Guest Author: LoRee Peery

Interrupted Plans

In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps. Proverbs 16:9 (NIV)

Years ago in the New American Standard Bible that rests on my desk, I jotted “writing” next to that verse. In the NASB it reads: The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.

In other words, life doesn’t go according to my plans. I can make annual, monthly, weekly, and project goals. I can fill up my calendar with appointments and to-dos and daily tasks. It’s good that I keep busy. However, family, especially my husband, override those plans.

Has your life, or your plans, ever been put on hold? As Christians, we’re called to recognize God’s course for our lives at the forefront. We’re also told to put others first.

In a marriage, the commitment is for better or worse, in sickness and in health. My hubs has always been my strong protective rock. However, he injured his back in early June. I turned caregiver. We endured two hospital stays, sought and accepted help from family and Christian brothers and sisters. I can honestly say I haven’t been angry that my own health care appointments were put off for the time.

At the end of the day, I managed to write in my journal, and always had an errand list. My June writing goals consisted of two guest blogs for posting in July; add a date scene to a specific chapter in my time travel sequel; and dig back into my work-in-progress. The Lord did provide a window of writing moments for me to get to the blogs and added scene.

I found it quite interesting that each time I had a few moments to go upstairs to my study for email or check social media, internet service was down. That unexplained intervention affirmed that I was meant to stay near my husband’s side.

In the midst of any unplanned event, I can find rest in Jesus. I can wait for the right writing time to open up. I don’t have to turn all “woe-is-me” anxious and wring my hands. Those responses come from the dark one who rules the meanness in the world. I believe God’s promise that my Lord has overcome the world. I have victory in Him.

For those who love our heavenly Father, He holds us in the palm of His hand. His way is the best way, even during those times I view my life in a holding pattern. I can truly claim I Peter 5:7—Casting all my anxiety upon Him, because He cares for me.

He loves all you readers just as much. He has a path laid out for you that may interrupt well-intentioned plans, so rest in Him.

Mini-Interview:

Your book and you:

What inspired you to write the Frivolities Series?

I didn’t set out to write a series. The heroine, Moselle, is a name that resonated with me because my maiden name is Mosel and no one in the family had used it to name a baby girl.  I’ve always been drawn to reunion stories because there’s often something that remains unresolved over the years. Since Moselle’s mother Geneva and aunt Lanae were established characters, the series kind of evolved. I didn’t have to come up with a new setting and I enjoyed writing about older heroines. At the time Moselle’s Insurance was in progress, one of my critique partners really liked the hero’s ex, so she became the fourth heroine.

About you:

What book are you currently reading?

Just Write by James Scott Bell, and Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight

God and you:

Please share your conversion experience, if you’re comfortable doing so.

I grew up attending church, we prayed at meals and bedtime, and I went through Catechism classes so I was familiar with the Bible. The church was denominational and stress was never put on knowing Jesus in a personal relationship. To me, God had always been the creator of the world and I had no trouble believing He sent Jesus to die for my sins. For some reason I figured all I had to do was ask to be forgiven and I’d go to heaven.

The year 1975 was pivotal in my life. We bought an acreage, my father was murdered, our son born, and we built our country home with our own hands. My husband fell off the roof and crushed both heels, which drove me to read the Bible while waiting for his surgery and through recovery.

I was invited to attend a luncheon April 20, 1976, where the Lord used that speaker, whose name I never remembered, to hit me right in the heart. After all the blessings that overrode tragedy of the previous year, it was clear to me that Jesus was missing from my life. I expressed my belief, acknowledged my sin, and asked Him to take over because I couldn’t do it myself. From that day forward, I have strived to seek Him, thus discovering His will for my life. To me Isaiah 12:2 says it all. Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and Song, and He has become my salvation. (NASB)

About LoRee:

Christian romance author LoRee Peery attempts to see God’s presence every day. Often that gift comes from nature, when the call of a cardinal draws her to look for the distinctive flash of crimson. A meadowlark’s melody always transports her to the farm where she grew up. A rainbow holds special significance, since one appeared over her father’s grave the day of his funeral, assuring her of the Lord’s presence. She clings to 1 John 5:4 and prays her blended family and dozen grandchildren see that faith.

