Trading a Backpack for a Suitcase

On my last section hike. Trading in trail runners for high heels

I’m getting ready for another trip – and this time it has nothing to do with a backpack(!) Though I live out of a backpack several months of the year, right now it is my suitcase I am carrying for my next great adventure.

This time I trade in the backpack and trail runners, the convertible pants and rain hat for a suitcase, nice clothes, and the heart of a writer as I prepare to attend the 15^th annual ACFW conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

After all, before I really began my backpacking adventures, I was (and still am) a penman of the word.  In fact, 2017 will celebrate 20 years of being a published author that has seen some twenty plus novels and novellas find the printed page to the eyes of eager readers. I did do some day hikes in the old days and nursed a long sought-after goal to one day complete the whole Appalachian Trail (which I did in 2007 and again in 2010-11, both hikes chronicled in my first nonfiction book, Mountains, Madness and Miracles – 4000 Miles Along the Appalachian Trail).  But in the beginning came my fiction work – of which there have been many titles of adventure and romance, but really, seeking God in everyday life to life issues. I draw from experiences and personal issues I have been through to create these stories. I like to weave a tale too that will make readers keep turning the pages rather than close the book on chapter two (which I dislike doing myself when I read a book!)

So this day finds me packing a suitcase as I venture to a writer’s conference to network with fellow authors and talk to editors about future book ideas (of which I always have many!). Just like hiking,

the thrill of writing a good story is a part of me. I don’t want to waste any moment of what I have been given or learned in life’s journey. It’s in that mode of transporting through life’s ups and downs that I can craft a story that speaks to a reader and makes a difference in one’s life as it did in mine.

The Sting of Life

Oh, the sting. I was out yesterday enjoying the gorgeous weather with low humidity and picture perfect skies. Hiking along a pretty trail enjoying some lovely views of the Shenandoah Valley. Suddenly some kind of stinging insect (bee or otherwise) flew right into my face, got lodged behind my glasses and bit me beside the eye. Instant pain radiating to my head and neck. Thus endeth the hike, a few miles short of my goal. I went out to the road, and a park ranger happened to be there at the overlook and took me  back to my car. Today I still have swelling and pain in my face to remind me of a very unwelcome intrusion in what was to be a nice day.

The sting of life, and maybe when we are enjoying some beauty or some wonderful blessing. It seems everything is zapped. The blessing is gone or it appears, and you wonder what to do.

I believe it's these times that faith is really tested. Not on the nice days. But when things are throw at you when you don't expect it, be it the big or the tiny with stinger (like a bee). What are you going to do? This is where the scripture comes to play - the testing of faith produces patience. An eternal weight of glory. No matter what is coming our way or what it could entail. To stand on God's faithfulness to see us through  it. Not let it get to us but let our faith get it.

So to the bee, yeah, you put a crimp in my hike. But I'll be back for more days in God's creation.

Reader Feedback - the not so Good and the Great

Plants bloom after rain falls, bringing color on the journey along the Appalachian Trail

I thought this was a perfect picture to illustrate what happened, and quite unexpectedly. Many weeks back I received some reader feedback cards having to do with my last book for Heartsong Presents - Wasatch Love. I must say it was rather discouraging. I received only negative remarks. One reader basically said the book had no redeeming value whatsoever. As was written - "I HATED IT!! Too much sex junk!! Not Christian!" Inspirational theme - "Where??" 

Another wrote - I would have enjoyed it more if - "Sin and fornication weren't taken so lightly and matter-of-factly. Forgiveness and true repentance should have been clearer."

I was devastated. I wondered if I had missed the mark with regards to this work. In fact, when the editor sent me the galley proofs for the book to be included in the fall re-release of the Utah series, I looked it over, trying to keep an open mind to see where it may have fallen flat. Truthfully, I could not see it. I believed that while the characters were indeed flawed (as we all are!) God provides a pathway to redemption. Through their situation, they were able to grow together in friendship and eventually in love.     

Fast forward. I open the mailbox today to find a fresh batch of feedback forms on my books. Inwardly my spirit groaned. More folks complaining about this godless work. But looking through them, there was not one negative comment. And nestled among the forms was a handwritten letter by a reader. I hope she won't mind me sharing some of her words that she wrote concerning Wasatch Love - 

"This (book) is one of the most comprehensive Heartsong Presents novels I've ever read on rebuilding relationships with God directly involved and doing the work.

"You fill the pages with how to's for love, finding Jesus, healing wounds, fixing relationships, caring for others...

"Thank you for helping to reignite my counseling efforts. You are dear to me."

Wow! Talk about a complete and total reversal. I thought I had blown it with this book. But I realized that this is really God's ministry. God's work. His work through what I can do with my meager means of writing. No, my books won't please everyone. Just so long as I please God with it and pray the story reaches those few to see the message - that with God, all things are possible.  

