A New Year

                        (This is my back yard.)

The New Year is upon us. It's hard to believe we are entering 2023. Time has a way of flying by, especially the older a person gets. I will reach a milestone birthday in March this year. When I was young, I never thought I would be happy to turn sixty-five, but I've been without insurance for a while, and am looking forward to being eligible for Medicare. As my ninety-four-year-old, and still doing well, father would say, "You only have two choices in life--grow old or die. I'll take growing old." 

What is coming up in my writing life in 2023? Here's a partial list. As a freelance writer other writing opportunities will arise as the year unfolds but here is what I know now. 

Right now I am up to my nose in deadlines that I put off during the holidays. I have a first rounds of edits for my new devotional book that will release in '23 waiting for me to go through. I have a week of devotions due back to "The Quiet Hour" editor on Jan 31st. I finished writing these before taking a couple of weeks off for Christmas, but I need to read over them, self-edit them, and get them submitted. And I am teaching a workshop on writing for magazines in March for which I need to create a power point. All of these need to be done before the end of January so I have my work cut out or me. 

Here is my year in a nutshell:

January: 

a) Get 1st round of edits to my cowriter to add to hers by 1/10.

b) Get seven devotions submitted to "The Quiet Hour" editor by 1/30

c) prepare another submission to send out by 1/20 (Hopefully I can say more about this later.)

February: 

a) Have the Writing for Magazines Power Point finished by month's end. 

b) May hear back from a magazine editor who liked an article I submitted in the fall and said she would consider it in January or February.

March: 

17-18 Attend and teach a three-hour workshop at Mid-South Christian Writer's Conference in Memphis.

April:

A devotion I wrote will appear in the Spring Issue of "The Secret Place" but I do not know the exact date yet. 

May-August:

a) Edit, edit, edit on the new release!! (There are so many rounds of edits that happen in the making of a book, it can take up an awful lot of time. I don't like the edit stage nearly as much as I do the writing stage.)

b) Work with my committee at the Mid-South Christian Writers conference on faculty selection for the '24 conference. 

September: 

Seven devotions I wrote some time ago will appear in "The Quiet Place" 9/4-9/10.

October-December:

a) My new devo book will release some time in the fall, but we do not have a release date yet. 

b) A memoir article I wrote a year ago and submitted to the editor of "Goldenseal" magazine should be coming out in late '23 or early '24 according to an email he sent. 

Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it but I love writing. There is nothing I would rather do! As the year unfolds, you will be hearing more about my upcoming release. Hopefully I will be able to share its title and focus soon followed by a cover reveal and release date in the upcoming months. 

Website!

I have a website now! I am so excited to share my website with you. My friend, Rhonda Dragomir did a wonderful job setting it up. It's a good thing for a writer to have a website and I had drug my feet on it for way too long. But now I happily join the others and proudly present to you, my website!

What's New

I haven't posted in a few months. That is not the norm for me but truth-be-told, working with this blog and my other one frustrates me because it won't let me make paragraphs, so I now just make short posts. That said, as I am typing this it looks different and maybe this blog will allow indentions now. Here's to hoping that problem has been fixed. 

So, what has occupied my time since the last post?

 A lot of things. For one I've been working hard on writing that new devotional book that I signed a contract on. Over the summer I've managed to get my parts written and self-edited. It will go through many more rounds of edits before the final version. I completed a devotional assignment for seven devos  for "The Quiet Hour", have submitted a few freelance articles, and am working on a few other things, some of which I am not ready to mention yet, and I've been working with the other members of the faculty committee for the MidSouth Christian Writer's Conference to find faculty for next year's conference. In addition, I am about to embark on working with a website designer on an author website. I will post more about this including the link to it once it's up and running. I will also post the title of the devotional book Shirley and I are working on that will release in '23 and its cover when we have these. So stay tuned. Meanwhile, the pic on today's post are two pics from a photo shoot I had in the spring to get new author pictures for my website. Like everyone else, I grow older with every passing day. I have made a personal choice to update my author pics about every five years at least so when people actually meet me in person, they won't be too shocked with how much older I look in person compared to my author pics. lol! 

