One Thing That Works For Me with guest Erika Kelly: Time With Jesus

 

 

Good Monday morning, Seeker villagers! Carrie here to open today's new post in our monthly 'One Thing That Works For Me' series. Actually, let me turn it over to our own Erica Vetsch now, as she has graciously offered to introduce today's guest. Take it away, Erica!

First, an introduction…Erika Kelly…how do I describe such an amazing woman in just a few words? Erika is a sister-in-Christ, walking salt-and-light, generous, kind, funny, wise, seasoned woman who also happens to run a bookstore. I first met Erika when she worked at Christian Book & Gift in Rochester, MN, a family-owned bookstore that has since closed its doors. (Sadness) Then, she was my daughter’s third-grade Sunday School teacher, and finally, she became the manager of Christos Bookstore, a ministry of Autumn Ridge Church. I am always geeked up to visit Christos because I know I’m going to see Erika and I’m going to be blessed. She always has a word of encouragement, of wisdom, or of insight when I come in, and often, she pauses what she is doing (she’s a very busy woman) to pray with me before I leave. And I never leave empty-handed. I am blessed to call her my friend, and I’m so glad she’s sharing with us in the “One Thing That Works For Me” series.

One Thing That Works For me Regarding The Bookstore ...

... one thing = time with Jesus each morning. First thing upon awakening, I open my Bible Scripture app and read the verse for the day, and then, after making my coffee, I sit and journal in my Gratitude Journal. The number of entries is in the 10,000s as I started it years ago. Writing in a gratitude journal helps me frame my attitude for the day. After that, I pull out my Bible and devotionals and read a variety of them, marking the Scripture in my Bible. When God lays a person on my heart, as I read a devotion or Scripture, I intentionally reach out and text them or Facebook message them , and it usually always comes at a “God time” when they needed it most. Also, I have note-cards which I write when God prompts me to reach out to one of His dear ones.

We live in a time, when people need more encouragement ... Godly encouragement ... than ever ... so being a part of Christos, I update our Facebook page daily with items to encourage. Each day I also post uplifting hope-filled messages on my personal Facebook page, and have been asked over the past few years to update the FB page of our local Christian radio station, KFSI. God's Hope Filled Promises need to be sent out and shared with each passing day amid a world that has turned from Him.

Another great benefit of working in a Christian Bookstore, is it has helped me to read at least 2-3 books a month so I can recommend titles and speak from experience. There are so many God-Centered books out there, and if a book does not quote Scripture or refer to God and His Son, Jesus, then we will not carry it in Christos . Our mission at Christos is clear. Everything we think, do, say, read, watch, and listen to, needs to surround our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are all a day closer to Heaven, and Jesus is our Savior and Hope in this world. Our prayer is that others may see Him in us, and as I tell many customers, as they are trying to reach their lost family members and friends - "You may be the only Bible someone reads." Keep the faith dear ones. God knows you by name and all that is on your heart.

My life verse says to trust in the Lord with all my heart, and I won't lean on my own understanding; but in all my ways, I will acknowledge Him and He will direct my paths. Proverbs 3:5-6

Thank you for allowing me to share my heart,

Erika

Christos Bookcenter
Open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 10-4
Wednesday 10-5
Saturday 4-7 pm
Sunday 8:00 am - 12:00 pm
on-line shopping available via www.AutumnRidgeChurch.org (click on Christos)
507-252-9090

*photos taken from Christos Bookcenter on Facebook, with permission

Erica V. here again. I can attest that Erika’s servant heart permeates everything she does at Christos. I observed, during the recent pandemic, how her heart for our community and believers everywhere shined. Christos has in-person, in-store shopping, online shopping, curbside delivery, and mailing/shipping options. I love supporting local, and I really love supporting Christos. It’s where I tell my friends to shop for my books! I encourage you to follow Christos on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/ChristosBookcenter You will be encouraged and uplifted, and you’ll learn about some God and Scripture-centered books at the same time!

Do you have a local Christian bookstore?
What Bible Verse encourages you? 

If you need prayer, just put the word “Prayer” at the end of your comment. You don’t need to say what you need prayer for. Jesus knows, and He’ll hear.

