Silly Rhymes and Romantic Lines

Do you remember these kind of sayings? "Yours til' Ivory soup sinks." Do you remember Ivory soap? It's still on the store shelves and it still floats.  So whoever wrote that promise in my little autograph book when I was a kid must still be mine. The autograph books were sort of a fad when I was in grade school. A lot of us girls carried them around and begged people to write something in them. Like a love poem. "Roses are red. Violets are blue. Angels in heaven know I love you." Or shorter little promises like the one about Ivory soap. Another one I remember is "yours till the ocean runs dry." There were more. Some sweet. Some silly. 

Not too long ago, I came across my old autograph book from when I was maybe ten. If you're old enough, you probably have one stuck away somewhere too. Boy, did mine bring back memories as the youthful handwritten entries stabbed me with their innocence. 

I was going to take a picture of it for this post tonight, but naturally, I put it up somewhere for safe keeping. Now it's safe from me since I have no idea where that safe place is. But Valentine's Day started  me thinking about those cute verses. " When you get old and cannot see, put on your specs and think of me."   " 2 good 2 B 4gotten."  "Yours until elephants roost in trees." 

Hope you got a card with a verse that made you smile and feel loved. Or maybe you got candy and flowers. Or just a treasured call from a friend or family member. Most of the restaurants were hopping last night as couples, friends, and families enjoyed a night out. Darrell and I went to a local Mexican restaurant where they had taped fresh roses and balloons to the ends of the booths. At the end of the meal, they presented us with a free ice cream dessert and two spoons. Not exactly a candlelight dinner experience, but fun. So many ways to celebrate love. 

One of those ways is by writing blog posts and giving away stuff. I'm visiting Sunnybank Meanderings today talking about "Romances to Remember." And I'll be giving away an autographed copy of Words Spoken True to one of Caroline's commenters. Revell Books and I are also sponsoring a Louisville themed giveaway because that's the setting for Words Spoken True. Here's a picture of the second place prize in that giveaway open for entries all month on my website and here on my blog too. Just click on the book's cover to go to the entry form. I'm also doing a newspaper related giveaway at Fresh Fiction. A newspaper book bag and some books. So lots of ways to win with several more guest posts to come in the next few weeks.

It's fun visiting other blogs to talk about Words Spoken True. Since it's Valentine's month and my book is definitely romantic, I've been talking about romance. It's not easy to come up with a fresh post each time I visit a new place to talk about my book. The story in my book doesn't change. I still only have my two main characters to talk about. The same background, the same historical happenings. And I can't tell the whole story. I want you readers to have to read that for yourselves. 

Me and you - we're a partnership. I write the stories out of my imagination, but it takes your imagination while reading the stories to truly make the story circle. Thanks for reading tonight and making our friendship circle. So glad to have you as reading friends." Yours until Niagara falls."   Maybe I'll have an autograph book two entry on Wednesday. Lots of great info out there on the net about those old autograph books.

A Day for Romance

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. (Voltaire)

Happy Valentine's Day! What makes Valentine's Day good for you? Candy? Roses? A card with loving words? Maybe sugar candy hearts with "Be Mine" on them. Seems I remember hearing that they had jazzed up and modernized the Valentine messages on candy hearts. So now the sayings on the hearts are probably all shortened tweet-like love messages.

I like Valentine's Day. It's such fun to reach out to people with a smile and a love message. Romance can certainly be a writer's best friend. Romance stories have been popular since day one. Can't you just see Adam searching the Garden of Eden for the perfect flower to give Eve? And he surely had a fine choice before the serpent came along and started the ball rolling to mess up things. You can find lots of romance stories in the Bible. Jacob working fourteen years for Rachel. David falling into sin because he desired Bathsheba. Esther convincing the king to save her people.

We're wired for romance. Scientist are working on proving what we've always known. Romantic love, when it's right, makes us feel good. Releases all those good chemicals in our brain so that when people say we're on Cloud 9, they're not far wrong. We are sort of floating on air.

We like to read about people falling in love too and watch movies with great love stories. Romance sells books. Romance sells nearly everything. Gone with the Wind tells a dramatic Civil War story, but what do we remember? Rhett and Scarlett. We love a good love story. Some can be tragic. Think Titanic. Some happy ever after. Think Cinderella. And everything in between.

We yearn for romance in our own lives. We live it vicariously in the books we read and the movies we watch. So, most of us are eager to celebrate a day of romance on Valentine's Day. A lot of writers seem to be eager to celebrate romance every day of the year in the stories they write.

