm TOTT. Too old to text.
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I found that out some time back when I did one of my first on-line interviews. People signed in and I was signed in and they asked questions that after a respectful pause I was supposed to answer. Somebody asked me if I was a SOTP writer. Well, not wanting to appear out of it and TOTT, I frantically tried to make sense of what in the world a sotp writer was. Silly? Old? Timid? Proud? I had to forget about the proud and admit my ignorance. Of course! Seat of the pants. Anybody - especially a writer - should be able to figure that out. More so, since I am one. A sotp writer. But not a sotp texting interviewee it seemed.
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I think I need a reference book for texting shortcuts. Maybe there is one out there already. If so, I don't think you want me to edit it. Although between us, I'm wagering we could come up with some interesting entries. I just worry I could put some letters together that I might think means one thing when it might mean something not so nice to text experts. Like Iitd. (I'm in the dark.) So educate me those of you not TOTT. Throw some texting shortcuts out here and see what weird meanings I can discover for them. Then you can all be ROTFL.
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My website book giveaway winners were Lucy of Ohio and Barbara Sh. of I don't know where yet. Barb, you'll have to e-mail me your address. Lucy won three books. She picked my Orchard of Hope and she gets Susan Meissner's Shape of Mercy and Athol Dickson's Lost Mission - both award-winning books. Barb gets her choice of one of my books and that Shaker surprise - a spicy fragrant Hands to Work and Hearts to God hot mat and a huge Shaker clothespin. Fun gifts from the Shaker gift shop. Check back soon here or on my website. I'll be doing a birthday giveaway. I mean even though I might be TOTT, at least I'm not TOTGAB. Too old to give away books. (Or Too old to Gab either.) Have a great week.

A New Book Cover

Have you ever put something off that you needed to do? Over and over again? For almost a year now I've been planning to give my book, Angels at the Crossroads a cover make-over. Angels at the Crossroads is the only non-fiction book I've ever written and probably will be the only non-fiction book I'll ever write. I like making up my stories. But this book is different. It's the life story/testimony of Jerry Shepherd who used to sing in the Patriot Quartet with my husband. Some of you may have read his story.
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Anyway after The Scent of Lilacs was published and we were riding around on that big old bus getting to know everybody in the group almost too well, Jerry would talk about what happened to him when he was a teenager and young adult. He messed up, plain and simple, got mixed up with drugs and alchohol and because of things he did a man died. Jerry ended up in a Georgia prison for murder at the age of nineteen. He could have given up there and lost all hope, but the Lord wasn't through with Jerry. He gave him a second chance by putting people in his path (earth angels, if you will) to guide him back to hope and forgiveness. Because of that love and forgiveness, Jerry promised to tell his story any time he had the chance to keep others from making the same mistakes he made. Even before he got out of prison he was witnessing about how the Lord had forgiven him and helped him step out on a new road. It's a powerful story. Not because I wrote it but because of how the Lord worked in Jerry's life.
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So after I wrote that first Hollyhill story and had heard the great news that Revell wanted to publish it, I had the strong feeling that the next story I wrote down should be Jerry's story. And I promised Jerry if he let me write his story I would make sure the book got published - one way or another. My editor read the finished story and turned it down saying it wouldn't have the market appeal they needed to publish a book. Other editors turned it down. And I was left with my promise. So I went the self-publish route, but I made one big mistake and that was the cover. It's not right for the story. As one reviewer said it looks like the cover of a collection of homilies. Jerry's amazing story is inspirational, but at the same time it's gritty and raw. And while a sunrise does play a part in his story, I should have rejected the cover and held out for one that gave a better representation of the story. That's where I am now. We've about sold out of copies and I don't want to print any more with the old cover. I've known that for months. For months, I've put off doing anything about it. I think I kept waiting for a sign. Somebody to come grab the book and say here's the perfect idea for a new cover and we're going to make it happen. Well, unfortunately that hasn't happened. I finally had to realize that if the book got a new cover, I was going to have to get things rolling. I have pushed the start button - at last. Now I just have to decide what to suggest for the cover art. Not pink for sure. I keep seeing an open prison door. Other people have suggested a police car with lights flashing. Somebody said a deserted car with the door open. Perhaps at a crossroads. If you've read the book, what would you suggest?
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Thanks to all of you who entered my book giveaway. Details are on the Event page of my website, http://www.annhgabhart.com/. I'll be drawing for the winners on Tuesday, but you can still send me an e-mail to enter or leave a comment here.
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Hope you're having a beautiful Sunday. Talk to you again next week.

Edits Done!

Made a run to the post office this afternoon and got the Angel Sister galleys sent in. I know most of you writers would have hit the send button. But I really like my postal workers and wouldn't want to deprive them of a job. :-) That's only partially true. Actually I haven't learned how to use the edit tracking stuff on my word processor. That's sad, isn't it? I think I'm going to practice up before the next editing deadline. But I do enjoy editing on an actual manuscript. There's just something about seeing the words on paper that's different from seeing them on the screen. Gives me a whole new perspective.
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Of course, I edit my drafts on screen all the time. I haven't printed out a draft to work over since The Scent of Lilacs. I printed that book out to work it over in an effort to make it the very best I could. You see that book was a career marker. If it hadn't found a loving editor, I was going to have to seriously consider if I should keep trying to write. Well, I might have kept writing. I doubt I could actually quit writing completely. But would I have kept working so hard? Maybe I would have said it was time to give it up. To stop beating my head against a wall trying to find a publisher for what I wrote. Maybe I would have decided planting flowers and playing with grandkids was more rewarding than writing page after page of words that no one wanted to read. And I would have just played at writing.
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But the Lord answered the prayer of my heart with that book. He let me find a loving editor and set my feet on a whole new path of writing. A path I like. I enjoy writing stories for the inspirational market. I like it when my characters look to the Lord for answers. I feel blessed when a story comes together and is finally out there for readers. It's great when a reader tells me my story touched her or him or was an encouragement during a hard time. A reader left a comment on my Facebook page last week to tell me that she re-dedicated her life to the Lord after reading that final church scene in Orchard of Hope. When I think about the Lord using my made up story to make that reader's life better, I'm amazed and humbled. But I'm also happy when readers are just entertained by my stories and put them down with a smile after they read the last page.
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So I did get the edits finished on Angel Sister. A lot of pesky little wording problems. My pet word seems to be still in this book. There are just some words that help a writer move along with her story. Still, too many stills begin to echo in a reader's ear. So I word searched and edited out some of them. Not all of them. Some of those stills hunkered down and sat real still so I wouldn't notice them all that much. So they're still there. Are you seeing why I still have a problem with still? :o(!!
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I am so looking forward to this book being published in February. It's been a long time in the process since we wanted the Shaker books to release first. And don't worry. If you like the Shaker books, there are going to be some more of those too. The Blessed will be out next summer. But in between Revell is mixing in some historicals that aren't about the Shakers but that I'm hoping readers will enjoy too. Especially this first one. A story of my heart and from my mom's heart since her memories of growing up during the Depression years were the germ of the idea that became Angel Sister.
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It was a beautiful day down here on the farm. I met my deadline for edits. Darrell mowed hay and it's not looking like rain. My old dog stayed home. Mom was feeling a little better. And I got to go to an ice cream supper at church. Hope you had a good day too. Thanks for reading.