april 1st

Happy April 1st! I turned the calendar over this morning and was reminded that spring has sprung and April is a busy month with two birthdays, a wedding, baby shower, fiddler's jam, and church retreat down in Oregon. Who has time to write, right? And I just saw an add telling me I can fly to Spain for $192.oo. Temptations abound. But it's raining in Spain and my deadline for book 2 approaches. And we're no further with wireless internet than we were 4 months ago. I think the phone company is digging that promised ditch with a teaspoon:( Maybe we'll have a faster connection by this first book's release. It's on my prayer list. I have a very eclectic prayer list!

So this morning it's a rainy 40 degrees here and I've written a bit on book 3 and now have to go practice violin with Paul. Yesterday we were in town driving around, just the two of us, while Wyatt was getting braces at the orthodontist. Paul turned to me and said, "Mom, I want a dairy." A dairy? "Like, with cows?" I asked. He looked puzzled. "No, the kind you write in." OH! I said. A diary. But my heart was SINGING! He is only nine and he wants to write in a diary!!! It's a moment that makes a mom's heart melt. At least a writer mom's heart. And so when I parked the Jeep to run an errand at this little store, there on a rack was a little book - a diary - with a dog on the front. Only one. Some things you don't even have to pray about - they just appear. So I bought it. Last night he spent a LONG time composing his first entry. And I know you're not supposed to read other people's diaries but I can't resist sharing his attempt:

3/31/09
me, josh, wyatt, and ean were going down to the creek to have fun. we saw fish.

Anyway, I was about 9 when I started my first diary. So maybe Paul will grow up to be a fiddler and a writer. Only God knows.

Here's some Scripture to start the month from The Message Bible:
God's love is meteoric, His loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, His verdicts oceanic. Yet in His largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. How exquisite your love, O God!

winding down

Tomorrow my Kentucky momma leaves. So today we had brunch at our favorite breakfast place in Port Angeles - Cafe Garden. We always have the same thing- Angel's Eggs - which are just as divine as they sound. Lots of cream cheese, fresh mushrooms, green onion, and hollandaise sauce with a croissant or two thrown in. Nothing fattening about that! I've secretly been dreaming of Panera on Richmond Road in Lexington. There are no Paneras or Cracker Barrels this side of the Rockies to my knowledge:( Personally, I'm relieved that this eating thing is winding down. I need to get back to writing.

My mom keeps exclaiming about the birds we have out here. We have GIANT robins and woodpeckers - like something out of a Stephen King novel, truly! She keeps asking me to identify birds which I am dismal at doing. Need to get a bird book in my stack of stuff. All I know is that we have zero Kentucky cardinals here.

About those books... Soon I should receive The Frontiersman's Daughter in actual book format to review a final time. Only 153 more days till it's on bookshelves!!!! I am so excited and amazed still - maybe a little nervous. Still no wireless in the woods but maybe it doesn't really matter. I'm no Stephen King with reader mail stacking up!

I think I have this erroneous idea that once the book comes out my life will get a little more hectic. But I don't think this is true. I'm sure it depends on how the book does - whether it sinks or swims. Revell has an amazing marketing team. I'm so thankful for that. But really, it's all in His hands. I've done what I can. Going public with anything is a bit frightening. Writers usually are, by nature, a quiet lot and writing is a lonely profession. But like Stephen King said, it's all the playground personally and I think sales figures have little to do with that. I think King would enjoy writing just as much if Carrie had been backlist, though I'm sure his success has sweetened the whole writing experience overall.

I love this King quote: I have written because it fulfilled me... I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.

Amen, again!

snow days and stephen king

It snowed last night and schools are closed today though I see blue sky outside my window. My stack of books is growing beside my writing chair. Always a happy feeling to sit beside a stack of books! And Amazon has more on the way:) I was in the Port Angeles library a couple of days ago checking out books for my mom who's here (she's reading J.A. Jance, by the way), and I came across a little book on writing. It's the first book I've ever read by Stephen King.

I'm afraid I'm not a horror fan any more than King is a fan of TFD but this little book, entitled, On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft, is really interesting. The cover isn't bloody or eerie or anything like that but decidedly unKing-like with flowers and a bay window and root cellar door (now that door does look sort of mysterious and unfriendly, on second glance) but I do like what he has to say about writing.

King writes almost every day, even Christmas Day, and feels strange when he isn't writing and even has trouble sleeping. "For me, not writing is the real work. When I'm writing, it's all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty good." Amen to that, I say!

When interviewers ask him why he writes what he writes, as if he's in control of his stories, he remembers the quote by SciFi writer, Alfred Bester, who said, "The book is the boss." Simply put, the book drives the author, the author doesn't drive the book.

Lastly, King wonders why some authors are so prolific (Briton John Creasey wrote 500 novels, some in two days, under 10 different names) and why others like the brilliant Harper Lee and her solo To Kill a Mockingbird, are not. He says, "If God gives you something you can do, why in God's name wouldn't you do it?" Amen again!

I made one surprising discovery about Stephen King. Not only is he a master horror writer, he is a very humorous writer. If you like to write (and laugh) you should read this book. My only caution is that while I abhor profanity, King does not. But he offers a world of advice to writers everywhere, of all genres, and I learned a few tricks of the trade I'd not considered.

Now, off to play in that snow!