Days of Joy

Sometimes beauty surprises us.

As life spins around us, thick with frustrations and waiting and disappointments and slippery ice and burned toast and rusty-brown well water that turns laundry orange, every now and then we catch our breath. In amazement, delight. A skipped heartbeat of "can this be real?"

And that's where I am today. Caught by surprise, like a sky full of snow-clad branches surprisingly diamond-bright against a coal-blue sky.

God's mysteries wrapped up like a Christmas gift, glittering in the shadows.

My post will be short today because my heart is full. 

After all these years, we welcome home our second little one - named Seth after the consolation gift of a son God sent to Adam and Eve - and can hardly contain our delight. Even with C-section stitches, a stretched-out belly, pain medication, sleepless nights, migraines, and fumbling for bottles in the middle of the night, the wonder still stays, frost-like, sparkling in a thousand winter colors.

God has heard our prayer and answered, and we are speechless with gratitude.

As if one little child wasn't enough - more than enough - beautiful, precious, praise-worthy enough - He has blessed us with two.

Sometimes just when we think we have life all figured out, God throws us a curve ball.

A curve ball  with blue eyes and blond-thin eyebrows and succulent rosy cheeks. A curve ball that smells of baby powder and has ten perfect pink toes. My mind is clogged with warm fleece sleep suits and baby socks and tiny newborn diapers. I cannot write my newest novel ideas; I cannot remember a before or imagine an after. I would forget to eat if it wasn't for my exhausted, depleted stomach screaming after sleepless nights of feedings and diaperings.

I cannot think in poetry - the world explodes in it instead, falling around me like snowflakes.

If you've ever been surprised by God's mercies to the undeserving, you will know how I feel at this moment - as the new year rings in silently around me.

I have not even noticed.

I'm too busy whispering a fervent prayer of unbelieving thanks.

Giving thanks in all things

"Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." - 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Thanksgiving is approaching, and it's my first Thanksgiving home in the U.S. after close to ten years abroad: two in Japan as a missionary, and eight with my Brazilian husband back in his native Brazil.

Winters and summers in other countries have increased my love of fall a hundredfold: pumpkins, apple cider, frost on the grass. 

I love fall.

And I love Thanksgiving. My mouth waters in anticipation of creamy sweet potato casserole topped with melty marshmallows (a Southern specialty). Crusty brown turkey dripping with juices. Green bean casserole and fluffy yeast rolls and mashed potatoes with gravy. Pumpkin pie and Jello salad. (Yes, the Southern, quivery, artificially-colored Jello salad with Cool Whip - whose ingredients I couldn't begin to pronounce).

Dinner fantasies aside, everywhere I look I see thankfulness - joy - appreciation for the wonderful things God has given my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Even my friends who do not yet believe in the One who died for their sins are thankful, making lists on Facebook and recognizing the blessings that overflow in their lives.

As fall fades to winter in rural South Dakota, I am reminded of thankfulness.

And I am reminded of pain.

Of mistakes made that can no longer be corrected. Of relatives gone and buried, covered by wild cemetery grasses and the faint honking of geese overhead. 

I am reminded of hard years - painful years - harsh years - where living sometimes seemed more difficult than giving up, and the balance of what seemed "fair" and "unfair" tipped so far toward "unfair" that the entire scale threatened to topple over.

I am reminded of emptiness. Of grief. Of questions that, until today, do not have answers, or even comfort.

And yet, as I look out over the snow-frosted mountains and rolling fields of the Black Hills, I realize that those things - all of them, as dark as they are -  form the basis for one unexpected thing: thankfulness.

They are what cause me to pause, wide-eyed, at a forgotten elm tree in a scrubby cow pasture that has suddenly turned to gold.

For true thankfulness, you see, begins in the heart - and the heart cannot find true contentment until it has learned to give thanks in all things.

In all things, both joyful and heartbreaking.

Not for all things, perhaps, but in all things. In all seasons. In and out of our corridors of grief, and in the half-glow of hindsight that sheds wisdom and grace and even healthy regret along our pathway. 

In injustice and suffering, and in the valley of the shadow of death, even, "for You are with me." 

Thanksgiving is not just about the good, it's about the whole.

And therein lies the crux of thankgiving: a steady leaning up Christ with our wobbly faith, weak as it is, and looking upon all of life as a blessing - as a sacred gift - as a mysterious glory that plays out all across the length of our days.

Ten years ago, you see, I was surrounded by perfect Virginia trees aflame with autumn: reds, golds, rusts. Would this single elm, alive with sunlight, have captured my admiration as much if I not spent nearly a decade away from the America I love, away from fall, away from golden leaves?

Would I delight as much in the rounded globe of my belly if I had not spent eight years praying for a blessing on my empty womb?

Would I love these rolling hills of South Dakota so dearly if I had not wrestled with years of numbing homesickness? Would I delight in the utter silence of vast and empty plains if I had not struggled to fall asleep in the roar of urban delivery mopeds and un-mufflered trucks?

Would I love anything, anything as much if I had not first tasted the grief of sin, the regret of guilt, and finally the surprising joy of redemption?

We have all suffered, lost greatly, groaned along with creation as we wait for our Lord's returning. And by some inexplicable paradox, He uses it all to make us better people.

Who would I be without my mistakes, my failings? Without the pain and suffering just under the skin that reminds me I, too, am a fragile sojourner on this earth, in desperate need of Christ's mercy and transformation?

Who would I be without the injustice that build in me tenderness and forgiveness, the rejection and suffering that instruct me in compassion, the disappointment in human relationships that cause me to look to my Father and Healer and to our eternal home?

This, to me, is true thanksgiving: embracing it all for the sake of Christ.

And still daring to whisper "thank you."

For all of it, Lord, thank you.

--

What are you thankful for this year?

What difficult circumstances has God used to increase thankfulness in you?

--

Jennifer Rogers Spinola is the author of Barbour's "Southern Fried Sushi" series and an upcoming novella collection about Yellowstone National Park (also with Barbour). Her first novel, "Southern Fried Sushi," was named a Christy Award finalist in 2012. Jenny lives in South Dakota with her husband, Athos, and four-year-old son, Ethan, with a second son due in December (if he waits that long!) Right now she's trying to get the swelling her feet to go down and wishing she didn't have to make dinner.