The last couple of weeks, I've been talking a lot about romance because my new book, Words Spoken True, is the most romantic story I've written for a while. But my story is hardly like D.H. Lawrence is describing romances here. "And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything as you like it, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose, and it's always daisy-time."  

Always daisy-time. Not quite in most of my books. My characters have all kinds of obstacles to true love. They do get wet. They wave off the bugs and sometimes can't find a daisy anywhere. But their story gets told and now Adriane's and Blake's story is getting read.

Thank you so much for reading. And I wish you a Valentine's Day where all is smooth as a soft serve ice cream cone. Maybe we can keep it from melting too fast and dripping down our arm. A day to celebrate love shouldn't melt, but go on and on.

Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live.

Discombobalated

Okay, so it's not Wednesday. It's not even Thursday, the day I usually remember I forgot to post on One Writer's Journal on Wednesday. But I've got excuses. A good writer should always be able to come up with excuses. Or reasons. So, I'm blaming those grandkids who were here a few days ago. By the time they left, I didn't know what day it was. Since I wasn't brave enough or energetic enough (the truth is I'm not young enough) to take the four kids to church, I felt like I was missing Sunday and who knew what day it was after that? If you don't have Sunday, the days just melt together. So you might say I was discombobalated.  Now there's a word that sounds just like it should. I looked up its meaning on line to be sure I wasn't discombobalated about that too.

Discombobalated or discombobalation is a word used to say that something confuses you or a word used to say that someone is a bit mental in their head. can be used as an insult!!

Don't you just love words? Without them, storytellers would be in a fix. Especially if they weren't good at being a mime or drawing pictures. Words are what I need. I've had a romance with them ever since I was a kid. Words spread across book pages carried me away on adventures, caused me to fall in love over and over, let me chase along behind people saving the world from the bad guys, and made me laugh and cry. Words were my favorite games in Scrabble and crossword puzzles and playing hangman with my sister on our chalkboards. I just did a guest post about having a romance with words on Romcon. If you want to check out the post and leave a comment there, you'll have a chance to win a copy of my new book. I'm also visiting on Katt Scribbles this week where you can leave a comment for a chance to win a book. Lots of those opportunities this month. Along with my own giveaway at my website.

It's always a kind of gift when the very right word comes to me from seemingly nowhere when I'm writing. Sometimes it will be a word I would never think to say in my own conversations, but somewhere in the murky depths of my writer's mind it's been buried, waiting for the right scene, the right character, to rise to the surface, waving its hand in the air, screaming, "Here, I am. Use me." A lot of the time, I'll pull out my ancient dictionary, not the on-line kind, but the open it up and flip through the pages kind, to make sure the word means what I think it does. Discombobalated was not in my dictionary. I had to go on-line to find it. Lots of new words have gained entrance into the book of words since my old dictionary was printed years ago. 

But it was the right word. I was discombobalated. It could be that I am discombobalated. But I do know it's Friday. I do know that I'm supposed to have my first book launch for Words Spoken True tonight at the Corinth Book Store in Frankfort. I do know that the weathermen are talking about a winter storm advisory starting at two o'clock this afternoon. It hasn't snowed but a skiff all year. The photo above is the bit of snow we had a couple of days ago. Not even enough to call off schools. By noon tomorrow, we're supposed to get an inch, maybe two, but the weather guys are making it sound like we're going to have a blizzard. A weatherman misses snow, I'm thinking. It would have to be the day I was hoping to meet and greet some readers that the snow would start falling. Oh well, maybe all of you have four-wheel drives and you want to test them out. If so, come on down to see me. I'm sharing the time with another local writer, Jennifer Johnson, with her book, Shoebox Surprise. 

Thanks for your patience with this discombobalated writer. I appreciate you dropping by. What words do you like? Which ones bring a feeling or thought to mind for you just from hearing it? Joy. Boisterous. Whisper.  Readers! That's one of my favorite words. :)

The Wheels Turn

It's been a grandkid weekend that started on Thursday night and won't end till late tomorrow night. A couple of the kids are a little homesick. The other two aren't showing much signs of wishing for home. But for sure, I'm one tired grandmom. The twins are sweet as they can be, but two three-year-olds keep you on the move. Especially when they know how to open the doors. I've had to keep my ears tuned for the sound of knobs turning. Barefoot right out in the rain - no problem for them. They love it outside. And two of them like the dogs while the other two are just as happy to keep the dogs back. Of course, the twin who likes the dogs is the one who's allergic to them. Naturally. The six-year-old asked me if she could have Oscar - my big black dog. I said no way. Her dad would have said no way even faster - for different reasons.