Sunday Scripture & Prayer Requests

 DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio, c. 1602. [PD-US]

On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked, 
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples
that are not written in this book.
But these are written that you may come to believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

John 20:19-31

 The Seekerville bloggers are praying for YOU and for our entire blog community. If you have any special intentions that need additional prayer coverage, leave a request for prayer in the comment section below. 

Please join us in praying for the United States--and the world--during this Coronavirus pandemic. Pray for the sick and suffering, for businesses and schools to remain open, for people to be able to work and for our economy to prosper.

We are so grateful for all of you—for your friendship and your support! 

May the Lord bless you and your families and keep you safe.  

Weekend Edition

  

If you are not familiar with our giveaway rules, take a minute to read them here. It keeps us all happy! All winners should send their name, address, and phone number to claim prizes.  Please send to Seekerville2@gmail.com. If the winner does not contact us within two weeks, another winner may be selected.

Monday: The winner of an audio copy Mary Connealy's March release Braced for Love is Glynis.

Tuesday: Chris Fabry uses a junkyard for inspiration. Can you imagine?

Wednesday: Mindy Obenhaus shared some insight on creating engaging openings. Winners of her Love Inspired Western Collection anthology are...Lucy Reynolds and Sarah Taylor!

Friday: Carrie talked about how to survive moving with books, and the winner of a book from her stash is Rachael K!

Monday: Erika Kelly will be our guest today, sharing one thing that works for her, so let's make her feel welcome!

Wednesday: Ruth Logan Herne is rolling into town with her full-on detective gear intact as she talks about something that probably means very little unless you're willing to work hard every day.... but she'll be giving away two copies of "PATTERNS OF DECEPTION" her newest Savannah Secrets mystery for Guideposts because Ruthy loves, loves, loves writing cozy mysteries!

 

  

Friday: Renee Ryan is back in Seekerville - and we're excited to have her!! She'll be sharing some of the fun inspiration behind her upcoming release The Sheriff's Promise and giving away a copy to one lucky visitor.

Cover Reveal!

Coming August 2021!

Book three is the Bliss, Texas series, A Future to Fight For

All their dreams will come true…if they can work together.

Widow Paisley Wainwright’s so close to taking her Texas event-planning business to the next level by turning Renwick Castle into a wedding venue. Only one thing stands in the way: her longtime rival, Crockett Devereaux, who wants the castle to become a museum. When the building’s owners insist they collaborate to implement both plans, can Paisley and Crockett put their differences aside…and fight for their dreams together?

BOOK ONE OF RUTHY'S NEW "KENDRICK CREEK" SERIES OUT NOW!!!!

AVAILABLE NATIONWIDE AT WALMART OR WHEREVER LOVE INSPIRED BOOKS ARE SOLD!

AMAZON BUY BUTTON

WALMART BUY BUTTON

The Key to a Successful Novel Lies in Genre by CS Lakin at Live Write Thrive

The Roles of Secondary Characters by Ellen Buikema at Writers In The Storm

5 Ways to Use Holidays in Your Story by Bethany Henry at Fiction University

What to Include on Your Book's Copyright Page by Andre Calilhanna at Book Baby Blog

Want a Stronger Manuscript? Read it Aloud by Becca Puglisi at Writers Helping Writers

Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing: Which is Right for You? by Lewis Jorstad at The Novel Smithy

11 Book Promo Ideas Worth Exploring by Linda Nathan at Book Brush Blog

How Can You Weave a Theme into Your Story? by David Rawlings at Learn How To Write A Novel

Archetypal Character Arcs, Pt 9: The Maiden's Shadow Archetype by KM Weiland at Helping Writers Become Authors

Keeping Your Notebook by Barbara O'Neil at Writer Unboxed

How to Avoid Weasel Words When You Write by Kristen Hogrefe Parnell at The Write Conversation

Moving With Books - A Survivor's Tale

 

by Carrie Schmidt

At the end of 2020, my husband and I moved from Kentucky to Georgia. Yes, yes that does mean we sold our house in one state and bought a house in another - in a pandemic. I don't recommend it. It's certainly not for the faint of heart. Something else that isn't for the faint of heart... moving when you hoard* collect books! Nevertheless, I survived to tell the tale, and because I care for all of you and want to save you some stress when the time comes for you to move your book collection from one residence to another, I have some tips to help you survive it as well.

*It's not hoarding if it's books. The internet says so. 

