Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 98

Updates on What I’m Writing and I’ll Be in Kansas City, Missouri Next Month

I have now hit the halfway point with two works in progress (I’m working on four total but the last two at slower paces and as I get around to them).  Since I hit the halfway point on the two main ones, I feel that I can safely mention them on this blog.  I don’t think they’ll come as a surprise since I mentioned them in my October newsletter and have mentioned them on this blog already.

A Most Unsuitable Earl

I decided to change the title of A Most Unsuitable Husband to A Most Unsuitable Earl.  The great thing about this book is that it’s a comedy.  I love writing serious works, but it’s also nice to laugh.  Fortunately, the hero’s reaction to a lot of things happening around him is what makes it a comedy.  Long ago, I’ve learned it’s not the circumstance a character’s in that makes things funny; it’s how the character reacts to the circumstance that can make something funny or not.  And a lot of it depends on the character.  Some characters have a tendency to exaggerate in a comical way while others tend to take things seriously.  Ethan (our hero in this book) is definitely the type to exaggerate everything.  :D

Mitch’s Win

Mitch’s Win is the book I plan to submit to a publisher or two.  I don’t know if this book has any chance or not.  I’ve already decided I’m keeping the sex in the book and keeping mention of going to church in there, too.  The two might not work together for a publisher.  I decided to embrace self-publishing for my romance titles back in 2009 because I mixed my Christian values with steamy romances, and I found that I couldn’t go with a publisher and keep the two together.  Will I still find the same roadblock?  I don’t know.  But I do love self-publishing so it wouldn’t be a problem to keep self-publishing.  The only drawback is that a publisher does offer as a buffer between some things happening at online bookstores.  (I don’t want to go into detail, but let’s suffice it to say when you self-publish, you are your only advocate and that can be stressful.)

I’ll be in Kansas City, Missouri Next Month

Next month, I’ll be going to the Heart of America Christian Writer’s Network’s annual fall conference in Kansas City, Missouri.  So if any of you happen to be in the area, it’d be fun to say hi and sign some books for you.  :D

The conference is from November 8-11.  I’m going with Janet Syas Nitsick (a friend and fellow author who lives in the same town I do).  We’ll be giving a workshop together, which we started preparing yesterday.  I’m both excited and nervous since this will be my first public speaking engagement as a writer, and I’m glad Janet will be there since she has experience in this area and can walk me through it.

So if any of you are in that area, let me know!  :D

Nothing is Sexier Than a Historical Western Hero

So now that I’ve written fantasy, contemporaries, Regencies, and I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing is sexier than a historical western hero.

The ideal hero.

Now, I should offer the disclaimer that when I say “sexy,” I don’t mean, “Let’s talk about sex.” To me, the quality of being sexy isn’t about how a man looks when he takes off his shirt or his sexual prowess in the bedroom.  (You’ll notice the picture of my ideal hero is of a man who is fully clothed.)  I understand that the word “sexy” is often used on a physical level.  It’s like hearing a woman say, “Oh, he’s eye candy.  I’d have sex with him.” What I mean when I say “sexy” hero goes a lot deeper than that.  Sexy is about attractiveness in personality.  It’s what defines a hero’s character, especially in how he treats the heroine.

The historical western hero, esp. the cowboy or farmer represent qualities that I find desirable in men, and these are qualities I like to give every hero I write about.

1. He works hard.

This is the kind of man who isn’t afraid of hard work.  If it takes from sunup to sundown, he’ll put in the hours it takes to provide for his family.

2.  He protects his loved ones.

He guards the wellbeing of his family and friends to the point where he’d sacrifice his life if it means keeping them safe.

3. He believes his word is his bond.

If he says he’ll do something, he does everything in his power to do it.

4. He stands up for what he believes in.

Even in the midst of adversity, this is the kind of man who stands by what he believes.  The rest of the world may change around him and he might face persecution for standing his ground, but he remains firm in his convictions.

5. He shows respect to others.

He treats others the way he’d want to be treated.  He’s polite and kind.  If he sees someone who needs help, he steps in to offer a helping hand without thought to any reward.

6.  He honors his father and his mother.

If his parents need assistance, he’s there to lend a helping hand.  He remembers that they once took care of him, and in their old age, he returns the favor.

7.  He’s tender in his affections to his wife and children.

He lets his wife and children know he loves them.  He hugs and kisses his wife outside the bedroom, and he’ll hug and offer comfort to his children.