Website

Links:

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Pelican Book Group

Frivolities Series:

Hope after Trauma

by Justine Johnston Hemmestad

In 1990 my car was broadsided by a speeding city bus as I turned out of a parking lot - I was in a coma and had sustained a severe brain injury. I was paralyzed when I woke up from my coma, though I worked hard to walk again within a few months, and to relearn how to perform the basic functions of life.

I began to write when I was carrying my first child Megan, less than two years after my accident, as tool or a way to cope with feeling so alone in my disability and misunderstood. Writing, throughout the darkest part of my recovery—when everyone looked down on me and I had no one to talk to or relate with me—helped me to get my thoughts in focus, to learn new things, and to remember what was important to me. I felt bullied, my thoughts and perception were skewed, and I felt emotionally alone, isolated by my personal lacking (my speech was slurred; my reactions were slow, etc.).

But writing was my Savior. When I was so afraid and so filled with guilt for being disabled, writing offered me a safe and comforting place to go, where I could cry and feel loved. Writing was my confidante and gave me hope when the world was crushing me. Writing even helped me find out who I was, since everything about "me" seemed to have melted away with my TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). Writing helped me find my words to speak again. Writing was my purpose, and writing was my healing.

My novella, Truth be Told, is essentially the story of my recovery wrapped up in fictional characters in a different time and place. Everything is symbolic in my novella because symbolism itself taught me how to travel deep inside my thoughts and search until I found the answers. Symbolism aided my memory by the weight of its meaning.

The old man in my novella is symbolic of God, prayer, love of my children, and the inner truth I found when I dug deep, the challenges that stretched my mind and that I knew I had to face when I wanted to give up on life completely.

The Lady is the aspect of my recovery in which I felt lost, even to myself—I didn’t know who I was—but in prayer and meditation I learned to focus my mind, calm my thoughts (which were drowning in the guilt I felt for being disabled) and listen to God’s answer…what defines me?

The knight is the aspect of my recovery that was assaulted by PTSD. Not only was I recovering, but I was recovering amidst a torrent of fear, pain, and false persecution. He represents the survivor’s guilt I had for living as brain-injured, and the part of myself that felt I deserved the lies that people told about me simply because it was easy to lie about me. I illuminated my purpose— the purpose that any recovering person needs to be able to climb out of the darkness—symbolically as Jesus. When people lied about me, writing defended me and made the truth immortal. My purpose, as writing, was the well within me; writing saved me and gave me direction in life (even when I no longer had any sense of direction due to my TBI). There were people who tried to point me in the wrong direction, but my prayer, and written prayer, was always brimming with truth.

My purpose in writing raised me out of the darkness and set me on a new path. As my characters in Truth be Told founded one of the first Universities in Europe, my purpose led me to enter into college, to study tirelessly, and to set goals and reach them. For a person with a TBI, these things stretched my mind to the breaking point. And yet my savior, writing, was always there, so much that my purpose and my goals became intertwined. Every class I’ve had brought me new challenges; every professor’s pushing has helped me more than they were ever aware.

My husband and I now have seven children and I'm still writing, for both have truly been essential to my recovery. I've also earned a BLS through The University of Iowa and am now working toward a Master's Degree in Literature through Northern Arizona University. I’m grateful to have written a book that I felt so strongly, all along, could be of help to survivors, for them to recognize themselves in the characters and to know that they're not alone. I would have recognized myself in this story and it would have given me hope. My mission now is to give other survivors hope.

Justine on Amazon

Justine's Website

Justine's blog

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Writing Tips: Ane Mulligan

 

Did y’all know that Delia developed my logo for me? She did. And I love it. She caught the essence of my Southern-fried Fiction brand. So, when she told me my topic was writing tips, I thought, “Cool. I love to pass on tips I’ve learned from other writers.”

