My kitchen window
Never fails to excite my inner core.
Each tiny glimpse of nature
Whets my appetite for more
The behavior of the animal life
Is utterly absurd
The birds are eating the cat’s food
And a cat is acting like a bird.
Two cranes are walking slowly
Pecking down at the ground for food.
The cats are watching quietly
As is to disturb them would be rude!
I keep my camera by my window
To capture moments such as this
A cat is drinking from the birdbath
The absurdity is bliss.
My Take
DiVoran Lites
Photo by Melodie Hendrix
My neighbor came over yesterday to return something. Since I was about to get in the car, we stood in the driveway for a minute to talk. She had finished reading my newest book in the Florida Springs Trilogy, Living Spring wanted to tell me how much she liked it. She said what she said when she read the first book, Sacred Spring. “Living Spring is a wonderful book, it kept my interest the whole way through, when is the next one coming out?” This is a smart and successful person and not one who is inclined to flatter or gush. I was pleased with her report.. Truly all my readers are intelligent and discerning. I’m so glad they like my novels.
I’ll tell you a teensy secret, though perhaps I shouldn’t…I was a tad worried about my new baby, Living Spring. Even though I love the characters, the setting, and the plot, I wasn’t quite ready to turn loose of it for publication.
When I told Onisha what I’ve told you, she said, “Your niggling feeling about turning loose of it may mean, Living Spring is one of your best books.” Now, I understand that it was because I would miss working on Living Spring that I didn’t want to let go of it. Now, I’m on to Clear Spring, the third book in the trilogy, so all is well.
When Bill, Billy (our son) and I were having lunch at Tibby’s New Orleans style restaurant in Winter Park, I told our son about my doubts and how they have been overcome by good reports. He who is the father of two perfect (to me) college age kids, said, “Is Living Spring better than Sacred Spring?”
My answer was: “I don’t really want to know or think about that.”
”Why?” says he. Why has been his favorite word since he learned to talk. He’s a biologist now and since he has the inside scoop on nature, he is my chief source for questions about plants, animals, land, and water. We have a lot of lovely scenes and encounters in our Florida Spring trilogy, along with real love stories and a bit of suspense.
How do I explain to our inquisitive son that I don’t want to compare the two books? Aha, I ask him this: “Is your daughter better than your son or your son better than your daughter?”
“I see what you mean,” says he. “But it’s not the same thing, your books aren’t your children.”
“Oh, yes they are,” his father and I say in unison. “Or anyway they’re the next best thing.”
What do you, blog reader and friend have to say about all this? I hope you’ll say with the neighbor, “It was wonderful, it held my interest all the way through, when is the next one coming out?” I can’t ask for more than that.
Sacred Spring is available exclusively from Amazon right now, for Kindle or in paperback, but that will soon change and you’ll be able to get it, as you now can now get, Living Spring, from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. In case you don’t know what Smashwords is, it’s an eReader service that can sell you the books in any format to fit any eReader or device.
Please buy Sacred Spring, and Living Spring in whichever format you prefer and let us know what you think on our blog comments or my Face Book page. We’ll soon have a website up and running, too, for Rebekah Lyn Books, a new Christian publisher who will take the world by storm. Her first book is Summer Storms, and she has two more after that. Look her up, you’ll like her.
In Living Spring, Jean Schaefer, sister of Hank, has suffered from overwhelming anxiety for the past four years due to the death of their parents and an entanglement with her child’s father which ended in a shocking rejection. She contracts for an original settler’s house in the woods near, “Living Spring,” hoping to use the renovation process as therapy. She must now learn to live in new ways and begin to allow people into her life again. As the history of the old house, along with elements of her own past begin to surface, Jean finds herself fighting inner battles she thought she had buried forever.
.
From the Heart
Louise Gibson
My Take
DiVoran Lites
When we go to Lake Eola in Orlando, we always see something wonderful because the lake is home to black swans, white swans, geese, ducks, coots, turtles, and is a landing pad for sea gulls as well. Last week we saw two black swans building a nest on the ground using pine straw (dead pine needles put out by the park managers as mulch.) The female was inside the increasingly rounding nest putting beak fulls of pine straw around herself—that’s how she gets the nest to fit–while the male was gathering the straw in his beak and piling it up. Each time the female depleted her pile he brought another close enough for her to reach.
Last spring we walked past a tiny shallow pond with limited access to the lake. In it were at least two dozen baby ducks and one big duck for a baby sitter. This kept all the babies out of the clutches of anything that might hurt them until they learned to make it on their own in the big lake. I call it the nursery, of course. I can’t tell you how delightful it was seeing them all swimming around, practicing dunking and being free and happy in the sunshine.