My perspective is that of an avid reader & reviewer & book marketer who reads mostly on her Kindle these days but needs to have the paperbacks around to hug on occasion too. But I also know that authors have copious author copies laying (lying?) around - and the more books you've published, the more author copies you have. Hopefully, all of us can relate on some level to my survival tale, even if just with empathy :)

Boxes, Boxes Everywhere

The first thing you need to know about moving with books is how to select the right boxes in which to pack them. Now you might be tempted to go for the bigger boxes to pile in as many books as possible and make quick work of your task. Beware of that temptation, dear reader, and arm yourself against it. The more books per box, the heavier those boxes be. While this seems like a basic concept, when you're neck deep in boxes and to-do lists and sleepless nights, it can be more difficult to think logically. 

The moving experts I consulted (aka Google) said the best boxes for moving books are the 10x10 or 12x12 sizes. I ordered one hundred 12x12 boxes*, and they seemed to be pretty much perfect for the job. I also tried to limit myself to packing only about 20 books per box (and filling in the rest of the space with packing paper or towels or pillows, etc. as another safeguard to keep the weight down. To protect the books in case the movers dumped the boxes in a puddle or, you know, something equally horrific, I lined the bottom and sides with sheets of newsprint and made sure that the spines were up against the sides of the box, rather than the pages. 

*I had to order 25 more... if you want to do the math, about 20 books per box, 125 boxes... you'll have a good idea of how many books i own.

You Did Not Just Say That

Finding the right box size and getting all those tomes packed is but one hurdle to moving with books. Another hill you must climb is the perhaps-well-meaning-but-still-painful comments you'll get from your realtor, your father-in-law, and other misguided people. You'll hear audacious things like:

• You can only keep about twelve books out for the pictures,
• Are you really taking all those books with you?,
• and the (closely related) Can't you get rid of some of those books so you don't have to move them all?
  

Dear reader, when you inevitably hear one of these statements, do not panic! It merely makes the situation worse. I found it helpful instead to smile as sweetly as I could muster and say, "Yes of course I'm taking all of my books. They are my friends." I mean, they already think I'm a little kooky for reading so much (it used to be an offense worthy of committing someone to a mental hospital, after all) so I figure calling books my friends can't damage their opinion of me much further lol.

Let Them Go, Let Them Go 

And no, I don't mean donating them or giving them away - we've already put that idea from our minds. I mean, once they are packed, there are some things to adjust to. 

• Be prepared to get a little twitchy when you don't have easy access to your books for an undetermined amount of time. This comes and goes so keep your ereader handy to take a bit of the edge off. 
• 
  If you hire movers (and when you have as many books as I do, I highly encourage you to do so), there will come a time - brace yourself - when the book boxes get loaded into the truck and taken away from you. In our case, since it was a multi-state move and we weren't closing in Georgia for a few days after we had to vacate the house in Kentucky, our moving truck was locked away in the company's storage warehouse. (Cue those twitches I mentioned above)
• Once you and your books are reunited* they may stay in boxes for a while. I mean, you don't want to put them all in bookcases and on shelves and then realize you really need to arrange the room setup again. That's a lot of unnecessary work, and moving is enough work on its own, so I give you the freedom to let them stay comfy & cozy in their boxes for a little longer if needed. 

*When we got back to our hotel the day we closed on our house in Georgia, our moving truck was parked there too! You know what means, right? My books knew where I was & they found me!! 

Sort-of a Problem

This last thing isn't really a problem, per se - but it is something you'll want to think about at least a little bit ahead of time. Currently my books are in sorted piles all over my dining room/library floor (yes, still) but before I could even get that far, I had to decide HOW I wanted to sort them for shelving purposes. There are about as many ways to sort books as there are genres (which is one way to sort them). You could sort them by:

• author, alphabetically
• genre
  
• topic
• read status (i.e. TBR, for review, read, re-readable faves, etc.) 
  
• title
• color
• trivial pursuit category (Anne Bogel - aka Modern Mrs. Darcy - says this is how her assistant sorts her own books and I thought that was ingenious!) 

And then of course, you can use combinations of the above. For instance, I sort by author but I also have a separate bookcase for books I've been asked to review/launch teams, etc. and a china hutch that I've repurposed into a home for our most cherished books. 