So those are the main qualities I think makes a hero sexy.  I understand that no man is perfect, but these are qualities I believe are important for all of my heroes to strive for.  It seems to me that historical westerns best portray the type of man I like my heroes to be.  He’s masculine.  He’s smart.  He’s strong.  He has integrity.  He’s the head of the family, but he leads his family with gentleness and love (not with an iron fist).

Of all the genres I’ve written, it’s easiest to portray my ideal hero in historical westerns, mostly because the historical mindset of the United States best supports this type of hero.  It’s why I love writing and reading historical westerns the most.  

Inspiration for the Book: Bound by Honor, Bound by Love (Citlali’s Dream)

Citlali’s life revolved around his heritage, so his dream (which I presented in the Sunday Story Sample) was interwoven with the religious beliefs of his tribe.

The Mandans had a couple variations of the creation story, but in each one the Lone Man was a central figure.  He and the Creator had a disagreement, and the Lone Man took the land north of the Missouri River and the Creator took the land south of the river.  They both created different things, but the Lone Man was responsible for creating people.

He was also responsible for protecting the Mandan people, and when the great flood came, the Lone Man built a wall around the Mandan tribe so they survived it.  This was why Citlali dreamt of the impregnable wall that surrounded the tribe.  No one could get in and no one could get out of the tribe.  In this case the Lone Man’s wall symbolized the struggle Citlali and the chief faced in trying to protect their culture while the white man’s influence got stronger and stronger around them.

When Citlali had this dream, there was a conflict between him him and Onawa.  He knew that by following the chief’s orders, he was pushing her away from him since he was making her choose between him and her family.  He was afraid she was going to choose her family, and in his dream, she did.  In his dream, she tried to climb the wall but couldn’t get out, so she opted to dig a hole and go underground.

In the Mandan myths, they believed some Mandans lived under the ground.  One Mandan myth gives the account of the underground Mandan tribe as being the original tribe.  One day, someone climbed a grapevine and found the surface of the earth.  He returned to tell the others about the wonders he found, and they followed him up the grapevine.   When half the people were on the earth’s surface, the grapevine broke, so half the people were stuck under the ground forever and the others were stuck on the earth’s surface.

So in the dream, Onawa found the underground tribe, and the people there helped her get to the surface.  While there she met the Lone Man who was their creator, and he led her to the sacred bundle.  Sacred bundles were very important to the Mandans.  They would marry to acquire them into their lodges (which is why Citlali married Onawa at the beginning of the book).  It was a sacred bundle that brought Citlali and Onawa together (at their wedding), and in his dream, it was a sacred bundle that would permanently tear them apart.  And when she opened the sacred bundle the Lone Man gave her, she ate the corn inside the sacred bundle and became a white woman.

By becoming white, she had embraced the white man’s way and fully removed herself from Citlali.  During this time (the early 1900s) in the Mandan history, there was a struggle the Mandans went through to preserve their way of life, and they struggled to have more full-blooded Mandan children, which was why the men were encouraged to have more than one wife (women outnumbered the men).  As we know from history, this was a lost cause.  The last full-blooded Mandan died in the early 1970s.

In the book, Citlali was having to come to terms with the inevitable reality that the white man’s influence had penetrated the Mandan’s way of life so deeply that there was no going back.  That’s why in the dream, Onawa became white and forgot him.  Citlali had to make the choice between his love for Onawa (which included accepting the changes coming to the tribe) or the chief’s mandate (which was an effort to do everything possible to keep the Mandan line pure).

Onawa giving birth to the white child had a double meaning.  One was that he would never had a place in his child’s life (because Onawa was pregnant at this time in the book), and two was that he saw a day when his descendants would no longer be full-blooded Mandans.

So there you go.  That’s the symbolism behind Citlali’s dream.  :D

Sunday Sample Scene: Bound by Honor, Bound by Love

For today’s sample scene, I thought I’d choose a dream that Citlali has in Bound by Honor, Bound by Love.

The dream has a couple layers in it that has to do with some of my research of the Mandan Indians.  Since I wasn’t able to describe the meaning behind this dream in my book (because that would break the flow of the story), I will give the meaning behind it in my next post.  :D

Citlali closed his eyes and waited for Onawa to come to him.  Seconds turned into minutes, and by the time a half hour had passed, he gave up counting the seconds.  She was in no hurry to see him, and who could blame her?  He was lucky she bothered coming back to his lodge at all.

