Shenandoah's Eclectic Scribblings

Today was a good day ... I'm sick again (not good), but spent the day in bed with my laptop, writing and researching. Oh yes, in the middle of everything else going on lately, my writing changed direction, with the accompanying squeal of brakes and grinding of gears... and I'm on page 16 of my historical. Looks like I'll have an entry for the Genesis this year, after all. I went in search today of what firearm my hero carries. After a slight side trip to research the Brown Bess, it was suggested that he'd carry a Kentucky or Pennsylvania long rifle . Voila! An even longer side trip, before the reading on the Brown Bess, brought me back to my favorite website on Banastre Tarleton , which in turn yielded several useful details for the scenes I've been working on. I'm starting to get used to the constant adjustments I have to make as I refine my research ... from the first it has been write a page or two, read a bit, realize certain details wouldn't work,

Dear longtime friends of mine, a fellow homeschooling family of six, recently lost nearly everything they own to a house fire (back in November). The insurance company is refusing honor the claim, and so after much prayer and thought, the family is asking for help. See here: The House is On Fire . Merely posting this seems such a pathetically small thing, since Tanya, the mom, flew all the way across country to be with me when we lost Duncan 7 1/2 years ago ... so thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for anything you can do.

And so begins the next blog tour. I confess, because of everything that's been going on, I'm not ready for this one. I've neither read the books nor met the author, so I have nothing very witty or interesting to share this time ... but I've heard a lot of very good things about this series! Our author is Wayne Thomas Batson , author of The Door Within trilogy : The Door Within Rise of the Wyrm Lord The Final Storm At least two of the participants have interviews (Sharon Hinck, and Becky at Spec Faith), and others have very interesting comments. (Welcome to all who have joined up in the last few months!) Jim Black Jackie Castle Valerie Comer Karri Compton Frank Creed CSFF Blog Tour Gene Curtis Chris Deanne Janey DeMeo Tessa Edwards April Erwin Linda Gilmore Beth Goddard Marcus Goodyear Todd Michael Greene Leathel Grody Karen Hancock Katie Hart Sherrie Hibbs Sharon Hinck Joleen Howell Kait Karen K. D. Kragen

Please forgive the dust while I muck with my blog template ... err, wait, if it's muck, I guess I should be asking forgiveness for something more sloppy than dust ... Anyway, I decided I wanted something different, and this is what happened after a couple of hours with my web-designer friend and then being left to experiment for the rest of the day. The graphics are drawn from a photo my friend Tamara Goff took at a recent reenactment event. I'm still in the process of restoring my links, which may take me a bit. In the meantime, this week is another blog tour, and I'm freshly spiffied up ... oh, egads, that means everyone will be seeing this ...

This is not what I planned to post next … but I’ve been entrapped in a particularly intense swirl of real life (ballet costumes, tax preparation, taking some special field trips with my kids as part of a local tourism promotion), and this is the most ready-to-hand piece I have. It also happens to be pretty much the most frivolous. Sigh. Rebecca tagged me a week or two ago, so here goes: Four jobs I’ve had Waitress at a truck stop. Yeah, really. For six weeks, and the one and only job I got fired from … also the one that gave me nightmares. Certified nurse’s aide in a nursing home. Hardest job I ever had physically and emotionally, before motherhood. Processor and book repairer in the technical services department of a library. I kept getting in trouble for spending too much time browsing the books … My first job, “walking beans” at the tender age of ten … that’s a common farm-teen job in the Midwest, along with detassling corn (which I never did) … this one involves walking

Someone posted this on the ACFW list today (yesterday, now, but who's checking?): What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn't matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it's thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on. - C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves

So … I’m writing again. Not the historical—that’s coming soon, I feel, but I’m in the process of sorting through my research and reexamining my story premise before I actually commit anything more to words on paper—or to computer, as the case is these days. No, I actually have six pages of the last installment of a story that will be the end of my Gift of the Stranger series as I currently envision it. After agonizing over an alternate opening scene for the first book of the series (the one I finished last year by that title), a scene that felt completely forced and artificial and just wrong for the story, I shed a few tears and prayed and, at the suggestion of a writing friend, tried instead what was really on my heart … and before I knew it, I had 350 words written. This story features a couple that first came to life for me twenty-five years ago as secondary characters in my first novel, the male character so strong and compelling he nearly takes over when he appears not quite ha

Happy 2007! Normally, I hate both the term and the custom of New Year’s Resolutions. Lightly made, quickly broken … and the whole cliché thing of “turning over a new leaf” just like we turn the pages of a calendar. It isn’t that easy. But these last few weeks, I’ve had a few intense conversations with God about my family life, my writing, and a couple of dramas going on in the periphery of my little world, and He’s impressed some things on my heart. For one, I must not despise the time that I spend in prayer and tears over anything, for I have no idea what fruit may come of it—whether or not it was that particular intensity of intercession that brought about a breakthrough. Two, I must stop comparing myself unfavorably to other writers whose work I consider brilliant. I do not live their life, and vice versa. I have often questioned God why He needs me, when He has them—but I am slowly coming to recognize the beauty of the uniqueness we all bring to our own stories, including my o