My book sisters (and partners at JustRead Tours) have done beautiful jobs sorting their books by color and gave me permission to share their shelves as examples of how pretty it can turn out!

Beth's bookcase

Rachel's book nook

And of course there is the ol' tried and true method of just putting them on the nearest shelf in whichever order they come out of the box because you know you'll be double and triple stacking them before too long anyway ;)

Have you moved with books before?
Do you have any helpful tips for rookies?
How do YOU sort your books?

Chat with me in the comments to be entered to win a book from my stash (US only) or a book of choice from Book Depository if international

~*~*~*~*~*~

Carrie Schmidt is an avid reader, book reviewer, story addict, KissingBooks fan, book boyfriend collector, and cool aunt. She also loves Jesus and THE Story a whole lot. Co-founder of the Christian Fiction Readers’ Retreat and JustRead Publicity Tours, Carrie lives in Georgia with her husband Eric.

She can be found lurking at various blogs and websites (because she can’t stop talking about books) but her main home is the blog she started in 2015 – ReadingIsMySuperPower.org.

 

Engaging Openings

by Mindy Obenhaus

Recently, a fellow author and I were discussing opening scenes, why some really grabbed hold of the reader’s attention while others lacked punch, despite having key elements such as the h/h meeting quickly, goal, motivation and conflict, etc.

An opening scene needs to be engaging and make the reader care about the character enough to embark on their journey with them and see it through to the end. But that doesn’t mean that all openings are cast from the same mold, does it? Curious, I went back and looked at the opening scenes of some of my books.

Just in my two most recent releases things varied considerably. In A Father’s Promise, book one in my Bliss, Texas series, the hero and heroine don’t even see each other until the end of the first scene. And when they do, it’s barely a glimpse and they don’t speak to each other. While in book two, A Brother’s Promise, the h/h are conversing by the bottom of page one.

I write for Love Inspired Books and one of their must-haves is that the hero and heroine meet in the first scene. However, whether they lay eyes on each other on page one or page fifteen or somewhere in between depends on the story. Wherever it happens, though, readers need to be engaged from the get-go. If they’re not, they’ll put the book down and we don’t want that.

So how does one craft an opening that will make readers want to keep reading?

Goal, motivation and conflict – You’ve heard this over and over again. Every character has to have a GMC not only for the story, but for each and every scene. In chapter one, though, it’s their story goal, motivation and conflict that needs to be established so the reader knows what the character wants, why they want it and what stands in their way. It’s what makes us want to cheer them on. Now, that’s not to say that their GMC might not change at some point during their story, but in the opening scene, it’s what starts them on their journey and invites the reader to join them. And it needs to presented ASAP.

Stakes – What’s at stake goes hand-in-hand with GMC. Stakes are what will (or could) happen if they don’t achieve their goal. In A Father’s Promise the heroine wants to name a guardian for her infant daughter so that if the heroine (who has no family) were to die, her daughter would be taken care of by someone who loved her. The stakes are that if she doesn’t name a guardian and something does happen to her, the daughter would become a ward of the state. Stakes are the driving force behind each goal.

Inciting incident – Once we know our character’s goal, motivation and conflict and what’s at stake, it’s time to contemplate the inciting incident. This is when something about the hero and heroine coming together changes the trajectory of their goal and/or life. Needless to say, when my heroine in A Father’s Promise sees her baby’s father, she knows her life is about to change in some way. In A Brother’s Promise, it’s when Christa learns that Mick is now the guardian of his five-year-old niece and she can’t help but reach out to them in hopes of making the transition easier for little Sadie. The inciting incident is what brings the hero and heroine together and often results in a common goal. But we can’t simply bring them together. No, we want to…

Rock their world – Example, my very first book was a secret baby story. Of course, the heroine knew her life was about to change as soon as she saw the hero she believed turned his back on her and her son nine years prior. However, the hero didn’t learn about the boy until chapter three. Then an editor asked me to revise it, stating that she wanted him to find out sooner. So I reworked things, bumped it up a little, though not by much and said editor bought the book. Imagine my surprise when I received my edits where she stated she wanted the hero to learn about the boy at the end of the first chapter. At the time, I wasn’t too thrilled about that, but I soon saw how right she was. Instead of simply seeing the girl he loved and whose heart he’d broken, his world was rocked by the knowledge that he had a son!