Both the boys like to play with cars, but the one in the picture above likes watching those wheels roll. Just the same as his dad did at that age. His dad would lie on the floor and roll his cars or lie on the ground - whichever and watch those wheels the same way. So it's sort of like going back in time to see this little fellow do the same. The other twin likes cars too, but instead of rolling it, he's burying it in the rocks. That's the thing about kids. They're all different. Even when one echoes the past, he's still different - his own unique person. 

That's one of the fun things about having several grandkids - seeing how they are different personalities. Having several makes for a grandma who needs an extra pair of hands. Maybe two extra pairs of hands. I did have help this weekend with my daughter here for several days and then grandpa came home from recording a new project with his gospel group. And he's helping guard the door and has had a lap full of grandkids most of the day. 

It's also been my book release weekend, but I haven't had much time to think about that. I have had a couple of guest blog posts go live.  In the one yesterday, I talk about my romance with words. It's at RomCon and if you want to go make a comment over there, you'll have another chance to win an autographed book along with a box of Bauer's Modjeska candy. So far, your odds of winning would be good. I've got several blog appearances this month. So it's a good thing I like words and putting them together. 

Thanks for reading. Got to turn in and get ready for another full day of grandmothering. The eight year old told me earlier that I had to be nice to them because I was their grandmother. That was right after I made the two girls sit in time out.  Oh, to be told to sit on the couch and do nothing for five minutes. It's all in the perspective, isn't it?

Opening Day for Words Spoken True

Today is release day for Words Spoken True. It's out there in the world of readers now. The cover is getting great remarks and now to see if what's between the front and back covers will make you readers happy. I feel like a mother bird watching her baby bird fly off into the great beyond. Well, I really doubt a mother bird worries too much about the baby birds after they fly away. She's too busy repairing the nest for the next eggs. So maybe I should be like the mother bird - not  think about the book flying out there to readers, but start building the new book. Actually I am doing that. Building one word on top of another and feeding my characters with new ideas and situations to see if they won't develop wings that will carry them out to readers someday too. 

But a release day is too rare not to celebrate a little. Some writers get more books out to market in a year than I do, but I'm thinking they are probably happy about every one. I'll have two this year. Two is good. Two is great! One is good. And there have been plenty of times in my writing career that one would have been great. It is fun to see your book for sale. It's fun to see the reviews start showing up. It's fun to get e-mails from readers who like your book. I had a note passed on to me from a Barnes & Noble community relations manager. She wrote " I read this book in two days - if I did not have to get up and be a functioning employee I would have read through the night. ... Draws you into the story as if you were living, breathing and speaking with Adriane and Beck at moments."   I mean, who wouldn't like getting a letter like that?

Every writer I know likes to hear that "I couldn't put it down" line. That's what keeps a writer digging the stubborn words out of her head to tell a new story.  At least it makes us feel good after we've spilled the words out. I have to admit I'd probably be writing some kind of story whether I had any readers sending me encouraging words or not. That doesn't mean encouraging words aren't a boost and a blessing. They are for this writer.


Now it's time to announce the winner of my blog drawing. I really appreciate all of you who left comments here in January. I have such fun reading your notes and love it when you share stories with me. I gathered a lot of comments about the quilt, so I know the love of quilting is still going strong out there. 

Okay, okay. I'll tell you the winners. I decided to pick two. Drum roll please. Virginia C. and Nancy D., you are my winners. I'll send you an e-mail for your mailing address. Thanks so much to all of you. We'll do this blog giveaway again soon.


And I've got that other giveaway going on my website now if you want to throw your name in the hat for that. I think I'm going to need a big hat. I sent out my newsletter today and the entries are rolling in. Also, I'll be doing some guest blogs and interviews in the next few weeks. Some of those will offer a copy of Words Spoken True to one lucky person who comments. So you've still got plenty of chances to win. The first ones are this weekend. You can also get a peek at the scene where Blake and Adriane meet on Chapter-a-Week. Check out the links on my website Event Page.

Thanks for reading. And tell all those groundhogs to stay underground and not come out and see their shadows tomorrow. Of course, it's already feeling like spring here, but I have a feeling winter will be returning.

Crazy Quilt History

Quilts connect the past with the present and the future.

  This is the bed I sleep in when I stay with Mom overnight. I don't actually sleep under this quilt. I very carefully fold it down and lay it aside. The quilt is well over 100 years old. It was a gift to my great aunt for her wedding. Her sisters and friends had a quilting shower for her. They each embroidered their names on a piece of fabric and then all gathered to sew the pieces together with more fancy stitches.