Seasons

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." - Ecclesiastes 3:1

Autumn is touching western South Dakota already. Gone are the blazing days of over-a-hundred-degree temperatures, settling into soft warmth for cricket-filled night. No, the minute the calendar switched to August, a coolness crept into the evening air. A crispness, like a one of the season's last melons. Stars burn clear and bright in the night sky--thousands of them--thick as glittering morning fog. When my son goes out to play in the golden-hued late afternoon, he pulls on a jacket. Goldenrod pokes up in yellow beacons along a roadside choked with empty raspberry bushes, fallen wild roses, and elm leaves tinged the color of late squashes.

Even our ginger-striped tabby cat, christened "Charlie Broccoli" by my three-year-old son (don't ask; I don't know why, either, except it had something to do with Veggie Tales and Charlie Brown) is reluctant to slip out the door at nightfall as he's done for months. Last night I scooped him off the sofa at nearly ten o'clock, a warm ball of purring fuzz, and set him on the front step. "Go catch mice," I said, or something to that effect. "Good night." He gave the moon a chilly look, then me, and slipped back inside between my ankles.

Even I am changing as I try to fit my bulging belly into shirts and jeans that once skimmed a smooth waistline. I toss them wistfully one-by-one into the "after-December-when-I-can-finally-bend-over-again" box and thumb through my shrinking closet for something, anything, that will button or fasten or whatever it's supposed to do without gapping or making me hold my breath.

We are all changing. Nothing, no matter how permanent it may seem, usually is.

One of the biggest changes I've noticed lately is in my own writing habits--which have been a part of me since even before I could pen (or crayon) correct sentences. I've spent far more time staring at a blank screen than I have in years, and my idea list looks more like a grocery list gone insane: "...how about that historical fiction novel?... don't forget to pick up peaches at the grocery store... holy cow, you forgot to pay the trash company again... the Colorado peaches, not the California ones that ripen to the consistency of wrinkled softballs... so... what am I supposed to be writing about again...?"

I have almost no ideas--or no good ideas--and my brain feels like the Cream of Wheat I ate this morning as I put my hands on the keys.

It's bothering me. A lot. HELP!! When was the last time I didn't write... anything? Really? I mean, I just pumped out four full-length novels in less than three years--one of which finaled in the Christy Awards, for pity's sake--and have edited galleys, critiqued, proofread, worked on cover art, written interviews and articles, posted on blogs, and made a general nuisance of myself to the writing world. 

Oh, and all of this took place after we 1) adopted a preemie with health issues; 2) raised said preemie to a running, jumping, bilingual, always-yakking, always-smiling three-year-old (how I'm not really sure; I know nothing about babies or children); 3) went through a harrowing process of brain surgery with Ethan to correct a malfunctioning shunt for hydrocephalus, and 4) underwent the grueling immigration process for my husband and son and moved to the U.S. after eight years abroad. So it wasn't like I was sitting around knitting for those three years. (If I knew how to knit, which I don't). We were busy. Our lives were upside-down. We barely slept.

So what's my problem now??!

Why can't I write? Why won't the words and ideas flow like they used to? Especially now that I'm not doing night feedings (yet) or running to the American Embassy with more paperwork or trying to explain to my annoying, rude neighbor why the U.S. supports Israel over Iran all in Portuguese. We speak ENGLISH in South Dakota, for crying out loud!

I've been praying about this problem for a while, and the thing that floats up to the surface of my thousand thoughts are this: seasons.

We are always moving and breathing and living in seasons. Life changes. Moods change. Pregnancy saps brain cells and productivity (so it seems for a lot of women)--especially when running after a three-year-old who is probably either trying to climb to the top of a huge feed tank, spray himself and everybody else with the garden hose, or ride our friends' chocolate lab like a horse. (Yes, all of those things actually happened, and recently).

Perhaps for me, the season to furiously write is passing. Fading. Melting into a season of quiet patience and reflection that I, having never been pregnant before, have never known. 

Perhaps now is the time for me to put down my pen and my laptop and just watch my curly-haired son play in the afternoon sun, the gold of the light turning his hair glorious rusty brown. Perhaps now is the time to gather him up in my arms, all laughter and dirty knees and joyously kissable cheeks, and hold tight the little body that doctors once said might never walk or never talk, and praise the Lord for His mercies--for "they are new every morning."

Perhaps now is the time to fall on my knees in prayer for that same little one who is scheduled to undergo brain surgery once again next month--to fix that shunt that saved his life last year, now starting to malfuction--and thank God for every day of his life, and for protection and peace as we go through such a traumatic process all over again. And yet grateful that we, and not someone else, are called to the task.

Perhaps now is the time for me to close up my notebooks of half-baked ideas and circle my belly with my hands in wordless wonder. For who would have thought that after eight years of nothing, this womb would hold a child? A fluttering, kicking, healthy growing baby whose rounded head and limbs we watched, with rapt disbelief, on the fuzzy black-and-white ultrasound screen? I am not as old as Sarah (yet) but like her I laugh--and cry--at this miracle called life, and how it has been granted to me not once, but twice--to hold and nurture and give back to the Creator.

Perhaps now is a new season for me. A new dawning of responsibilities and priorities. An autumn of sorts, blooming out its golds and rusts before a quiet winter of birth and motherhood, and a family made four from nothing--like the inhabitants of Eden formed from earth and a single rib.

But what about writing? Will it vanish, too, like so many other things in my life?

Of course not.

"Life has its seasons," author Valerie Comer wrote to me just yesterday. "Sometimes it's okay to go with them... (Remember that) God has given you a gift as a writer and author. He hasn't removed it, but your body and brain are busy with other things right now. It's okay. It'll come back."

It'll come back.

I promise. 

Just like green grass after winter snows, and tender shoots where the dried winter grasses lay cold and blond across the field. The clamor of meadowlarks and robins, and the lowing of cattle as spring-young calves leap in green pastures.

I know because I saw it; I lived it. We watched the frozen white fields and mountains of South Dakota turn gold and then green, and spring came once again.

Just as it will in a few short months.

For while our worlds change around us, our Lord will not. He is the rock immovable, the fortress that will never be shaken. "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever."