He finally drifted off into a fitful sleep.  In it, he caught images of an impregnable wall that circled the entire village.  All full-blooded Mandans were locked inside, and Onawa was unable to see Julia, Woape, her nieces, and her father.  She tried to climb the wall to get outside, but when that didn’t work, she dug a hole until she reached the underground tribe of Mandans who never made it to the surface of the earth.  They showed her a passage that took her above the ground, and the Lone Man led her to the river where a large sacred bundle led her to the people she loved.

Woape and her father and nieces were all white.  Their heritage had been removed from them, and Onawa took the corn from the sacred bundle and it transformed her into a white woman.  She gave birth to a white child.  Woape asked who the father was.  Onawa said the chief of the white man was the father, adding that she loved him.  When Woape asked about Citlali, Onawa said she never knew someone by that name.

At that point, Citlali woke up, his heart pounding loudly in his ears.  He had no idea how long he slept, but beside him, the bed was still empty.

Bound by Honor Bound by Love is Now Available!

It’s now live on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords for anyone who wants to read it!

Amazon | B&N | Smashwords

I don’t know when it’ll be up on Kobo, Sony, Diesel, or iTunes, but I hear Smashwords is getting books up faster to these channels.

Inspiration for the Native American Romance Series

Bound by Honor Bound by Love should be available in a day or two on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  I just uploaded it today.  I already have it on Smashwords, but I’m waiting until it’s up on the other channels to give out the links.

On Sunday, I’m going to post the dream Citlali has in the book, and on Monday, I’ll give the background behind the dream because a lot of his dream stemmed from the Mandan myths and things that were going on in his life at the time.

But for today, I thought I’d give the overall background for the entire Native American Romance Series.  :D

Believe it or not, it all started around May 2009 when I wrote Meant To Be.  Yeah, I know.  Meant To Be never coincides with the Native American Romance Series, but there was a romantic subplot in Meant To Be between Cole Hunter and Penelope.  Cole Hunter was the bad guy turned good in Meant To Be.  I found I enjoyed Cole and Penelope’s story so much, I wanted to write their story in more detail, especially Penelope’s background.  So I wrote the novella “A Chance In Time.”

I was chatting with a friend who said it was sad that Penelope was unable to have children, so I decided to give her a child through adoption.  But to do this, I need a pregnant woman.  That’s why Penelope brought the Mandan Indian woman the white people called “Martha” to her home after Cole left for Fargo.

But as I wrote “A Chance In Time,” I knew that Martha hadn’t been raped by a white man.  I knew that Martha had loved the white man who was the father of her baby, and I knew that no one else would ever know the truth unless I wrote Martha’s story.  The original plan was for Martha to die in childbirth so Penelope would get a child that way.  Since I decided to let Martha live, I had to find another way for Penelope and Cole to have children.  Someone told me about orphan trains from that time period, so I decided to have Penelope and Cole adopt two Mandan children.

But that still left me with what to do with Martha and sharing her story.  I decided that Martha’s real name was Woape (which means Hope), and I started her story.  I had no idea how she was going to end up pregnant and alone, but I knew that had to be the central part of the story.  My original plan was to have a white man rescue her, marry her, die, and leave her pregnant and on the run from the Sioux Indians who were feared by the Mandan Indians.  The Sioux had a tendency to be violent while the Mandans sought peace whenever possible and only resorted to fighting when they were attacked.  (This was based on my research.)

I was able to connect Woape up with Penelope in Restoring Hope, but (as you all know), I couldn’t kill Gary off.  So I opted to make everyone think he was dead.  My original plan was for Woape to return to the tribe, marry Citlali, and learn to love him.  But since Gary threw a wrench in those plans, I had to go with the alternate route the characters took me on.  This led to the subplot of Gary’s sister, Julia, and Chogan searching for him after they realized he wasn’t dead after all, and it offered Julia a means of atonement for her sins.  While I was finishing Restoring Hope, I knew Julia and Chogan could have a great story, but it would be better off if I didn’t go into it until I wrote their book.  I also realized I wanted Woape’s sister was in love with Citlali and thought it would be fun to see Citlali happy.