Here's my grandmother's name. I never really knew her. She died when I was two, but I can imagine her quilting her name here before she married - while  she was young and anxious to fall in love and have her own family. Some of the other names are Ethie, Em, Hervie, Virgie. Old fashioned names. But young names at the time. Names of girls full of hope and laughter. You know they laughed as they worked to fit these crazy pieces together like a puzzle. 

I love looking at the quilt. It's a unique piece of family history, an evidence of caring and fun. A very real piece of art. Everyday art for them at the time. But amazing art for me as I think about how they were able to fit all those pieces together and come up with a quilt that doesn't have odd corners.

I've always liked the crazy quilt patterns better than even the fanciest wedding ring patterns or basket patterns or whatever bit of amazing artistic design. The crazy quilt patterns speak to me.

"Our lives are like quilts - bits and pieces, joy and sorrow, stitched with love."

I guess that's why I like the crazy quilt pattern. It's like life. Bits and pieces in all shapes and sizes, but when stitched together, it makes the whole fabric of our lives. Writing is that way too. A book is pieced together with bits of stories from a lot of different characters. Sometimes you can't see how you'll ever fit the pieces together and maybe sometimes you'll have to throw aside a piece to use another time. But you have to get the important pieces - the ones with names on them - into the whole of the story. And the process can be crazy, but turn out beautiful sometimes in the end. 

Thank you so much for reading. Remember, this is another (and your last) chance to leave a comment to be in the drawing for an autographed copy of Words Spoken True. I'll be drawing for the winner on February 1. So let me know what's crazy in your life right now or just say hello. I always enjoy hearing from you. And I'll be announcing a great new giveaway to celebrate the book's release that will have the flavor of the book's background.

Some Days We Need An Inspirational Kick

A lot of you know I'm a big basketball fan. And living in Kentucky, that means I bleed blue. Ever since I was a kid I've been listening to UK play basketball. Been through some exciting times with the Cats and some disappointing times. Right now, things are going well in the Big Blue Nation. We've got a good team and a coach most all of us can like. 

I know you're all wondering how I'm going to tie all this in with the picture I've posted. Well, I heard Coach Cal on the radio the other day and he was talking about coaching and how a person can get off track. He said he had a banner in this office that read "Coach Your Team." I think he was saying that he had to work with what he had and not worry about what other coaches were doing. He had to be the coach for his players. 

That resonated with me. Not the coaching part, but the taking care of your own corner of the world part. So I made a banner for my blog tonight. "Write Your Book." I can't write somebody else's book. I can't waste a lot of time wishing I wrote as well as this bestselling author or that much admired wordsmith. I guess it's only natural to wish to be better at whatever we want to do whether that's writing or throwing basketballs through a hoop. But I'm not going to get to be a better writer by wishing I was somebody else writing somebody else's book. I have to write my book. 

Then once I have it written, I could make another banner. "Turn Your Book Loose." Give it to the readers and hope they will like the story. Just don't obsess about it. Turn it loose and look back to banner one. "Write Your Book." 

The thing about writing novels is that by the time one book makes it out to market, most of the time a writer is putting the finishing touches on a new book. And some writers might have finished several books in that year it takes a book to wind its way through a traditional publishing house and be printed and ready to go out and find those readers. All that is good inspirational advice. But even the best advice is hard to follow sometimes. It's hard to turn loose a book and not feel a little tightening in the throat when the first reviews roll in. What are readers going to think? Are they going to like your characters? Are they going to be caught up in the story? Are you, the writer, going to develop a thick skin and be able to remember that first banner and "write your book" no matter what the reviewers say? So many questions. Questions that might not have easy answers. 

But I have gotten the answer about the first couple of reviews I've seen for Words Spoken True. RT Book Review Magazine gave the book 4 stars. Then Long and Short Reviews posted a really nice review today. Loved some of the imagery the reviewer used about the story being a tapestry with the different threads of the characters and their stories woven into it. And isn't this button image they sent me nice? This is the one for romance. The one for sci-fi is green. The one for mystery another color. I'll let you guess what color they use for the spicier romances. Sort of fun. 

But you know the reviews that are best are the ones from you. I'm always glad to get an e-mail or comment telling me what a reader likes about my books. The ones where you tell me what you don't like aren't quite as much fun, but I'm tough. I can take it, because you know what? I have to "Write MY Book." 

Don't forget the giveaway. Comment on the blog and get your name thrown in the pot again for an autographed copy of Words Spoken True. I'll pick the winner February 1. Remember, this is just for those of you who comment on my blog posts so your chances of winning are pretty good. I do need a way to get in touch with you or you'll need to check my Wednesday blog on Feb. 1 to see if you won and then you can let me know how to contact you.

As always, thanks for reading. I do so appreciate each and every one of you.