He will not fail, and He will not fade. Just sa He transitioned me from missionary to international wife and then to mother and author, He will not forget me--or you. Our times are in His hands, and He alone holds our future.

And while season after season may shake our private thoughts and fears, we can hold fast to Him, knowing that He puts the words in our mouth and pen in our hand--and will bring everything in our lives to fruition to give Himself glory.

--

What season are you in now? Have you ever felt like you're in transition and out of control? What holds you in place when the world around you shakes?

--

Jennifer Rogers Spinola lives in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, with her Brazilian husband, Athos, and three-year-old son, Ethan. She has lived in Brazil for nearly eight years and served as a missionary to Japan for two years. Jenny is the author of Barbour Books' "Southern Fried Sushi" series and an upcoming romance novella collection based on Yellowstone National Park (also with Barbour Books). Her first novel, “Southern Fried Sushi,” was a Christy Award finalist in 2012. Right now Jenny is sharing her side of the bed with Charlie Broccoli and hoping Ethan sleeps a little longer this afternoon so she can put her feet up.

Transitions: Learning from Criticism

I'm looking out over my back yard full of green. New grass pokes up through the bleached alfalfa in an emerald carpet, and sun falls across the slopes in blue shadows against white. Jonquils bloom against violets.

A scant five months ago I walked the clay-red dirt roads of Athos' parents' house on the family farm, watching sunlight stream through ficus tree leaves.

We're here now in South Dakota - both of us, Athos and me, with our precious son Ethan - and our lives are irrevocably changed. Over the past ten years, our paths have forked from our first meeting in snowy northern Japan to tropical Brazil and back to snow country in rural South Dakota.

Even as an American, things still take me by surprise: English in the supermarkets, the shocking cold of frosty evening, the sight of snow on the mountains. Even the fact that I use the word "supermarket" instead of my traditional "grocery store" is a dead giveaway that I've been living in Portuguese-speaking country. Why? Because "supermarket" sounds like the Portuguese "supermercado," and is easier to explain and for a Brazilian listener to pick up on because of the similarity. (Of course some such similarities are false cognates, which can cause hilarious - and embarrassing - confusion. But I digress.)

Just as I adapt to South Dakota freezing temperatures and snow-muddy roads, compare prices on groceries I haven't purchased in years (cream of wheat, Cheddar cheese, cranberry mustard), an author has to adapt to two things: 1) praise and 2) criticism.

Praise is easier to adapt to (of course) since we are praise-hungry creatures, and often rightfully so, after all the hours of work we and our publishing team have put into the final product of a BOOK WITH OUR NAME ON IT!

Ergo:




It's amazing, isn't it? Sometimes I stop to think about it, and the whole idea just floors me. (SHAMELESS PLUG: You can buy "Like Sweet Potato Pie" and its predecessor, "Southern Fried Sushi," at Christian and chain bookstores, and a host of other online bookstores. It's also available on Kindle, Nook, and IPad and downloadable on I-Tunes).

But part of the author's journey is also facing criticism - which every book and every author - bar none - will experience. It might not be fun, but like so many things in life which seem unpalatable at first glance (spinach, anyone?) they're incredibly good for the body as well as the soul. Book reviews are at an all-time high, and more accessible than ever - meaning that anybody with a keyboard can hurl stars or darts or accolades or opinions about books into cyberspace. Sites like Goodreads and Amazon thrive on the sugar-and-spice mix of book reviews, and the idea that I - regardless of who I am - can have a voice and an opinion is heady.

So while authors can either read or not read their reviews, they're out there. And believe me, people are reading. And writing. And posting.

What does this mean? First of all, if you're an author, it means your work is visible - and vulnerable. That's simply the nature of publishing work. We already know that not everybody's going to like our book. That's not the question. It's the bigger question of WHY - and whether or not the reviewer has a valid point that could help us to actually write a better book in the future.

It also means that at some point in time the "big one" is going to come - and you'll be faced with how to respond.

So which comments or criticisms are worth considering? Forget about hateful or nasty reviews that attack the author - those simply don't warrant your time or thought. Flush those down the toilet. You can also more or less disconsider "this book wasn't what I expected it to be" or "I just didn't like the book" reviews, since 1) you can't mind read a stranger's expectation before he or she opened the book, and 2) personal likes and tastes are entirely subjective. I've seen the same best-selling book receive both a one-star and a five-star rating at the same time, so what gives? Personal tastes and preferences, and for the same reason we have a million brands of toothpaste and breakfast cereal, we have just as many books.

However, there are a few reviews out there - inaccurate or unfair as they may be - that can actually challenge and motivate you to do better work in the future.

Here's an example. I found a review by Susan Ellingburg on Crosswalk.com quite by accident. (You can click here to read the whole thing. Her title: " 'Southern Fried Sushi' Sounded Good."

So you can guess that this isn't going to be one of my more peppy and enthusastic reviews.

You can do one of three things when you read a review like this: 1) ignore it and desperately wish to cover it up; 2) get upset and kick the dog (I don't have a dog, by the way. YET.) or 3) see if there's any grain of truth you can take away that will make you a better writer - and in fact, a better person. Susan's review isn't absolute truth, it's subjective like everyone else's. But it's a good starting point for a lesson in what can help the bitter medicine go down a bit easier.

So here, in all my "Sushi" glory, I'm going to shamelessly break down some of her main criticisms for you so you can see my own thought processes as I go through her review.

It's kind of scary, like those dreams of wearing a bath robe in public (gasp) but... why not? If readers can see me trumpet my good stuff, let them also see me display my not-so-good.

To start off, Susan writes that my characters were not "authentic" and "stereotypes."

I'd have to say that I disagree with the first assessment right off the bat. One of the most widespread praises I've received is about the authenticity of my characters. However, with the second, she's a little more on track. It wasn't until my third book manuscript revision that I realize good authors shouldn't stereotype characters: i.e., make them so common and overdone that they fail to raise interest.
It was my crit partners who helped me realize that rednecks who read Shakespeare and hippies who collect guns are far more interesting - quirky - unusual - fresh - unexpected - that the traditional, ho-hum redneck who listens to Garth Brooks and the hemp-spinning hippie. Run with it! Surprise us.

TAKEAWAY POINT: Don't let your characters die a stale death.