And that’s true. I don’t have many of my own, though. Other authors, who have mentored me and taught workshops, have instilled them all in me. I’m merely paying them forward, hoping it

takes you less time than it did me to grab the brass pen and sign a contract.
Here are five that stand out to me and have made a big difference for me:

1. Story is king. Learn the basics of good writing and then trust your instincts as a storyteller. Learn when to break the rules, and then do it with panache.

2. Coincidence can’t replace Motivation. Motivation is the key to great characters and plots. Readers will follow a character through anything if the motivation is believable.

3. Give your characters a lie they believe, flaws and quirks to make them real. People can’t relate to someone who is good all the time. They want to see characters that make mistakes like they do. Who mess up in life like they do. Characters they can relate to.

4. Make metaphors and similes fresh and turn clichés on their ear. The opening lines to my latest WIP, Life in Chapel Springs, are: The morning fog was about as thick as the pea soup Great-aunt Lola used to make. Claire hated that soup then and she didn’t much like this fog now. That’s making an old cliché fresh. Instead of saying a “Cheshire cat grin” I used “She grinned like Garfield with a pan of lasagna.”

5. This one was taught to me by the late Ron Benrey. I keep it posted nearby lest I forget. It’s called The Magic Paragraph and goes like this:

• Signal which head to enter

• Twang an appropriate sense, emotion or mental faculty

• Show appropriate action

• Repeat if necessary

Home to Chapel Springs:

A homeless author, a heartbroken daughter, and a theatre ghost. There’s trouble in Chapel Springs.

There’s always someone new in Chapel Spring, either coming home or stirring up trouble.

Bestselling author Carin Jardine’s latest book is a flop. While the reviewers are happily skewering her, her racecar-driver-husband walks out on her and she’s evicted, because he hasn’t paid the lease on their condo for the last three months. Then she discovers he also he drained their bank accounts. Homeless and broke, she and her little boy have no choice but to retreat to the house she inherited from her nana in Chapel Springs—the house that’s been gutted. Then, a stranger knocks on her door. One that will change the course of her life.

After the residents thwarted Howie Newlander’s plans for a Miami-style resort on Chapel Lake, he’s running for mayor and spreading rumors about diverted water and misused taxes. The Lakeside Players want to remodel the town’s old theater, but it’s rumored to be haunted. When Newlander and Mayor Riley go head-to-head, Claire gets caught in the middle.

Claire’s youngest daughter is in love with a young man whose daddy is none other than Mayor Felix Riley…the man who blames Claire for every wrong in Chapel Springs. Having him part of her family isn’t in Claire’s plan. The years of her heartache should warn her daughter off this boy. So far, her daughter’s heart isn’t hearing the warnings.

With hearts pulled in all directions, will they find a home in Chapel Springs?

About Ane Mulligan:

While a floppy straw hat is her favorite, novelist Ane Mulligan has worn many including pro-family lobbyist, drama director, playwright, humor columnist, and novelist. She firmly believes coffee and chocolate are two of the four major food groups. Ane writes her Southern-fried fiction in Sugar Hill, GA, where she resides with her artist husband, chef son, and a dog of Biblical proportion. You can find Ane on her Southern-fried Fiction website, her Amazon author page, Google+, Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Self-Imposed Deadlines (Leeann Betts)

(A Writing Tips Post)

There is something intimidating about deadlines. When you first sign that contract or make that agreement to have your book in your publisher’s hands six months from now, that seems like a long time. Sure, you can take a week off and celebrate. And another week to do some research. Then one of the kids gets the mumps. And another.

And before you know it, it’s April 2nd and your book is due April 25th.
 
What do you do? Panic!

But what about if you’re not under an official contract? You don’t have a publisher breathing down your neck, waiting for your book. You have all the time in the world, right?

No. You don’t.