Guest Martha Rogers on What is YOUR Excuse?

I am so pleased to have guest Martha Rogers here with an extraordinary story of her path to publishing as well as introducing her newest release slated for June!! And leave a comment for a chance to win!!

What Does Age Have to Do With Anything?

We make so many excuses for not submitting our writing. I don’t have enough time. I have too many other obligations. I’m too young. I’m too old. I’ve got too many rejections. I don’t have an agent. Any sound familiar? If I had used the excuse of age, I would never have been published. My agent believed in me and kept submitting my manuscripts. When I wanted to quit, friends encouraged me to keep on.

When God calls us to a task, He expects us to finish it. If we’re obedient to that call, He will give us what we need to complete it because He who began the work in us will carry through until it’s completed. Galatians 6:9 tells us not to grow weary when we’re doing God’s work because we’ll reap a harvest when God sets the time.

So many younger authors were getting contracts and having success that I wondered if He’d forgotten how old I was getting. Well, God doesn’t forget. He doesn’t sleep. He never quits work. He’s always there willing to help us reach our goals when we call on Him for help. The Lord does expect us to do our part. That part is to put ourselves in that chair and write.

My first contract came at age 73. God’s timing was perfect. It always is. I’ll be 75 in two months and by that time I will have five novels and one novella published with another five novels contracted. When God opened the door for me, He kicked it wide open. Prayer, perseverance and patience reaped the harvest at the time God ordained.

Do whatever it takes to write. If you’re serious, God will help you find the time. At other times He may tell you to wait a season and take care of other things first. Listen to His voice and calling. Write as much as you can when you can. Be patient, and pray for His guidance in all that you do. Jeremiah tells you to call on Him, and He will answer and tell you great things you do not know. Jeremiah also tells us that God has great plans for us, plans to give us hope and a future. So press on to what God has called you to do whether it is to wait for a season to begin or whether it is to work hard now, for pressing on will lead you where you need to go.

So what excuses have you used to keep from submitting?

Martha Rogers is the author of Becoming Lucy; Morning for Dove; Finding Becky; Caroline’s Choice; Not on the Menu, a part of a novella collection with DiAnn Mills, Janice Thompson, and Kathleen Y’Barbo; and River Walk Christmas, a novella collection with Beth Goddard, Lynette Sowell, and Kathleen Y’Barbo. A former schoolteacher and English instructor, she has a master’s degree in education and lives with her husband in Houston, Texas.

Website

Summer Dream

As the daughter of a small-town minister in Connecticut, Rachel Winston fears that the only way she’ll ever find a husband is to visit her aunt in Boston for the social season. But when Nathan Reed arrives in town, she can’t help but wonder if he could be the one. Although attracted to Rachel, Nathan has no desire to become involved with a Christian after experiences with his own family. What’s more, until he resolves his anger with God and his family, he has no chance of courting her. When Nathan is caught in a devastating blizzard and lies near death in the Winston home, Rachel and her mother give him a lesson in love and forgiveness that leads him back to his home in the South. Will he make peace with his family and return before Rachel chooses a path that takes her away from him?

Summer Dream will be available in June on CBD, Amazon, and Barnes&Noble on line or pre-order now. Check with your local Christian book store for availability.

To win a copy of this new title available in June, please leave a comment with your e-mail address. Thanks for stopping by and be sure to subscribe for all the latest writing news and future guests to come like Loree Lough, Lynn Coleman, Laurie Alice Eakes to name a few!

On A Journey

The Sun Rises on the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey

Once again a long and lonely trail beckons to the heart, soul, and mind of a wanderer. That is, I will be taking a few weeks to enjoy Pennsylvania and Maryland to Harper's Ferry on the Appalachian Trail. Once the three weeks are finished, I will have completed the trail in its entirety for a second time, this time from Maine to Georgia (in '07 it was from Georgia to Maine), becoming one of the few women and in my age group to have completed the trail both north and south.

I will post again in May when I will have a special guest blogger, Martha Rogers, author of the Winds Across the Prairie Series. So check back here after May 8th for this special blog and giveaway, along with musings from the trail.

Until we meet again....

Under the Weight of It

Okay, so I am not holding up the literal weight of this rock. You might call it instead a tight place. I am on a hike I took with my husband last week. We had to negotiate rocky areas and obstacles to climb an impressive mountain in the Blue Ridge called Old Rag. It also proved a unique illustration of what can go on in our lives. Maybe the crushing weight of rejection or a deadline in writing, or some other trial in our lives is affecting us. We try to hold the weight of it back or make it through in our own strength and find it too heavy and burdensome.