Susan writes more: "Here’s a prime example: the Virginia characters are poor but honest, hopelessly unfashionable, dumb but warmhearted rednecks . . . a Southern girl myself, I found their portrayal insulting."

Um... to this I'd have to beg to differ. STRONGLY. Just exactly which Virginia characters is she referring to (since all the characters outside of Japan are located in Virginia)? If she's referring to Tim and Becky, and maybe Faye and Stella, yes, they meet the "warmhearted" and "redneck" bill. However, I thought she gave a grossly exaggerated assessment here. The only character ever billed as "unfashionable" was Becky. Never once did I imply any of them were "dumb" at any point - this is simply a characterization Susan has imposed herself. Rednecks are not inherently "dumb," and I've never portrayed them as such. In fact, the one who appears "dumb" throughout the story is Shiloh herself as she tries to survive in a world more foreign to her as Japan - and where the so-called "rednecks" have the upper hand in life, love, business, money, and family relationships.

The "Virginia characters" Susan is apparently trying to refer to are only a few in a much larger circle that she's either forgotten or neglected intentionally to prove a point.

Young and modern Puerto-Rican-American Jamie Rivera, African-American model Trinity, Blake the bleeding-hearted server, Trixie the mod hair stylist with "sawed-off auburn hair," Adam, the leading man, and his Army hero brother Rick - all Staunton natives. "Redneck"? Uh... I don't think so.

The muggers in the woods at Winchester (all Virginia natives, mind you). "Warm-hearted"? Not a chance.
Jerry the successful restaurant owner - "poor"? Faye and the Donaldsons and Stella who own their own homes, work as accountant and bookkeepers, and give Shiloh financial help and advice - "poor"? This was just absurd. I couldn't even figure out where the "poor" thing came from.

In fact, in an ironic twist, Shiloh the up-and-coming Yankee journalist is the ONLY ONE IN THE ENTIRE BOOK who has financial problems at all - and is the only character who could possibly be construed as "poor."

So... sorry, Susan. This didn't stick. At all.

Okay. So now on to real issues (which yes, there are plenty of).

"Not only that, the author attempts to create their accents through transliteration, which is annoying to read. Not because Southerners don’t sound like that (several of this reviewer’s relatives are living proof that they do), but because the weird spellings get in the way and are “for shore” a constant distraction from what the characters are actually trying to say."

Now this is probably true. I had mixed reviews on the Southern dialect as it was circulating among my crit group. But once it went to press (and it went rather quickly) it was too late to edit out the worst offenders among the dialect transliterations. The best-selling book "The Help" also garnered the same criticisms. If you're read books two and three in order, you'll notice that the transliteration, while still present, was GREATLY smoothed out. (Thanks, crit partners, for your help with this!)

I should mention that I did get some positive points for the transliteration, too, as some readers said it added to the "reality" of the speech. But it's always good to keep it a bit more muted so it doesn't take over the text.

In the future, I'll be far more careful to make my text READABLE rather than accurate - even if I have to sacrifice a bit of accuracy. No, I wouldn't make a redneck say, "Would you kindly pass me a cup of tea, please?" but I might make him say, "Gimme that cup of tea, will ya?" Even though no true redneck would ever say "of," altering it too much messes up the text even visually so that it's hard to see and understand what's being said.

TAKEAWAY POINT: Don't alter speech so that it sacrifices readability. Lesson learned!

Moving on: "Shiloh herself doesn’t seem as well thought-out as she might be. For a woman with a degree from Cornell—a reporter, no less—she’s remarkably ignorant about the most random things. (One wouldn’t expect her to be familiar with collard greens but even in New York baby sheep are known as “lambs.”)

She's right. I simply have no explanation for this. Another reader criticized the scene where Shiloh makes chicken-and-dumplings with Faye, saying that chicken-and-dumplings weren't Southern at all, and that she shouldn't have been afraid of chicken. Ham hocks, maybe.

Gold star. You got me.

TAKEAWAY POINT: Make your character's limitations and flaws believable and realistic.

You can't catch everything, but you can be wiser next time and try to think of how your reader is going to perceive your work - and whether your characters flaws are really believable. I was trying to show Shiloh's bumbling country ways, and how she who was once the smart, intelligent one is suddenly on the lower end of the totem pole and seems "dumb" (to use Susan's word) in comparison to those around her whom her own mainstream urban society, ironically, looks down on. But the chicken thing, and maybe even the sheep thing? Yeah.

More from Susan: "The author also makes the classic rookie mistake of inserting a page-long sermon (do any readers not skip over those?) and later misses no opportunity to preach to her character and, by extension, to the reader. Without all the preachiness, Shiloh’s walk through loss, grief, and self-discovery would have been so much more inviting to go along."

I have to agree that she's totally right about the preachiness. (And I AM a rookie - guilty as charged). When I read back over the galley for "Sushi" after working with my crit group for many more months, I cringed. It just seemed so... preachy. I even tried to eliminate some of the preaching (literally, from the scene where there's a sermon on the car radio) in the galley, but it was too late for that, since the galley is really only for eliminating typos and very minor (limited) changes.

If I wrote the book now, I'd probably do things differently. But that's the way it is, preserved on paper and print forever. In my defense, at that point I'd 1) never been to a writer's conference or had any kind of Christian fiction writing training whatsoever and 2) was writing purely for my own personal enjoyment without the foggiest idea I'd ever be published.

But still. It's preachy. You have a captive audience, but you don't want them squirming and begging to be set free.

TAKEAWAY POINT: Don't be preachy. Avoid using sermon portions.

Amen. In fact, I have a couple of verses from the Bible to prove my point... just kidding!

TAKEAWAY POINT: Watch out for rookie blunders - especially if you're a rookie!

There are lots of those. When I started critting with GOOD writers, they all knew this amazing stuff I didn't: like how to use the element of surprise, that a standard chapter is about 3,000 words long (it is), and that you should avoid the verb "to be." It's a flat and lifeless verb. (And again, it really is!) You can avoid some of these by reading good writing books. There are gobs of them out there, and they've all done me immense good.

(BTW - I read my first writing book on the plane coming back from my first writer's conference!)
To finish: Susan's review includes a few kudos about the writing style and some comments about her disappointment with the book - that it wasn't "as good as it could be."