In my August 2021 release, the hero and heroine both want to purchase an abandoned castle. The owner refuses to sell but issues a counteroffer. The h/h—who can’t get through a church committee meeting without butting heads—must work together in exchange for exclusive rights to use the castle as an event center and a museum.

When trying to come up with a rock-their-world moment, it helps to use an approach you all have heard me mention before. Ask yourself what’s the worst thing that could happen to that character at that moment and then find a way to make it happen. It can be a challenge, but it works.

When crafting the opening of your book, remember you only get one chance to make a first impression. If you don’t grab an editor’s/reader’s attention within the first few pages, they may not keep reading and that’s never good. Instead, we want to capture their attention with an opening that makes them want to journey with the characters all the way through to that satisfying ending.

Writers, what strategies do you employ for an opening with impact? Readers, what sorts of story openings capture your attention?  Leave a comment to be entered to win one of two copies of an anthology due out later this month. My April 2019 release, Her Colorado Cowboy, has been paired with Lois Richer’s, Rocky Mountain Daddy, and will hit store shelves April 16^th. (US mailing addresses only, please)

Award-winning author Mindy Obenhaus is passionate about touching readers with Biblical truths in an entertaining, and sometimes adventurous, manner. She lives on a ranch in Texas with her husband, two sassy pups, countless cattle, deer and the occasional coyote, mountain lion or snake. When she's not writing, she enjoys spending time with her grandchildren, cooking and watching copious amounts of the Hallmark Channel. Learn more at www.MindyObenhaus.com

 

The Pigeon by Guest Chris Fabry

Hello, Seekerville!

Jan here, and I'm excited to introduce our guest, Chris Fabry.

I became familiar with Chris through his radio work, and then ten years ago I read his novel, Almost Heaven. He instantly became one of my favorite authors.

Chris has a new book releasing today, A Piece of the Moon. We'll get to the book in a few minutes, but first, it's time to hear from Chris!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The Pigeon

C. S. Lewis once said that his fiction sprang from pictures in his head and from those images he wrote his stories. The idea for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came from an image of a faun, an umbrella, and a lamppost in a snowy wood. There were other images, of course, but those were the seeds that eventually grew the seven books about the land of Narnia.

I’m a believer that such images can spur us toward sensory writing, meaning a story that makes you feel part of it from the first sentence. Those are the types of stories I aspire to write.

The spark for my novel A Piece of the Moon came from an image burned into my subconscious as a teenager. When I was sixteen or seventeen, I went to work for a local radio station a few miles from our home in West Virginia. The station sat on a little knoll that looked over a valley below with a river running through it. Behind the 5,000-watt daytime station was the antenna tower with a flashing red light and guy wires that held the tower secure. I would often wander outside at night and stare at the vista bathed in a ghostly moonglow.

Decades later, I was standing in the office of a junkyard in Tucson, Arizona, waiting for a check for my totaled Honda CR-V. I had been riding in the passenger side of that car when the accident happened and it had shaken me. I walked in a daze for a couple of weeks. But the visit to the junkyard became the unlikely location to discover the last piece of my literary puzzle.

The woman at the makeshift counter worked in searing heat with only a small window air conditioner behind her. She looked haggard and seemed perturbed at something, perhaps because she was surrounded by men all day. On the wooden counter in front of her were files, an aged computer, a calculator, and a pigeon that walked back and forth on the counter.

What was even more strange than the pigeon walking the counter was the fact that nobody in the room acted like it was strange in the least. I walked away with my meager check but never forgot that woman or her pet.

Fast-forward to the writing of A Piece of the Moon. I had the image of a pigeon hitting the guy wire and spiraling down into the bottomland where one of my main characters lives. She adopts the pigeon as a pet and from then on she is known as “Pidge.” As Pidge sees the wounded bird for the first time, she feels like she’s looking in a mirror. She can’t help but nurse the bird back to health and then hang on to it.

As I wrote what turned into a love story and a search for hidden treasure, I had that image of the bird flying in moonlight, the red light flashing on top of the tower, and a junkyard below that represented what many feel about themselves—they are castaway, wounded, junk.

These were the images that became seeds of what I hope is a story that sticks to your soul. So be careful not to dismiss the images that come into your mind and remain. If you’re diligent, you might find your own Narnia.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  

Thank you, Chris!

