Revisions

I've had the fun of hearing from book groups and readers who have taken trips across the country following the journeys of my characters. I met two couples from Ohio visiting the Aurora Colony just to see where Emma walked. They'd taken the train to Portland, first time west of the Mississippi River. Homeschoolers from Minnesota and Alberta, Canada told me they followed Jane Sherar's story as a summer vacation reading A Sweetness to the Soul along the way. When we lived on the ranch, a couple of book groups came down the reptile road to see if we really did live on such a remote piece of paradise along the John Day River.  This week I connected with a three members of the Happy Bookers book group out of Redding, CA making their way north following the stories. They tell me they feel like they're inside the characters who become friends they don't want to leave behind when the book ends.

 

I'm currently in the revision stage of my novel that will come out next spring, One Glorious Ambition: the Compassionate Crusade of Dorothea Dix. I usually re-read a craft book before revising. Self-editing for Fiction Writers is a favorite.  So is A Writer's Guide to Fiction by Elizabeth Lyon. This year I was fortunate to discover Rivet your Readers with Deep Point of View by Jill Elizabeth Nelson. http://jillelizabethnelson.com/  Look for her suspenseful novels as well.

 

Jill's book about writing is both a paperback and ebook, not very long, but just what I needed. I struggled with keeping my character too far away from the reader in the first draft and it read like a biography.  Not badly, but not what my editor and I had in mind either.  Jill's book will help me become a better writer I'm sure. It could also add to your  pleasure as a reader.  I want to create characters real enough that perhaps another book group will be moved to travel the route of my characters. That is what novelists hope for most - to move people.  Thanks to all of you who allow yourselves to be moved by the stories and maybe even take a road trip to deepen your experience. We authors are honored.

The Midwife's Legacy with my hometown-setting piece is going hot off the shelves!  Thanks for that. My novella is the first in the collection and I think you'll like all four author's stories threaded together by a journal kept by a midwife.  Midwife means "with woman" so in some ways, we're all midwives when we support each other. Even writers need midwives and many of my readers act as just that for me!  Thanks for your visits to my site, emails and letters. I appreciate it!

 

  Here's the first peek at the cover for my devotional coming out in January from Harvest House. Promises of Hope for Difficult Times is a memoir-like journey of challenges in my life and I hope it will bring encouragement to others and especially to caregivers. 

 

I learned this month that I was nominated by Romantic Times magazine for a Lifetime Achievement Award for Inspirational Novels. I didn't win but another Central Oregon author of fine stature did:  Melody Carlson. Look for her wide range of novels (over 200, I think) for young adults, children and adults. Her Crystal Lies is one of the best books about schizophrenia  and a young Portland street girl that I've ever read  http://www.melodycarlson.com.  Congratulations, Melody! 

 

Quinton Smith, a Pulitzer-prize winning editor and now freelancer, spent five hours with me in June. He visited here (I fed him lunch!) attended a book signing, talked with previous editors and wrapped that all up in a piece published in The Oregonian newspaper. He'd also read a number of my books and proposed me for a feature called "Where Writer's Write." Honored and humbled, that's me when the piece came out even though my  office was a mess. He told me not to clean it up!  

 

Where Lilacs Still Bloom has gone back to a second printing! This is wonderful news as often it doesn't happen with my titles for at least a year. So kudos to all who are reading and telling your friends about the book. I thank  you!

 

Naked Spirituality A Life with God in 12 Simple Words by Brian D. McLaren (Harper One, 2011)

First Presbyterian Church in Bend, Oregon has a practice of reading a book in the summer and hearing sermons based on the weekly readings. This summer the book by Brian McLaren was chosen and I'm so grateful. In addition to postings on Facebook where people comment on the words and how they've spoken in their lives each week, the book is full of wisdom and inspiration at an almost cellular level. I've been reading it aloud to Jerry. Since his stroke, he has a harder time reading for himself.

 

Pastor McClaren writes:  "This is a book about getting naked - not physically, but spiritually. It's about stripping away the symbols and status of public religion - the Sunday-dress version people often call 'organized religion.' Now we're after a lost treasure as old as the story of the Garden of Eden: the possibility of being naked before one another, too, so we have no need to cover up, to protect, to posture, to dress to impress, just the freedom to be who we are, what we are, as we are. I hope this book will help you strip away distractions and discover that precious hidden treasure underneath.

 

The twelve words he explores and helps move us into a deeper spiritual life are: Here, Thanks, O, Sorry, Help (a personal favorite) Please, When, No, Why, Behold, Yes and the last word is an ellipsis[...]the practice of contemplation and rest. The words are divided by sections named Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity and Harmony.

 

With the word Help, for example, he provided a new way for me to look at petition and prayer, a new way to consider anxieties and disappointments. Even the focus of disappointment - what has not happened - gave me new insights.

 

"Pain that isn't processed," he quotes Fr. Richard Rohr as saying, "is passed on. Pain that isn't transformed is transmitted." Pastor McClaren offers new ways to reframe our anxieties, hurts and disappointments so we process rather than pass along those pains.

 

Brian McClaren writes fluidly, with stories and anecdotes and references to scripture and with a sharing of his own personal journey. It's a book I'll be giving to many - people of faith or not - and will read again and again and again.