I have to agree with her. It wasn't - but it's what I had, and I'm honored that it's even come as far as it has. If you'd told me I'd be published, back in 2009 when I was typing away at my keyboard unaware that Roger had become an author or that Barbour Books even existed, I would have called you Looney Tunes. I simply had no idea. I wrote because, as my good friend and mentor the late Dr. Gayle Price once told me, "a writer simply can't NOT write."

And so my entire road to publication, my friends, is God's grace on the undeserving.

Undeserving and, as Susan pointed out in her "harsh" (yes, rather, I'd have to agree) review, guilty as charged. Combine these "infractions" with the other criticisms I've received, and I've found a few more takeaway points. Each and every one of those, while sometimes hard to gulp down, help me learn and grow - just like my husband, son, and I are doing daily in South Dakota. There's no sense in fearing rejection or criticism. I don't. The book is done; what's written and published can't be changed.

And while there are always growth points for writers, at the end of the day, my book was always for HIM. For the Lord. To honor him, to write as I so enjoy doing, and bring in income so I can stay home with my beautiful little boy. My beautiful little boy who will not always be little. And to create a home and environment of learning, growing, adventure, and creativity for myself and my family.

It's all His. And while I want my writing to be the best it can be, and my work to reflect His amazing creativity, it will never be perfect.

There are no perfect books. Perfect people. Perfect locations.

Although... South Dakota is pretty close, in my opinion.

And that's what I want to aim for in my writing - as close to perfection as I can be - while realizing that we're still this side of heaven. Which means "that's just how my book is" or "I didn't know better" won't cut it. We as authors need to constantly do our best to improve at our craft. We need to LEARN to know better to the best of our ability. Not so we can avoid bad reviews (that's impossible; they'll always come) but so that we can really honor God with our best work and make the most of our business. Since publishing is, well, a business. To be blunt.

Here are a few ways to improve your writing if you're really ready to invest:
* Join a local writer's group. I'm new to South Dakota, but I'm going to see if there's a writer's group available and join. Don't be put off if the other members aren't Christians or don't write Christian books. So long as you're not having to read through really gross stuff, you can definitely learn from them. They're writers.
* Share your material, ideas, and questions with other authors. Author Roger Bruner (also with Barbour Books) was my first writing mentor who read my work and believed it had potential. He guided me on every single aspect, from writing a proposal to how often to call my editor when I was in agony about whether they'd give me a contract or not. Roger, you are wonderful! Could you please clone yourself?
* Share your material, ideas, and questions with other writers. Notice I didn't say "authors" - and I don't only include published authors in my "people who write" category here on the blog. I've learned a tremendous amount from writers who are not yet published - but I'm certain will be one day.
* Share your material, ideas, and questions with other READERS. They don't even have to be writers. Roger Bruner's wife, Kathleen, was one of my biggest encouragements when I first shared my "Sushi" manuscript. She doesn't care much for writing herself, but she knows what works in fiction because she reads a lot - and was willing to share with me and give wonderful suggestions.
* Get hooked up with a critique group faster than you can say "butter on grits." I don't have enough space here to tell how much my crit partners (Jenn, Christy, Shelly, Karen) have helped me. I'll just get down on my knees and kiss their high-heeled shoes instead.
* READ GOOD FICTION. Write down what you like and don't like and what sentences or turns of words impress you. Pay attention to how good authors introduce surprise or character flaws or avoid cliche.
* Enter writing contests - even if you lose.
* Join a professional writer's organization like ICFW or ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers), and then go to their incredible once-a-year writer's conference.
* Go to a writer's conference.
* Repeat the above steps, especially the last two (since I met Jenn, my first crit partner, at an ACFW writer's conference in Indianapolis - and I'm forever indebted.

Spoiler: I was already contracted when I went to my first conference, so I sort of did things backward).

The bad news: even if you do all of these, you'll still get rejections and criticism. Work anyway. Improve anyway. Learn anyway. Grow anyway.

Because you might come away with an unexpected treat like this one, from my sweet friend Karen: "Your first book touched me in so many ways that I can't explain on Facebook. It was an oasis in a desert for me. I've re-read it so many times I practically have it memorized and you got Staunton so well!"

Or this one, from Amazon.com: "I loved reading Southern Fried Sushi so much that I stayed up most of the night to finish it! The story of Shiloh Jacobs drew me in completely. Her journey to faith with all of its twists and turns kept me engrossed in the story for hours at a time. The romantic connection between Adam and Shiloh left me dying to know what will happen next. I can't ever remember being so anxious to read a sequel. I would highly recommend this book as it Is one of the best Christian fiction books I have ever read!"

Can you believe it? That someone would write those words about MY book? Flawed as it is?

A miracle. Like the snow-dusted cobalt mountains in the distance, and all the trees outside our windows coming up green lace- as opposed to the ninety degree temps and discarded trash outside our expensive Brasilia flat. The grocery store full of cheap American food that I can whip up in minutes (rather than cooking beans for two hours). The crisp air and open sky I thought I'd never see again, and the wonder of enjoying it all with my beautifully Brazilian husband and son--and now our unexpected little one on the way, pushing out my belly.

It's all a gift.

Our transition to greater glory with Christ.

And for the moment, it feels pretty sweet.

---

Jennifer's debut novel, "Southern Fried Sushi," has been nominated as a Christy Award finalist for 2012 - despite all her inept mistakes. She and her Brazilian husband and son relocated from Brazil to rural South Dakota just before Christmas, and Jenny is (surprise) expecting - after eight years of infertility. Seems like the Black Hills are quite agreeable!

---
Disclaimer: I actually do like spinach very much. My apologies to spinach if I've portrayed you as negative in any way. Please forgive me?

Nearer To Thee

 This song came to mind this morning (click here to hear a beautiful version sung by the Sharon Singers of the Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute), and I listened, eyes closed.

Such a deep and powerful hymn - so close to my heart. I did not learn it from the "Titanic" movie, or from Elvis "singing the gospel." I grew up finding it in the dusty pages of the old green Baptist hymnal, or listening to its mournful, haunting tones echo against the wooden rafters of the Mennonite church of my mother's childhood.

It sums up everything I feel and long to say, now and forever.