I know it sounds kind of sad, but we’ve also seen a lady come collect many bags of eggs and take them to her official vehicle. The park isn’t so big, after all, about a city block in size. They take such good care of the birds there that if they let all the eggs hatch they’d soon be overrun with all the above. If I see that lady again this year, I think I’ll ask what happens to the eggs. Maybe they go to a place where more birds are needed or maybe they’re breakfast at the zoo (horrid thought, but perhaps necessary.)
God’s nature is like that. There is so much abundance we would never go hungry or have any shortages if we took proper care of what he has given us—and by that I don’t mean chemicals!
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
¶ JAMES 1:17
.My Take
DiVoran Lites
When I wrote my first novel, Sacred Spring, I studied every aspect of writing, publishing and marketing. Some of it stuck and some of it didn’t, but still I tried to follow all the rules. These included learning to write so well, that like cream, you would rise to the top. You had to join a writing group, so I started one, you had to write, write, write. I have a closet full of journals to show for that and I’m glad of it. You had to learn copy-editing, and I attended a class for years with the best copy-editor around. You went to writers’ conferences, and after multiple submissions on your own, you folded and got an agent. Been there, done all that.
I received heartfelt encouragement from everyone who read my work. One person compared it with Bach’s, “Two-Part Invention.” If I hadn’t had a favorable reception, would I have stopped writing? No, I was born to write. I know that now, just as I was born to cook. I gave up trying to publish, for a while, though.
Then one day I had the blessing of running into a young woman whom I’d known all her life, Rebekah Lyn. Her, dear mother, Onisha Ellis, had told me that Rebekah, a professional writer, had always wanted to write a novel. I was ready to write a new one too, so we joined forces, meeting for over a year reading and writing and discussing every aspect of publishing and with Onisha, we began to learn how to market what we’d written, as well.
Meantime, I was reading, The Right to Write, by Julia Cameron. She highly recommended self-publishing, hereafter to be called indie (for independent) publishing.
Before, whenever I’d heard about self-publishing I’d heard that you needed to be a speaker and sell your book to your audiences or pay the huge price to for self-publication then end up with a “garage full” of books you couldn’t sell. It was called, vanity publishing. I didn’t want to be vain, I just wanted to write and like a cook preparing a meal, I wanted my efforts consumed by someone who would appreciate them.
Come to find out Julia Cameron isn’t the only person who recommends indie publishing. So does Tama Kieves, a wondrous fireball of a personal coach who has just published her second book, Inspired and Unstoppable. She indied her first one but with this one although she started out doing it herself it was soon picked up by the one right person to publish it the traditional way. Apparently many books, which are now famous and even considered classics, were originally indie published.
Meanwhile Onisha was doing her, and our homework on publication and marketing. She discovered that we could publish free with Amazon and we set out for one of the most exciting adventures of our lives so far.
Rebekah Lyn and Onisha did a lot of the work of publishing Rebekah’s first book themselves. I think it was hard, but they seemed to enjoy most of the learning process. By the time I was ready to go, all I had to do was sit down at the table with them and say, pass the potatoes.
First they suggested I email my manuscript to a professional editor, Beth Lynne of BZ Hercules, who was is an excellent editor and a kind and patient person who charges a reasonable price. Then I sent my hand painted cover to Laura LaRoche of LLPIX who prepared it for publication. She also helps authors who don’t paint their own covers.
Sacred Spring is now for sale on Amaon for Kindle and in print. Many people like it very much, and I’m so glad. If you read it and like it, please write a nice review for me on Amazon. I’m almost ready to publish the second novel in my Florida Springs trilogy and Rebekah is working on her fourth one. It’s a new and better day for readers and for writers, that’s for sure!
Speak Up Saturday
Patricia Franklin
A few years back we took a ride to northeast Colorado near the small town of Calhan. Someone had told us that there was a beautiful area there called the “Paint Mines.” We were out in the middle of nowhere, when we saw a sign ahead that said “Paint Mine Park,” so we turned off and followed that road. We drove further out into the prairie land which was flat and barren. As we drove along, we saw indications of some ridges and gullies in the landscape.
Our road led to a parking lot, where we parked our car in an almost vacant lot, and started walking along the trail that was indicated there, although we saw nothing and did not know what we were looking for. As we got further along, we saw a couple of crater-like holes in the ground. When we looked into them, there were indications of beautiful rock/dirt formations in different colors. As the trail went on, we came to a curve, where the trail doubled back and went downhill from there, then snaked to the right and further downhill.
