Hi again, everybody. Are you like me and not finding enough hours in the day to do everything that needs doing? Truth is, I’ve been letting a lot of things that need doing slip by not done. I’m going to have to get going on cleaning my house soon or well, I guess it’ll just get more in need of a dedicated housekeeper. I’m not dedicated to housecleaning. But I used to do a better job when all the kids were home. I had more of a routine then. Saturdays I cleaned. Now Saturdays are always busy with some other activity. Darrell’s singing and I get to go along or Darrell’s singing and I think wow, I don’t want to waste a perfect day to write on doing chores. Maybe the grandkids have slept over or are coming to visit or I’m going to visit them. Or I want to go somewhere with my sisters or help Mom out. Or the wildflowers at Panther Rock were in bloom and a person has to stop to smell the roses, doesn’t she? There is always something. That’s for sure and when those kind of choices come up, I don’t pick washing windows. Maybe I should, but I don’t.
And now next week I have the best excuse ever — Vacation Bible School. Talk about a gobbler upper of time. That can do it. First you’ve got to come up with lessons or study the lessons in the books you have. Second, you have to do crafts and plan activities that will keep the kids interested. Have you noticed that’s harder to do than it used to be? I’ve been teaching Bible School for many years. Many years! And the kids aren’t as easy to settle in to Bible study as they used to be. Of course, at our little church we don’t have any electronic stuff to show movies or slides or whatever. We depend on the Bible and have an old fashioned Bible School that fits our little church best. The new programs are great, but we don’t have the room at our church or the volunteers to lead that sort of program. So we just go back to the Bible School style of old and most of our kids have the most fun ever. So next week promises to be a whirlwind of activity. I’m hoping I can keep somewhat to my goal of getting a set number of pages of my new book written every week, but I might not have the proper time. Especially since I have to take Mom to the doctor one day and my dog to the vet the next day. Plus we bought a new fridge and that means I have to empty out the old fridge and get the spot ready for the new fridge. I’ll take me half a day to take all the grandkids’ photos and art work off the old fridge. 🙂 The new fridge is not going to be as art display friendly, but we’ll have to work out something. The side maybe.
Darrell and I took one of those Saturdays off the way I was talking about earlier and went to a play “As It Is in Heaven” at Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill. It was not as good as I’d hoped. I’ve been doing a lot of Shaker research and there were several things that were just wrong according to the books I’ve been reading. They had the Shaker girl having a pet cat. That was not allowed. The little girls couldn’t even have dolls. The Shakers did have a few cats late in the life of Shakerism in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s after the rules of conduct had relaxed quite a bit. But the play was set in 1837. No pets then. However the actresses did a great job and I liked hearing the Shaker songs they sang. They were definitely authentic songs. I hope to go back to Shaker Village for a full day of sightseeing and absorbing the atmosphere soon. The Shakers were interesting people, but not very easily understood in their time or even now. They had a lot of contradictory ways.
My new book, The Outsider, about the Shaker girl and the frontier doctor will be out in August. Publisher’s Weekly reviewed it. Not a great review. I always hope for a great review, but I don’t always get what I hope for. I met one writer who said she never read reviews. I’m beginning to thing that might be a good idea. The review wasn’t really that bad, just not great. Oh well. Maybe the next one will be better and I know me. I won’t be able to keep from reading it, good or bad.
I do appreciate all of you who may have put a review out somewhere for me. Terri put one on Amazon.com last week and I really appreciate that. I also really appreciate every time you recommend one of my books to a friend. Word of mouth reviews are the best kind. If they’re good, that is.
The ACFW Southeast zone newsletter had me as their featured zone author this month. It was a fun interview and I enjoyed talking about my writing to all the other writers in the group. Every day I get a digest of messages where the members of the loop tell about what’s going on in their writing lives and that’s always fun to read about. You can visit the ACFW (Amercian Christian Fiction Writers) on the internet and if you’re a writer of Christian fiction you can sign up and enjoy all the perks. (For a membership fee, of course. But part of the site is open to anybody who wants to click on.) I haven’t been taking advantage of all the information out there on the site because, well, I have to get my new book done before my daughter-in-law has those twins this summer.
Yeah, I know. We’re right back to that not enough time for everything bit. Hope you have the time to do all the things you most want to do. I love teaching Bible stories at Bible School so I’ll be sure to make time for that this week. Ann