Listen with me:

Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me;
Still all my song shall be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!


Can you fathom what this is saying? That through any means, whether suffering or death or cross or shame, I am willing - if it brings me nearer to Christ. It is looking back on these days of agony at Hospital de Base in Brasilia, Brazil with our son, when he underwent emergency surgery for hydrocephalus and a clogged valve/shunt. Our little one's needle-punctured hand and cold fingers tucked in ours, and saying yes. His poor bandaged head, his stitches, and his tears, and saying yes.


Why us? Why Ethan? Why this child, why the blockage in the tube? The only answer I know is yes. So long as it draws us closer to You, then yes, Lord.

After all, I could ask the same questions another way: Why were we chosen to love and care for Ethan? Why this child for us, and not another - and how are we so fortunate - so blessed beyond all reason? Why this child born into a country with medical care and free neurosurgery where millions die on the side of the roads from disease, from starvation, from war and neglect? Why a mere blockage that was swiftly corrected, and not a terminal disease?

And this time we fall on our faces in thanks for yes.

For yes always means nearer. Nearer, my God, to Thee.

Is this not the whole goal of life? Of every breath? To draw nearer to Christ in his life and in his sufferings? To know Him more fully, and become more like Him in his love and in his death?

I think of another yes more than fifteen years ago, on a green hillside in Churchville, Virginia. A gray granite stone marked with my mother's name. In memory of the day she burst forth in life in 1952, and the day she said yes to God's call to come home forever. Walking in obedience and faith, day after day.


Ask her now if she regrets her following, her faith. Ask her now, secure with her Savior and resting at last in the Everlasting Arms, if God's often difficult will for her life, for her early death, was unfair.

No - for now her dreams have been fulfilled.

Nearer. She is nearer to her God - she is with him! - as we all will be. She tastes now the joy that we all secretly long for, with every heartbeat and every breath.

And that's it exactly: the secret we try so hard to avoid. That God is good no matter what, and His plans for our life are good as well.

"God is good," people said when we heard the joyful news that Ethan's CT scan showed a wonderful blank gray of healthy, fluid-free brain tissue, and his life and healing may continue. And He is good!

But God was good, too, fifteen years ago when we lay my mother's body to rest in the cold February ground at a mere forty-three years of age.

He would still be good if the scan was bad, if the neurologist came to the operating room door with a bowed head and teary eyes, if the car we got into after the hospital never made it home. He would still be good.

Because He is good.

There is no other way for Him to be otherwise.

Read with me the rest of the words to the hymn:

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I'd be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

There let the way appear steps unto heav'n;
All that Thou sendest me in mercy giv'n;
Angels to beckon me nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
Then with my waking thoughts bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise;
So by my woes to be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

I think of the story of Jacob in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, as he fled from his brother Esau. He slept on the ground with a stone under his head, and God sent him an amazing dream of stairs leading to heaven, with angels ascending and descending on its bright steps. "Jacob's ladder," we call it.

Where else have we seen this image in the Bible? We find it again with the stoning of Stephen in the book of Acts, when he looked up and said, "I see heaven open, and angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

Of course! The Son of Man - Jesus Christ Himself - who bridges the gap between earthly us and the perfect Father. The precious link between heaven and earth. The tower of Babel that the ancients tried unsucessfully to build - why? Because they needed Him. His sacrifice and atoning death.

Without the Bridge, the Ladder, we cannot reach the righteousness of God.

We don't need Babel and confused syntax. We need the WORD. The clear and understandable Word that speaks to us, and for us. For "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Jacob's ladder - and ours, too. That brings us nearer, my God, to Thee.
It is the only thing we will ever need.

Or if on joyful wing, cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upwards I fly,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

Forever, from now until my last breath, all I need is Jesus.

In every joyful moment, all I need is Jesus.



In every God-given, sacred, shimmering moment of tear-filled thanks, all I need is Jesus. To say yes. And so to draw nearer - nearer to Thee.

All I can say are the words of Job, after God appeared to him in the windstorm: "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”

For I do not deserve this:



And yet when I open my eyes, he is there. With his shy smile and stitched head, which has grown into thick and beautiful curls. Scars forgotten. Life, and health, and joy! After five months we can no longer tell the place of his incisions. "He needs another haircut," my father says.

A gift. God's gift.

All of it. The pain and the sorrow. The delight.

Every moment, as long as as I live.

For all of it brings me, moment by moment, nearer to Thee.
--

Jennifer Rogers Spinola is a writer, author, and speaker who just relocated from Brasilia, Brazil - after two years in Sapporo, Japan - to rural Belle Fourche, South Dakota, with her Brazilian husband and son. Her second book with Barbour Publishing, "Like Sweet Potato Pie," released March 1.

Thinking of Good-bye

It's been three months today since the little EmbraAir jet (Brazilian, appropriately) taxied onto the snowy runway in Rapid City, South Dakota. Through frosty plane windows, my son, Ethan, and I watched tropical fields of banana trees and red Brazilian clay fade into ocean, into night, and then into snow-dusted patches of prairie flanked by rugged Black Hills.

We have left Brazil and made our home in South Dakota - for good. My husband joined us in December, and I cannot remember a time I've been happier. All the years stored up waiting have finally come to pass. We are here - we are home!

And yet we have not forgotten all the faces and days we left behind in warm Brazil, where afternoons smell of sunlight and dried leaves, of summer grasses and salt breeze and hibiscus blooms.

Here is something I wrote back in September, never imagining that two short months later I'd be buying American furniture and winter coats and car insurance.

And yet - by some strange miracle, we are.

--

Sept. 3, 2011

I’m sitting here in the Galeão terminal overlooking Rio’s misty, jagged mountains. Lighter spots of favela housing dotting the hillsides like patchwork quilting. A heavy, gray tropical sky. Yesterday I saw the beach, a clear gray-blue under overcast skies, and pale, wheat-colored sand like sugar. Soft as powder beneath our feet. We stripped off Ethan’s shoes and he jumped and danced, barefoot, leaping and rolling and tossing handfuls like he’d been marooned at sea for months. “A mess!” he said in giddy joy, sifting handfuls down over his brown toes.