If you are a writer, then you must write. And if you’re a writer, you must be writing for someone other than yourself. At the very least, as a Christian writer, you are writing for God. And even if He is the only One who ever sees what you’re writing, He has an expectation that at some point, you’ll be ready to move on to the next project.

Failing to set a finish date sets you up to fail.

So even if you’re not under someone else’s deadline, you should be under one of your own.
How can you stick to that date?

• Make up some business cards with the cover on it and the release date.
• Tell other people.
• Spread the news on social media.
• Write it on a calendar in ink.
• Keep a picture of the cover in front of you with the release date written on it.
• Schedule time to accomplish the work by the date you say.

 
What happens when life gets in the way?

You might need to put aside something else in your life so you can meet your personal deadline. That’s right.

• Get up 30 minutes earlier.
• Go to bed 30 minutes later.
• Skip your lunch hour and write.
• Skip television one or two or three nights a week.
• Take your laptop when you go to an appointment and work while you’re waiting.
• Tell your family what your goal is, and ask them to help you meet that goal

 
Self-Imposed deadlines might not be about finishing a book. Maybe you’ve spent way too much time on research but you can’t tear yourself away. So set a deadline. Two more days and then you’re done. You might be pleasantly surprised at how much you get done in the next two days.

Maybe you’re spending too much time re-writing. Face it—ten years is too long. One year is probably too long. Repeat after me: It will never be perfect.

And that’s because you are learning as you go. You will continue to learn. You want to put out the best product possible, but not getting the book done isn’t going to help anybody. Let it go. Or pay someone else to re-write for you.

What kinds of deadlines do you give yourself?
 

Leeann Betts writes contemporary suspense, while her real-life persona, Donna Schlachter, pens historical suspense. No Accounting for Murder and There Was a Crooked Man, books 1 and 2 in her By the Numbers series, released in the fall of 2015 Book 3,Unbalanced, released in January. Book 4, Five and Twenty Blackbirds, is due in April, with more planned for later dates. If you like accountants or are an accountant, check out Counting the Days: a 31-day devotional for accountants, bookkeepers, and financial folk. Leeann and Donna have penned a book on writing,Nuggets of Writing Gold, and Donna has published a book of short stories, Second Chances and Second Cups. You can follow Leeann atwww.AllBettsAreOff.wordpress.com and Donna atwww.HiStoryThruTheAges.wordpress.com. All books are available at Amazon.com in digital and print, and at Smashwords.com in digital.

Writing and editing up a storm

As far as my writing career goes, I'm inclined to believe there's nothing quite so satisfying as writing, "The End." I finally finished the second book in my Paradise Pines series, SUMMER DREAMS. Whooooppeeeeee! BIG SIGH of relief!

I got that one officially submitted. It was way late, after our move to Texas, my broken kneecap and the subsequent surgery...but it's finished and in the hands of my editor. Actually, I just received the first edits back on it, so things are moving along nicely. (I sent it in on the 2nd of this month. This is a really fast turnaround - no doubt because my tardiness in getting the book written upset the schedule-cart at Pelican Book Group. I'm so sorry, PBG!)

Started the third book, AUTUMN FALLS, and got several chapters in with ease. Finishing SUMMER DREAMS seemed to oil my creative wheels. It feels to good to be making progress! Then I received the galleys on OH BABY. Joy, joy, joy! The other Heart's Haven authors and I have been patiently waiting for this series to start releasing. Looks like the ball is rolling, and we are so ready. I hope you are too.

That's my current "twitter-fest" about writing. Sometimes I just have to crow a little... 

Thought you might like to see the covers for the Paradise Pines series. Pretty, aren't they? Thanks to Nicola Martinez for always turning out covers PBG authors can be proud of!

On another note, this blog is brand new. I hope to keep it active - not only with my own ramblings, but with information, interviews and announcements from other authors too. Not everything will be writing-related, I promise. You'll find a bit of this and that and every other thing here on Chirp and Chatter. So hurry...quick...run out and grab the rest of your flock and ask them to wing it right on over here and give me a follow. My sidebar looks pathetic! lol