When we got to the bottom and looked ahead, we were flabbergasted to see we were in a rock canyon with beautiful spires and rock walls in breathtakingly different formations and colors. As we walked into the area, we were soon surrounded by these amazingly beautiful formations in bright purples, pinks, mauve, yellows, and stark white. It was absolutely unbelievable to walk into this alien land in the middle of the Colorado prairie. To make it even more eerie and exciting, the area was deathly quiet and no one was around. We almost felt like we had walked into the past. We eventually did run into a few people during our walk. It was strange how you could be alone in the quiet one minute, round a corner and meet up with someone without hearing a sound or seeing anyone until they were right there with you. At other times, you could hear voices, and never find out where they came from.
These rock walls, tunnels and spires were cut in here thousands of years ago by Mother Nature, and the Native Americans used these natural clay deposits for painting and pottery. The trails go along for a few miles of different kinds of formations. They are amazingly alike and amazingly different from each other. At one point, there are rows of large towering ghost-like formations called “hoo doos.”
This is one of the best kept secrets in Colorado. We took pictures, but you will get a better view of the Paint Mines if you just want to Google “Paint Mines, Colorado.”
A NATIVE AMERICAN QUOTE:
“WE DID NOT INHERIT THIS LAND FROM OUR ANCESTORS, BUT BORROWED IT FROM OUR CHILDREN.”
Sunday Memories
Judy Willis
I love to watch squirrels. They are such fun to see – digging in the grass for buried treasures; chasing each other around the tree; sitting on their haunches, tail up and curled, eating some delightful morsel….
For some time, I had been feeding pecans to the squirrels in the back yard. I would stand in the doorway and place the pecan closer and closer to my foot, just to see how close they would come to me.
Why is the dog, Maxie, running through the house? Is she chasing something? Then why isn’t she barking? As I looked down over the bannister….who/what belonged to that gray tail? Then I understood, and….FRED! THERE’S A SQUIRREL IN THE HOUSE!!
As Fred ran to get a broom, I ran down the stairs and grabbed Maxie. I took her to the front door and opened it and the screen door. I crouched down, holding her wiggling body by her collar, next to me. Fred ran into the living room. Then I heard him scream a word that I had never heard him say before!
Next thing I know, the squirrel is racing for the open door. And I just let go of Maxie and let her chase that squirrel to her heart’s content! She didn’t catch it, of course, but not for lack of trying.
Seems the squirrel had jumped up on top of one of the picture frames over the couch. As Fred swung the broom at it – it jumped at his face! Hence the “word.” But he was after that squirrel as fast as possible.
From then on, any time Maxie saw a squirrel outside the house, she went crazy, trying to get to it. She never barked, but boy! did she race back and forth in front of the windows.
I shall never feed a pecan to a squirrel again!
John 10:10
Speak Up Saturday
Patricia Franklin
The Last Meal
What’s this, you’re bringing the laundry down?
But I’m doing no laundry ‘til that mouse leaves town.
What did you say? You’re out of shirts?
So what, I’m also out of skirts
You think that I’m just getting lazy?
No, I’m not, I’m going crazy.
Besides, he’s eating up my laundry soap.
Is this weird little mouse high on dope?
I don’t want the whole place to belong to that mouse!
I’m doing no laundry, no, I’m not,
Not until that monster is caught!
“Do you think he’s inside that wall?
How did he get in here at all?”
We’ve never faced a critter like this before.
That’s it! I’ve had it, we’re waging WAR!”
“We’re going to serve him a fabulous meal.
One that he’ll beg, borrow or steal.
A Mouse King’s feast for the little beast.
The best of everything at the very least!”
“I’ll fill those traps just one more time —
He’ll face this ultimatum of mine!”
The traps are filled — a gourmet trough,
One tiny toenail will set it off…”
“Now we’ll just sit back and see,
Who’s going to win this battle – him or me.”
Speak Up Saturday
Patricia Franklin
Here are some thoughts regarding our pet mouse.I think our precocious mouse is enjoying the new “live” traps we set out for him.
First, he is laughing and turning up his nose at the few little seeds in the middle of the sticky surface. He has completely ignored the seeds that came with the trap, but he has to be eating something!
Second, I think he is using these traps to attract his own preferred food products for his gourmet appetite. I always thought mice were vegetarians. However, he either consumed the beetle bug or dragged him off somewhere in order to clean up his own private space, leaving only one skinny beetle leg behind.
On the other hand, maybe he has a secret entrance to come in and out of the house, while enjoying the fruits of my garden before coming in to cool off in the evening.
At any rate, I can feel his little beady eyes watching me and I even imagine I can hear his little snicker when I check the traps and he isn’t there. (We currently have five traps in the laundry room). I’m certain he enjoys the laugh of the day and then goes on his merry way to wait for the next challenge from our simple little minds.
Proverbs 17:22
Old Things R New 