I just checked in at an automatic check-in machine, entering my numbers and making the mistake of punching “English” for the language option and choosing my nationality as “The United States of America.” Because then, of course, the machine promptly asked for my passport number. Which I didn’t have with me because I don't carry my passport for domestic flights. “You should have said you nationality was Brazilian,” smiled the TAM worker as she helped me punch in my RNE (foreigner’s ID) number instead.

I wheeled my single small suitcase through security, speaking and answering in Portuguese, and found the gate myself. A man just came over to ask me if I’d picked up an Internet connection at the airport. And no, I hadn’t. In fact I couldn’t get one yesterday, either, at the Maingots’ house, because I'd inadvertantly messed up the wireless configuration on my laptop.

All of this I told him in Portuguese without thinking twice. Then I turned back to my laptop to finish editing my third novel and watch the planes take off across dove-gray morning. The mountains disappear, jagged, into the deep, dark, tropical haze like they did in years ago in Fiji.



All at once tears spring close to the surface as I realize, for perhaps the first time, the extent of what I will leave behind. This trip to Rio—our morning spent in the American consulate—has just nearly finished our process for immigration. As soon as they receive my tax forms and Athos’ police report from Japan, they’ll mail us the visas we need for Athos' green card. Ethan will become an American citizen the minute he sets foot in an American airport. We can count the months now, and perhaps even the weeks. The process has gone staggeringly fast—so fast that we are not quite ready for it. I felt the same way in 2009 when, from Monday to Saturday, we became parents of a fragile infant. The mess, the cribs, the trying to figure out how to use a diaper and a bottle—all sprung on us in a few days’ time.

Now I sit here and stare out at the moody runway, a straw color through the tinted glass, and realize that, in a few short months, we will step off the plane into blustery South Dakota winter. Equally unprepared. Our suitcases filled with linen pants and green-and-yellow short-sleeved soccer jerseys. Sleeveless silk blouses and strappy sandals and thin cotton skirts. Jobless and homeless and wondering, as I did the day we carried that warm little bundle into our tiny, one-bedroom-apartment living room and put him in a borrowed crib: "Have we done the right thing? Can we possibly live up to the enormous responsibility required of us, and can we make it work? Make it a blessing?”

“Do we have what it takes?”

“Are we what it takes?"

Suddenly it hits me: For the first time in ten years, I will leave behind my international life. I will no longer be exotic, odd, a curiosity. I wonder, with the first tingles of apprehension, if I will forget my Portuguese. The way my Japanese disappeared, like a reluctant cat, under the bed—toe by toe. Until I can barely coax it out into the light.

I will no longer breeze through international security lines at huge airports in São Paulo and Atlanta, switching languages as easily as I switch international documents. No more chatting in Portuguese about Brazilian soccer while I wend my way through the quicker “Brazilian” line. No more switching coins and currencies. No more blast of warm, tropical air as the airport doors swing open, Brasilia’s concrete terminal verdant with plants and glinting from rippling reflecting pools.

No more chilly green coconuts hacked open with a knife, in three perfect strokes, and pierced with a straw—the severed wedge given as a spoon to cut out the jelly-like white interior. No more macaws screeching from the trees as I run in early morning coolness just before sun-filled heat. No more nodding hibiscus flowers or clear-water beaches or fresh payapas and pineapples, like the sweet, pale yellow cubes I ate this morning for breakfast.



No more bitter Brazilian cafezinho coffee, piping hot and sugary-sweet, in tiny demitasse cups and saucers. No more golden loaves of ubiquitous French bread. No more fresh-squeezed orange juice or mangoes or bananas fresh from the tree at Athos’ grandfather’s farm, or walks through his plantations of blue-silver cabbages and striped zucchinis—dry red soil clinging to our shoes. No more round limes plucked from the limb or thick layers of dark coffee beans roasting in the open sun. No more conversations with my brother-in-law Kyle while we sit in his parents’ wooden house, rain pouring down outside in heavy sheets.

No more sultry bossa nova, at least not without a twinge of what-used-to-be-familiar-now-turned-exotic. No more airline instructions that I understand in either Portuguese or English, and do not remember which language was used. No more palm trees or beach-swept, salty hair or pungent scents of espresso or sautéing garlic.

No more TAM, and no more Brazilian phone numbers with the Brasilia (61) prefix code. I will not need to write +55 in front of my phone number or “BRAZIL” after my address.

After hours in the over-air-conditioned American consulate Friday morning, Athos and Ethan and I walked under palm trees, past tropical blooms and chattering macaws toward Botafogo. Then I took off my fancy heels and walked in the sand along the beach, listening to the waves roar and crash against the beach of Praia do Flamengo. Past empty cabanas where vendors sell coconuts, soccer jerseys, beer, and flip-flops during the summer months. Right across from those black-and-white wave-patterned sidewalk tiles—Portuguese in origin, yet so distinctively Brazilian.

Eternal summer, for better or for worse, is about to become a distant memory. Replaced by snow and cold noses and bitter mornings and brown autumn leaves and simple American addresses and phone numbers and postal codes. When I attend the American Christian Writer’s Conference, I will no longer be “the girl from Brazil.” I’ll be instead “the girl from South Dakota,” with a normal life and a normal residence. Only that I’m not really from South Dakota. I’m from Virginia, but I’m not really from Virginia, either. I’m from South Carolina. Although I’ve never really lived in South Carolina. It’s complicated, really—when who you are becomes somehow who you are not at the same time.



Should we move? Of course we should. We’ve been waiting for this day nearly seven years. I can’t wait to drive a car again. To speak in English and not answer questions constantly about where I’m from. To buy American clothes that fit me, and pay American prices that leave me with a little (or in some cases a lot) more left in my wallet. To earn money again instead of dividing precious reais with my husband and coming up short, all in hopes that we can both pay our bills for the week. To be near my family for a chance—my friends, my memories—and remember a bit the girl I used to be. Back before I left first for North Carolina and then for Japan so many years ago.

More importantly, Athos needs to go. He’s been blocked in here with his education and his job opportunities, neither going up nor forward, nor finding jobs in other cities, and we find our possibilities and assets decreasing almost daily in super-expensive Brasilia, which now boasts a higher cost of living than New York City. Athos needs the peacock fan of opportunities the U.S. can provide—in jobs, in career options, in movement, in locality, and in personal growth. He plans to get his master’s in the U.S.—more cheaply, more quickly, and with a wider array of choices, each of which suit him brilliantly.

