Meet Emmie in A Chance for Kallie Mae

“But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” …Luke 12:7 (NKJ)

Thanks to all of you who read the excerpts I shared from my books set in the Appalachian regions of Kentucky and to those of you who left comments. I always enjoy reading what you have to share. We had some different ideas about what modern conveniences we might miss if we had lived in the country or mountains back in the time of my stories. A few people mentioned air conditioning and many of us are spoiled by being able to keep our houses warm or cool by flicking a switch or setting a thermostat.

Others said running water. I had to agree with that one. I’ve lived without indoor plumbing. I like it better when water pours out of a faucet rather than having to be drawn in a bucket out of a cistern or well. But you know, if you’ve always been used to that, it’s not so bad. My mountain characters don’t expect any different. Of course, Mira in The Song of Sourwood Mountain went there from the city. She had to get accustomed to life without the conveniences she knew.

And then one or two said all of them. I could agree with that too. LOL. No electricity would be difficult. Those of us who have had our power service interrupted for more than a few hours by an ice or wind storm know how hard that can be and how happy we are when power is restored.

So, we can hope we can hang onto our modern conveniences.

I promised you one last excerpt. This one is a few paragraphs from my upcoming release, A Chance for Kallie Mae. Kallie has a little sister named Emma Louise, but she is called Emmie by those who love her. She’s six, going on seven, and eager to start school as soon as Kallie says she can go. Kallie is being extra protective of her and you’ll find out why when you read the story.

All right, meet Emmie. (Whitt is her 11 year old brother.)

Whitt knew numbers better. He showed Emmie how to make all the numbers up to ten and told her adding them up was just like counting her fingers.

Now there on the rock, she held up her fingers and gave each of them a number Whitt had shown her. If she started with her thumb being one and her pinky finger on the other hand ten and then counted all the fingers in between, it always came out just right.

She liked things that came out right, but stories could do that too. At least the stories Kallie told did. One time after Kallie told them a story, Whitt claimed it was better than the stories the teacher made him read and he wished she could write them down. Kallie’s face had gone all sad when she told Whitt he’d have to do that for her.

Emmie didn’t like it when Kallie looked sad. She liked it better when she was singing some silly song about Mr. Cardinal coming to tell them good morning or to ask politely if he could have one of their beans. In the song the cardinal had to eat a bug to earn a bean and Kallie would smile and ask Emmie how she would like having to eat a bug to get a bean. Sometimes Emmie thought a bug might be tastier, but she didn’t try it to see. She figured the bug’s legs might tickle on the way down.

Emmie wondered if other girls her age ever thought silly things like that. She doubted it. The mark on her face wasn’t all that made her different. It was her green eyes and straight black hair and even more the odd things she thought about.

                                                                                                                                                                              ***

A preacher she heard once said a person’s days were numbered by the Lord, whatever that meant. Not the preacher that had shouted about running from the devil but a different one. This one hadn’t yelled but talked real calm about how the Lord loved all of them and even had the hairs on their heads numbered. Like their days, she supposed.

Emmie pulled a hank of her hair over where she could see it. She fingered through it to separate out one hair but others came with it. Her eyes almost crossed as she tried to count those hairs. She gave up. That one little lock of hair would number way more than ten, but the Lord knew how many hairs were on the whole of her head. Not only hers but on everyone else’s too.

She pushed the hair back behind her ears. She couldn’t figure that out any better than she could figure out about how birthing her had killed her mother. 

I hope you will like Emmie and Kallie and Whitt and Aunt Sudie and all my characters in A Chance for Kallie Mae. The book releases on May 19th, but you can preorder it now from your favorite booksellers. If you check it out at Baker Book House, you can get a great deal and some extra goodies, a signed bookplate and a bookmark, while supplies last.

Oh, one more thing – the winner of my Appalachian Book Giveaway. That’s Kris B.

Kris, I sent you an email a little while ago so check your mailbox.

Did you enjoy the story excerpts I shared? 

I’ll move on to something else next post.

Wait, another one more thing. I noticed that a couple of spam comments made it through the spam blocker on my site. They were on old posts, but one of them was really bad. If you have comments coming automatically to your mailboxes, I apologize if that one showed up. I hope it doesn’t happen again.