But do you see behind the rock a glimmer of light? An opening one can use to crawl underneath the rock and to a blessed area of relief and freedom as we make our way to the summit? So it was on this hike when I had to lower myself beneath the weight and size of this boulder, scooting underneath it to find a way out. God is faithful to provide ways out of heavy obstacles blocking our way. To help us out from underneath weighty things that come across our path. That is, if we will stop and look for the open door on the other side. To find that shining light to guide and direct us.

Maybe you are in a similar place in your life. Or with your writing, feeling the weight of rejection or writer's block or some other glaring obstacle seeking to block your pathway to glory. Stop and look for the light behind the weight and follow it. Then see your path made clear.

NEXT WEEK I will be joined by talented, multi published fiction author Vickie McDonough who will guest blog and give away a book! Feel free to learn more about her writing at her website.

Day of Romance

These are the two-tone roses my husband gave me for Valentine's Day. The red is for love, the white, he said, for purity.

On this day of love, celebrated on Valentine's Day, I'd like to reflect on my writing. Why I chose to write Christian romance. You see, writing about romance and love is not a new idea. Or an idea only some have and others do not. Love is really God's idea. He created love. Love is all throughout the Bible. We can love others because He first loved us. And every day God instructs me on the purpose of love.Which is why the chapter on love, found in 1 Corinthians 13 is very much magnified in day to day living. Of love being patient in adversity. Kind when it may be easier to be unkind. To not hold a grudge when it can be difficult to forgive. Is long suffering. Has many attributes to it that I, as a writer, have seen with others and want to portray in my books. How love believes, bears up, hopes, and endures. I have written stories where love is patient. Long suffering. Can forgive. Leads to lasting relationships and marriage. But yes, can have its rocky times. Can be severely tested. Can be thrown into the midst of battle to see if love prevails. But in the end, love always wins. Just as the Bible paints so vividly, that love conquers all, to an everlasting love we will celebrate with God and His Son in heaven. That we can love because God first loved us. I pray that God will allow me to continue writing about love in books. That He will refresh me with new ideas on how to express that love so that I and others might continue in it, as long as we live.

Happy Valentines Day!

Feel free to visit my web site to learn more about my romance novels.

The Unexpected Dawn of an Orphaned Idea

As a writer, it can sometimes take a long drawn-out night to see the dawn of an idea come to light. As what happened with an idea I had some ten years ago. Back then I was called to write an idea for a biographical series with another historian. Since I dealt in fiction writing, he would do the history, and I would write the storyline. One of the stories for this book was on the life of William Penn and the Quakers. It was contracted by a major publisher. The idea was hashed out and rewritten over and over. For two years I worked on it. The book was done. Then out of the blue the publisher decided they didn't want it anymore. The editor who originally contracted it left the fiction department. That was that. An orphaned book with nowhere to go.

Talk about major disillusionment. It took a while after that for me to pick up the pieces and write again. I really thought, why bother? All that research; all that work I did. Hours and hours, and for nothing, in my finite mind.

And so the book sat. I left it along with all my other hard work to lie in a computer file gathering whatever dust computers gather.

Fast forward to this past summer of 2010. I am on the Appalachian Trail hiking in New York (yes, hiking). I get a frantic cell call from my agent. My long time editor who I have worked with for nearly fifteen years needs a fourth author for a novella collection. She thought of me and wondered if I could come up with an idea.

What is the collection? A Quaker Christmas.

Wow!

After so many years, I could use the research I once did and put some of it into this tiny story. No, it doesn't compare to the work I originally did. But I was still able to bring out a bit of William Penn's life and compare it to the life of my hero. Most importantly, God did not forget all that work. That when we are faithful to sow, He will cause it to grow if we are patient. Granted I didn't think it would take 10 years. But to God, its just a day.

So if you are waiting for your seeds, be patient. In God's timing, they will grow. And usually when you least expect it.

A Year I Didn't Expect

As this year closes, I wanted to take a bit of time to reflect on 2010.

The year did not turn out the way I thought it would. I began 2010 with high expectations in my writing career. I thought a book would go through with a major publisher that did not. Instead, I was led on a 1500 mile journey back on the Appalachian Trail, a southbound journey that went over and beyond my expectations. I hiked solo for many weeks but discovered new friends and new places I will not soon forget. You can read about my journey here.

2010 saw us welcome a new member to our family - our blue tick coon hound, Eve, from the shelter. She is doing very well after a few months of intense training, and we love her.

2010 also saw my husband prosper in his business and my three books set in the state of Utah published.

I always wonder what a New Year will bring. But this year I have expectations of good things. I serve an awesome God Who has my best interests at heart. I know He will lead me and guide me for His name's sake. And so I welcome 2011 with my eyes looking upward and my determination set to do all I can with the time that is given to me.

Happy 2011!