So I wrote Brave Beginnings to give Julia and Chogan their story.  That book turned out to be a lot longer than I expected since Ernest took a prominent role.  With my writing, the characters take over.  They’ll do what they want, and my original plan was for the book to be a novella where it ended with Julia choosing Chogan and marrying him.  But it turned out Julia wanted to marry Chogan right away, and Ernest was upset and wanted his revenge.  So I let them lead the course through the book, which was actually better than I hoped since Citlali got some time in that book that helped me figure out who he was.  I never got a good handle on Citlali until I wrote Brave Beginnings.  It turned out he wasn’t anything like Woape or Chogan thought.

The final book in the Native American Romance Series is Bound by Honor Bound by Love, and since it is the last book, it had to complete the underlying themes I had started with Restoring Hope.  The main theme was the historical reality that the Mandan tribe suffered greatly from the Smallpox epidemic, and they struggled to replenish their numbers by encouraging the men to have more than one wife (so one man would marry the oldest female and her younger sisters).  This was the norm at that time.  It was also permitted for the females to marry as young as fourteen to start having children sooner, but I couldn’t bring myself to make Onawa that young so I opted to make her sixteen.  The same was true for Woape.  She was around sixteen to seventeen.  This was a matter of historical accuracy since they did allow a couple women to wait until they were sixteen.        On the same side of the coin, Gary and Citlali had to be younger than my average hero so there was no huge gap in ages.  My average hero is 23-25 and my average heroine is 20-22.  (Keep in mind, that’s the average, not the rule for all of them.)

In addition to the Mandan’s struggle to preserve their lineage, I also wanted to address more of their customs.  I had plans to write about a buffalo hunt, but given the fact that Citlali wasn’t much of a hunter, I had to stick with more of the politics in the tribe, which stemmed directly from the first chief.  There were two chiefs in a Mandan tribe, and though Citlali was young, his dedication to the tribe and his cool head enabled him to be the second chief by the time Brave Beginnings was written.  Upon the chief’s death, he’d become the first chief and choose a second chief.  But since he was not the first chief, he had to take his orders from the first chief, and this provided the conflict necessary for the book.

The final theme was tying up the happy endings for all the couples who were a part of the series.  So I went into what happened with Woape and Gary, Julia and Chogan, Julia’s Aunt even found someone (I always felt she needed a man), Penelope and Cole (and their children), and Onawa and Citlali.  Penelope and Cole were briefly addressed in Restoring Hope, and I wanted to answer the question about the background of the Mandan children they adopted in Bound by Honor Bound by Love.  So I brought them back to answer the question of “how did those children end up on the orphan train?”

The series does end on a bittersweet note.  Citlali and Onawa get their happy ending.   A happy ending for the hero and heroine is a must in a romance (in my opinion), but the reality of what happened with the Mandans couldn’t be ignored while I wrote the series either.  Since the last full-blooded Mandan died in the 1970s, there was no way I could end the series on a completely joyful note, but what I tried to do was provide a resolution that was realistic and respectful of the Mandan legacy.

Sample Scene From “A Husband for Margaret”: Margaret Realizes Four Boys Are A Lot of Work

A week before I wrote this scene, I went through a situation where one of my kids had diarrhea run down his legs, so I had to clean him up, get laundry going, manage the other kids were running around the house getting into trouble, and dealing with a phone call all at the same time.  I modified some details for the book, but how overwhelmed Margaret felt was exactly the way I felt.  :D

Margaret wiped the sweat from her brow as she bathed Charles.  Charles giggled, filled the cup with water, and dumped it on his head.  This sent him into another round of giggles before he filled the cup again.  She breathed a sigh of relief and turned from the metal tub set to the side of the kitchen.

“Doug, can you hand me that towel?” she called out.

She went to the other tub and added more soap to the hot water before she scrubbed Charles’ pants on the washboard.

Doug dutifully came over to her with the towel in his hands.

She motioned for him to give the towel to Charles when Bob came running into the room.  “Ben’s on the work table!”

A glance over her shoulder showed her that, sure enough, Ben had dragged a chair across the floor and was standing up on the table.  Without a thought, she dropped the pants and rushed to get Ben down, but it was too late.  He’d already reached up on a nearby shelf and pulled down the canister of sugar.  As she pulled it out of his arms, the lid popped off and some of the brown sugar settled to the table and floor.  Before Ben could bend down to lick it off the table, she put the canister down, picked him up and placed him in the highchair.

“Doug, how do I get this tray in?” she asked.

She struggled to make the thing fit, even as Ben squirmed out of his seat.  She grunted and set him back down just in time for Doug to reach her and latch the tray into place.  She took a deep breath to settle her nerves.  Alright.  She’d get Charles out of the bath and dressed.  Then she’d tackle the sugar.