My family needs to know Athos, the Brazilian in-law they love but know only as a distant acquaintance who appears in letters, notes, and occasional phone conversations. And Ethan needs to know his American family. The American life God has given him, too, which is equally as important as his Brazilian life—which he knows virtually nothing about.



We want to homeschool, which is illegal here. We want to drive and live in a relatively safer environment, pay lower taxes, choose our own schooling, and earn money to bless others, buy our first home, and adopt again. We want to plant a garden and show Ethan how a tomato grows—in our own backyard. We want him to run free, learning about trees and soil and animals and rugged life, rather than living out of a city apartment and running with whatever ill-behaved neighborhood children happen to congregate below us. We want him to step over snowdrifts and blooming columbines rather than discarded toilet paper and snack wrappers.

It’s done. We decided to move back to the U.S. ages ago, prayed toward it, and when the doors began to open, they opened so rapidly we nearly had to run to hold them back so we’d be ready. Life is never static--always moving, always changing. We cannot dig in our heels and refuse to change when the world around us is shifting, squeezing our family in directions we don't like. The time is coming; the time is nearly now. We will move forward with confidence.

For God's presence will follow us wherever we go--surrounding us like the pillars of fire and cloud as the Israelites camped on the banks of the Red Sea.

Yet I remember now, sitting here in the gray morning of the airport: that whenever we give up something, even for the exponentially better, there is always, always a loss.

I feel it. A little twinge of something sorrowful, a sob rising below the surface. That yes, Brazil, the land I once called the land of my dreams, the place that has torn me from blessing to torment and back again, I will miss you.

I cannot stay here, but I will miss you.

Seven years has woven you into my life like the patterns on a homespun hammock—in glistening, brilliant colors and darkened bands. Beautiful and deceptively strong.

And I will always carry a piece of you with me, wherever I go—like the ivory sand that sifted from my cuffs from when I unrolled my jeans after walking on Praia do Flamengo.


Jennifer Rogers Spinola lives in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, with her Brazilian husband, Athos, and three-year-old son, Ethan. She has lived in Brazil for nearly eight years and served as a missionary to Japan for two years. Jenny is the author of Barbour Books' "Southern Fried Sushi" series (second book released March 1, 2012) and an upcoming romance novella collection based on Yellowstone National Park (also with Barbour Books).

Guest Post: Southern Fried Writer

By Jennifer Rogers Spinola

I know many readers assume that since we international writers live abroad, we probably can’t wait to fill up our novels with details about sugar-white Brazilian beaches, ice-cold coconut water, and hot, salty, sand-like farofa manioc flour, right?

Nope. Not for me, anyway.

People often ask me—an American who’s been living in Brazil more than seven years now and two years in Japan before that—how Brazil figures into my writing, and especially my debut novel series. Well, simply from the title, “Southern Fried Sushi,” you can tell my mind is somewhere else.

Precisely.

Because many times, in the grunt and strain and sweat of pushing a heavy baby stroller on broken sidewalks in the tropical heat, or cheeks reddening as I make one more mistake in Portuguese and everybody in the grocery store or overcrowded bus turns to gawk at me, the misplaced American, I wish I WAS somewhere else. Somewhere familiar. Somewhere I’m not introduced as an American (and subsequently judged, according to the hearer’s opinion). Somewhere I can buy peanut butter and grits and not have to explain ANY of it. Somewhere where I could regress back into my un-teacher-like Southern drawl, or look around the table and see everyone holding and cutting with a knife and fork like I do, and don’t have to answer the hundredth (antagonistic) question about Bush or American international policies—while two listeners whisper and giggle together about my accent.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Brazil. I’ve loved Brazil since my first trip here as a journalist in 2000, holding dust-streaked children in rural slums near the Pantanal. It was my dream to come back. My husband and son are both Brazilian, digging into black beans and rice, pouring on the farofa, and shouting “GOLLLLLL!” at every soccer match. And I jump in with the best of them.

But—under my tropical-sun-tanned skin and deceptively Brazilian long haircut and Havaiana flip-flops—I am simply. Not. Brazilian.

I am American. A South Carolina-born Virginia native. A lover of the Rocky Mountains and ice-cold streams and mist-covered pines. A NASCAR-watching, corn-shucking, bluegrass-loving Southerner who’s somehow detoured in countries far from her own. And that’s okay. That’s my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So what does this have to do with fiction writing? For me, everything.

Instead of writing about the environment I find myself in, I often find myself turning to writing—a blank page or a white Word document—to unburden my emotions. The places I miss. The memories I hold dear. The Fourth of July fireworks I don’t see, and snowfalls I long so deeply to feel against my face, just for a moment. A breath of crisp fall that I have nearly lost in years among sunshine and palms.

And so I write.

From this my first published novels were born. I thought, again, one January morning, of the places I missed. The smell of black powder and fall woodsmoke and delicate spring hyacinths. The slope of dusty purple Blue Ridge Mountains. Even the tang of soy sauce and clatter of the Japanese subway system that I’d come to love, and—like everything else—left behind in a blur of visas and passport stamps.

If you’re longing for familiar places, or even longing for some inspiration, consider your past. It may be that, like me, your old loves, and even old hates-turned-loves, will reward you with passion, details, and emotions that you never thought possible.

Jennifer Rogers Spinola lives in Brasilia, Brazil with her Brazilian husband, Athos, and two-year-old son, Ethan. She teaches ESL private classes and is the author of Barbour Books' "Southern Fried Sushi" series (first book releasing in October and now available for pre-order here!) and an upcoming romance novella collection based on Yellowstone National Park (also with Barbour Books). Jenny is an advocate for adoption and loves the outdoors, photography, writing, and camping. She has previously served as a missionary to Japan, a middle- and high-school teacher, and National Park Service volunteer. Jenny has a B.A. in English/journalism from Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina.


Valerie Comer's life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local foods movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily ever afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughter.

She is represented by Joyce Hart of Hartline Literary Agency and has recently sold her first work, a novella, to Barbour Books. Visit her website and blog to glimpse inside her world.