snow!

It's snowing wildly this morning! Actually it began yesterday and made our Sunday very special. We went on a drive and watched cars slide into ditches, kids making snowmen, people putting up holiday lights and everyone (?) enjoying a generous dusting of white.

In my fictional world, I love snow:) I even wrote a snow scene for the epilogue of The Colonel's Lady. I could almost smell the gingerbread baking and the pungent greenery twisted around the stair rail with ribbon and all those bayberry candles melting in tin holders.

As Madeleine L'Engle said, I leave chronos (real time/clock time) and enter kairos (God's timelessness) when I write. Today is a good writing day with a big fire in the fireplace and white woods outside my windows.

Since it will be crazy busy starting Wednesday, I have to make the most of it. I'll be fixing a 20 pound turkey, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, cranberries, deviled eggs, rolls, chocolate cream pie... I don't think the menu varies much across America:) My neighbors, however, shun turkey and always have lasagna! Thanksgiving always means a lot to me since Wyatt was my Thanksgiving baby. And we always put up a Christmas tree on our deck with lots of lights to start the holiday season. In all this snow it will be a beautiful sight!

I'd love to know what you're doing for Thanksgiving this week. Do you have any special traditions? Foods? Is it a quiet day or one filled with traveling, family, and friends?

winter wonderland

Can you find the snowflake in this picture?

We woke up to several more inches of snow this morning so now have just under two feet with more on the way! I've been spending a lot of time looking out windows, knowing it won't last. The temps are already warming up and those icicles hanging from the rafters are slowly melting. Our powdery snow is trying to be slushy now and all the trees look burdened. Randy had to go out to the apples and plums and cherry trees and shake the big branches off for fear they'll break. I hope there's a special place in heaven, like Narnia, where it's always snowing and never melting, and you don't feel too cold:)

Church was cancelled last night so Paul escaped playing violin. Randy did take them 4-wheeling in the snow at a friend's house though those ATV's make me nervous, even with helmets and all the rest. I stayed home and worked on the galleys. Our power is still on though others around us are without. We lost power for 4 days a couple of years ago and it was no fun, espcially when the water failed. We're still not out of the woods, so to speak, so hope all the amenities continue.

If I could, I'd move all this snow to my granny's house in Kentucky and celebrate there! With a big honeybaked ham, garlic cheese grits, and red velvet cake. My little version of paradise. But I'm confined to the wintry northwest woods with three Christmas trees, a warm woodstove, and two boys very excited about the next few days. Not a bad trade off, huh?

No, I still don't have all my Christmas shopping done, or know what's on the menu, but this year has been unlike anything I've ever known so it just figures this Christmas would be new and different as well:)

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:7

polar express

This Saturday morning it's starting to snow again and the sky looks like a big grey bully. Everyone in the northwest is hunkering down for up to 15 more inches of snow and winds gusting to 90 mph. Folks are calling it the polar express as temps dropped to the teens last night and we get some of that cold Canadian air. The boys built a snow cave which collapsed so we walked to the little 100-year old Joyce General Store a couple of miles away yesterday to mail some things. Walking in a foot or more of snow is good exercise! And you can't always have your head in your laptop:)

Wyatt has decided he wouldn't want to be a writer who sits in a chair all day and stares at a computer screen. He just doesn't understand how pleasant it is to park there and do just that, especially when it's a big Lazy Boy chair situated right next to a warm woodstove with a big picture window on the other side overlooking the woods. So I think it's safe to say he's not a writer in the making as I knew by age 12 that this was the path for me. Of course writers can arrive at any age but I'm one of those who think they are born, not made. Paul is still dreaming of being a violinist/fiddler.

Paul is trying to work up the courage to play "Silent Night" at church tomorrow night and "Angeline the Baker" at Old Time Fiddlers come January. This latter tune is so pretty and interesting. I'm so glad I have a fiddler in all my books. There's nothing in the world like the fiddle though banjo is a close second.

As soon as I finish these galleys I return to the Red River in Kentucky, via my chair by the fire, for another edit, though I'm just about dying at this point to get back to book 3. And I've just realized I'd better start thinking about that 4th book!

Happy Saturday!

snowed in. the sequel.

Sometime in the night it snowed another half a foot! And it's still snowing this morning. The big spruce with all the colored twinkle lights on the deck was swept off by the wind and now sits in a drift. All this snow is unusual. We usually have a foot of rain about now, not snow, so we are thrilled:) A white Christmas, indeed!

Luckily we don't have anything on the schedule today but lunch with a neighbor if we can hoof it over there as Randy took the Jeep to work. I'm writing an additional chapter for the galleys and am almost done. Not with the galleys but with the chapter!

I've noticed a disturbing trend in fiction the last few years. I love beautifully written narrative but now the focus is on lots of dialogue with rapid-fire delivery. I think people want a novel that reads like a video game or t.v. show. A novel needs to unfold with just the right balance of narrative and dialogue or the reader feels cheated. At least this reader. But so many books today have that rapid-fire feel and I think it's a reflection of our society and how people want to be entertained and not have to think and absorb. Sadly, much is missed in reading this way.

I do want to mention my association with Books & Such Literary Agency in Santa Rosa, California. I'm so pleased that Janet Grant has just taken this about-to-be-published author on! Janet is a prolific author in her own right. Before founding her agency in 1994 she was formerly an editor for Dr. Dobson at Focus on the Family and had her own imprint at Zondervan. She has some wonderful clients and I'm humbled to be on her list.

Christmas is next week and usually I have our menu planned by now and lots of shopping done. But, at this point,if anyone asks me what we're doing all I can say is, "Galleys!"

May you have warmth in your igloo, oil in your lamp, and peace in your heart. -Eskimo Proverb