“Uh…Ma?” Bob placed Charles’ new clothes on the kitchen table.

“What?” She spun around in time to see Bob pointing to Charles who was dumping cupfuls of water out of the tub.  “Charles!  Stop!”

She avoided the sugar-coated floor and hastened to the happy boy.

“Here’s the towel, Ma.” Doug shoved it in her face as she took the cup from Charles.

She stared at the towel and tried to decide what to do first.  Did she take care of Charles or the large puddle on the floor?  Everything was happening so fast.  If everything would just stop for one moment, she could figure out how to best do what and in what order.

“Get more towels for Ma,” Doug told Bob.

Bob bounded out of the room, and before she could warn him to avoid the sugar, he jumped over the spot.  She breathed a sigh of relief.  At least one thing was going right!  The last thing she needed was to track sugar through the house.  She took the towel and mopped up the floor as best as she could.  Then when Bob returned, once again jumping over the sugar, she got Charles out of the tub and dried him off.

Someone knocked on the front door and she groaned.  Of all times, why did someone have to stop by now?

“I’ll get it, Ma!” Doug bounded out of the kitchen.

She wiped the sweat from her face with the towel and threw it down so she could put a clean diaper on Charles.  Granted, the kitchen table probably wasn’t the best place to do this, but the floor was still damp.

Bob shook his head.  “You pinned it in wrong.  It should go the other way.”

Sighing, she removed the safety pin and turned it over so she could insert it through the cloth.  Sure enough, the hold was more secure.  She picked up the other safety pin and got ready to put it into the other piece of the cloth at Charles’ hip when a man and woman entered the kitchen.

“They said they have some pots you will want to buy,” Doug said, following them.

“What?” Margaret pricked her finger, rubbed it against her thumb, and tried to get the pin through the fabric again.  She glanced at the couple.  “May I help you?”

The woman raised her eyebrows.  “Is that child still in diapers?”

Margaret immediately felt like shoving the couple out of the house.  Really, wasn’t she having enough to deal with without putting up with the woman’s shocked tone?  She finished fastening the pin and gave the woman a look she was sure expressed her annoyance at the question.  “Did you come here to ask what I do with my children?”

“No,” Doug piped up.  “They want to sell you pots.”

The man smiled.  “We apologize, ma’am.  The boy is right.  We represent the Anderson Kitchen Supply Company, and we thought you might be interested in new cookware.”

Charles sat up, so she quickly grabbed a shirt and put his arms through the sleeves.

“I have enough pots,” she replied, wishing they would leave.

“We offer more than that,” the man continued.  “We also sell baking pans and kettles.”

The woman nodded.  “We also offer pot hooks.  I notice you don’t have any in this kitchen.  If you had some hooks, it would clear up some of that shelf space.  I have a couple I use in my own kitchen, and I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

“It does save up a lot of room,” the man agreed.

Margaret buttoned the boy’s shirt, glad that her focus was on the task at hand because, otherwise, she might not be able to hold her temper in check.  She hated salespeople.  If she wanted to buy kitchenware, she’d go to the mercantile.

Doug and Bob stared at the couple while Ben made raspberry noises.

“I am fine with what I have,” she finally said, realizing she had to say something.  She stood Charles on his feet and got the pants ready for him to put on.  He held onto her shoulders as she instructed him to place his foot into the pants.  “I don’t need the extra room.”

“May I check your cookware?” the woman asked, already stepping to the side of the table and toward the shelves.

“No!” Margaret took Charles into her arms, even as his pants dangled on him, so she could dart in front of the irritating woman.  “I’m sorry, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m busy.  I have a houseful of children to take care of, and the last thing I need is for you to go through here and tell me what’s wrong with my pots and pans.”

The woman’s eyes grew wide and she let out a light gasp.  “I certainly didn’t imply to overstep my bounds.  I thought as a woman who does a lot of cooking, I might offer some advice on a better set of cookware.”

Charles kicked his legs until the pants flew off of him and onto the sugar that was still on a part of the floor.

“Oh my,” the woman said, just noticing the mess.  “You certainly do have your hands full.  Are you sure you can handle all of this?  I do know a nanny who might be a big help.”

That’s it.  Margaret couldn’t take it anymore.  “I would be able to do this if I didn’t have unwanted company trying to sell me something I don’t need or want.”