I was privileged to read an advance copy of A Piece of the Moon and I loved it. The book is full of twists and turns as the characters search for a hidden treasure in their own ways...a treasure that might or might not be real.

Set in the early-1980's with a West Virginia country radio station as the center of the characters’ lives, we are treated to a nostalgic look at the near past. Waite and TD, the main characters, work together at the radio station. On air, they speculate about the treasure and take calls from listeners. As the story progresses and searchers narrow in on the treasure’s location, mysterious events reveal that there may be more to this treasure than anyone has suspected.

Along the way, we see Waite’s heart for lost and broken people, and TD’s dreams for a life free from his past. Pidge, the Kid, the other DJ’s at the station, and a boy-happy dog all work to round out the community. We are also treated to a glimpse of a small-town radio station in a time gone by, born out of the author’s early life.

The story contains twists and turns that kept me reading far too late into the night, and the conclusion was on target, leaving me with a happy sigh.

Chris talked about images as the seeds for our stories - What images have you found that later became the seed for your story?

About the Author:

Chris Fabry is an award-winning author and radio personality who hosts the daily program Chris Fabry Live on Moody Radio. A graduate of the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism at Marshall University and a native of West Virginia, Chris and his wife, Andrea, now live in Arizona and are the parents of nine children.

Chris's Website link

Read the first chapter of A Piece of the Moon!

 

 

Designed Pages--the lingo

 

As you work for different publishers, you find they all have their own terms.

Some of them are the same or similar, others quite different.

That's why it took me a while to remember the terms at Bethany House.

So today I thought I'd talk about my current understanding of what Bethany House calls...

DESIGNED PAGES.

I just  finished the DESIGNED PAGES for book #3 of the Brothers in Arms series.

Book #1 came out in March

Book #2 A Man with a Past coming in July. And that's all finished.

Now we're doing the last polishing on #3 Love on the Range.

Bethany House, and I think this is normal, has three stages of editing.

The first I think of a revisions. Bethany House editors read the book I send in and make large suggestions.

They talk about big gaps in logic, threads that are dropped (example...you never really said who shot Wyatt) problems with (--My favorite...we think after chapter six, Callie (heroine) she stop threatening to shoot Seth (hero).

And they say if a character does things that make them lack appeal.  (Win and Kevin had six weeks to talk with Molly and never did, that's not what a good friend would do)

So that's the first round and the biggest round. I call that Revisions.

Next is GALLEY Edits. The book is now mostly finished except for typos and a few additional edits that haven't been noticed. For some reason in...which book was it? I used the word 'women' when I meant 'woman'. I just did it a dozen times. It was WEIRD. Why did I do that?

Anyway, I try and catch all of that in revisions so the Bethany House editors only have to fix about a THOUSAND mistakes. I've got a huge tendency to write ...he'd...when I mean...he's. Just little stuff like that. The ever popular...you're your...mixup.

Anyway, this has got to be tedious for editors and I usually accept their corrections with a lot of APOLOGIES.

And that brings me to the third and final round. DESIGNED PAGES.

What that means is, the book is finished and laid out as it will look in print.

At this point I can fix only small things. It's never come up but I think in my contract, I agree if I--at this point--make MAJOR changes--so major I make them redesign the pages--I have to pay for it. I don't know this because I've never done such a thing. But I think I promised not to.

At this point there's not a lot of changes to be made. 

But I did find one substantive revision that somehow got through all my re-reads and all the editor's re-read. 

At one point I have a woman come galloping into the ranch yard and slamming into the house right before the noon meal.

Then later I talk about how she snuck in after dark and no one knows she's there but the family. She's never stepped outside, not once. 

Sigh

By some amazing wonder I caught it and fixed it, but in the designed pages edits, I cut and pasted a three paragraph stretch, then retype it with the corrections to make sure I don't go over the same word count (and word length) don't add a line.

So that's DESIGNED PAGES. Do you have any terms from other publishers that you're more familiar with?

And, because this most recent book, for the first time EVER, I was given a code for an audio book, which I have permission to give away as a prize.

Today tell me if you ever listen to audio books. Or tell me what you've heard publishers call these stages of edits.

Or tell me what you did for Easter. We got two of our kids, a son-in-law, and two grandbabies with us at CHURCH. It was really a blessing.

Remember that yesterday was the day we celebrated the beginning of salvation.