New Book Coming Soon!

 

I am so excited to let you know that Shirley Crowder and I just signed a contract with Entrusted Books (an arm of Write Integrity Books) to co-write another devotional book! The book will release sometime next year, most likely in the fall of 2023. I will share more about it over the next few months. For now I'm thrilled to be starting a new writing project. That is like play for me. :) 

The Joys of Mentoring

Today I watched the live announcement of the 2022 Selah Award finalists, (The picture I am using is last year's symbol which I received as a finalist in last year's contest.) This year my name was not called as a finalist, though I did enter a piece. Still, I was overjoyed to hear the finalists' names called out for a couple of reasons. I have so many writer friends now and I heard a few of their names called and am happy for each. But one in particular, thrilled me! Jenni Clark Dickens is new to the writing world and not so well known yet, but I assure you in time her name will be known! I've had the privilege of reading her work and she is quite the writer!

I met her last spring when she attended a workshop I taught at the MidSouth Christian Writers Conference. After the conference she reached out to me for some mentoring help. I have read and edited some of her pieces and gotten to know her. We fast became good friends. When she sent me the piece that was announced as a Selah finalist today, I knew immediately it was a special piece. I gave her a few editing suggestions but precious few. She is really quite gifted at writing. And I told her to submit it to Chicken Soup for the Soul for their Christmas book. I was not surprised to learn they had accepted it a few weeks later. Then I suggested she submit it to the Selah in the Essay category, which she did. And today it was announced as a finalist! I think I may be as excited about that as she is. 

But there is one more detail about this winning piece. She bested me. I entered a piece I'd had published in Chicken Soup for the Soul last year in this same category. Mine did not make the list of finalists. I feel like a teacher whose student has proven to be better than the teacher. It makes me proud as a peacock. Touche' to Jenni! Way to go! I applaud you and am honored to have had even a small hand in your current success. 

Book Review

 

One of the nice things about writing for magazines is that once in a while a book review you wrote for a friend’s book gets published in a magazine. When I submitted my review for Don Jackson’s book, “Maroon & White” to Goldenseal magazine (a WV state magazine) the editor said he usually writes book reviews himself but he liked what I wrote so he’d publish it in the winter issue just as I wrote it … and so he did. (And if you haven’t read the book, you should. It’s great!) Ot can be viewed or ordered here.

Come Before Winter

Sharing an article I wrote that is in the current issue of The Lutheran Digest.

2 Timothy 4:9-22 records the last words the Apostle Paul is known to have written. These verses are contained in a letter to Timothy. At the time Paul wrote this book, he was imprisoned in a dungeon in Rome, chained to a wall like a common criminal. He wrote the book for several reasons. He was concerned about the churches that were being persecuted under Nero and he had some specific things he wanted to say to the Ephesian church.

But Paul had another, more personal, reason to write this letter to Timothy.

He was lonely.

He wrote some sad and tender words in verses 9-11 and again in verse 21. In 9-11 he wrote, “Timothy, please come as soon as you can.  Demas has deserted me because he loves the things of this life and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus has gone to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me.”

I can just picture it, Luke, the beloved physician, trying to tend to Paul’s needs to the best of his limited ability. My father was a physician and I have always pictured Luke like my dad, remaining steadfast, staying nearby, using his brilliant mind to cure whatever he could on the aging and ailing Paul. But Luke did not have the medicines or tools my father had during his lifetime. Still, Luke stayed nearby, doing what he could.

Then in verse 21 we read words that are some of the most poignant to me in the whole Bible. Paul writes—pleads actually—"Do your best to get here before winter.” Paul then asked Timothy to bring a coat and books. His needs were simple, something to keep him warm, his treasured books, and Timothy to keep him company.

There have been many like Paul through the years, and still today. If we but look around us we will see the lonely, the ill, the imprisoned. They don’t ask for much—just the basics, and most of all our companionship. May God open our eyes to see those for whom we can be a Luke or a Timothy.