The woman blanched.  “There’s no need to be rude.”

“Rude?  You come in here and insult the way I take care of my children while you try to make a sale, and you call me rude?”

The woman stared at her as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

The man cleared his throat.  “We’ll leave you to your work, ma’am.” He took something out of his briefcase.  “You might like to check our catalogue.  At your convenience of course.” He set it on the kitchen table.  “Come along, Mildred.  We’ll try the house next door.”

Mildred gave one last look around the room and muttered, “My children were out of diapers when they were two,” before she left the house with the man.

“I’ll get one of Ben’s pants, Ma.  Charles can still fit ‘em.” Bob ran off down the hall.

“I can wash up the pants,” Doug said.  “I helped Pa with this.  I know what to do.”

Overwhelmed, she glanced around the kitchen.  Never in her entire life had she ever felt that everything was out of control.

Bob returned with the pants.  “I’ll watch him, Ma.  Go ahead and clean up the sugar.”

She stared at Bob as he told his younger brother to hold onto him so he could help him into the small pants.  Then she turned her gaze to Doug who started scrubbing the pants along the washboard.  Ben banged on his highchair but laughed when Charles fell down while Bob tried to get the pants around his waist.  Finally, she went to the drawer and pulled out a clean cloth.  As she pumped the water to wet it down, her tears started to fall.

Inspiration for the Book: A Husband for Margaret (The Names and Ages)

The sample scene I posted when Joseph Connealy is traveling to Omaha with four young boys can be found here.  Today I’m going to look at the inspiration behind the scene and the names I chose for the father and his boys.  :D

Behind the Names

In the book, Joseph Connealy was a widower with four boys ages 2-7.  My grandfather was a widower, but he only had one son named Ben.  He married my grandmother and they had four boys: Doug, Bob, John, and Charles.  My dad’s name was John (he’s passed away now).  Since I had used the name John for the hero in Loving Eliza  (I’ll have to do another post on that in the future because there’s more to it than that), I decided to use the name Ben.  Instead of Ben being the oldest, I made him the youngest.  My grandmother’s name was Josephine, so I changed it to Joseph and gave it to the hero of “A Husband for Margaret.”  (Richard, by the way, was my grandfather’s name and I already gave that name to Richard Larson.  That’s why I didn’t use my grandfather’s name.)

Behind the Personalities of the Children

As for the personalities of the children, I took that from my uncles.  Doug was always more serious and reserved.  Bob was, by the far, the most outgoing one of the group.  Charles was also outgoing, but not as much as Bob, and he ended up singing children songs in Canada.  When I write about Charles in a future book, he’ll do something with music.  I never really knew Ben except for a couple times I communicated with him, so giving him the youngest role seemed to fit best.  I did marry Ben off to Emily Craftsman’s friend (Alice).  That was in Isaac’s Decision. Ben ended up becoming someone steady and predictable.  That doesn’t make for the most exciting person in the world, but he’s someone you can depend on if you ever need him.

Behind the Children’s Ages

Doug was 7, Bob was 6, Charles was 3, and Ben was 2.  I based their ages off my boys’ ages (giving one year leeway).  I wanted the kids to be realistic, and the best way to do that was to base them on how old my kids were at the time.  My oldest was 7, my second was 6, my third was 4, and my fourth was 3.  So I lowered the ages for Charles and Ben by one year.  All I can say is that having that many kids so close in age isn’t for the faint of heart.  LOL

The Scene on the Train

This is a play-by-play account of how long trips with my kids typically go.  The first hour was usually okay, but somewhere into the second to third hour, things would go crazy.  So I imagine poor Joseph spent what felt like an eternity going from Dayton to Omaha on a train.

More Mayhem With the Kids Taken From Real Life

For fun, I’ll post a scene from when Margaret is trying to clean up one of the kids after he gets diarrhea from drinking milk.  That was also a play-by-play account of something I had dealt with just one week prior to writing it in the story (and yes, my own kid had diarrhea after drinking milk).  Ironically, it’s only when you’re running all over the house to get kids cleaned up does someone either come to the door or call on the phone, which is why I had the salesman pop up during that scene.  :D  I’ll post that scene up tomorrow.

Story Sample Sunday: A Husband for Margaret

I’m trying something new.  I’m going to aim for a sample from one of my books on each Sunday.  Then at some point during the week, I’ll offer the inspiration for the sample I post.  Since this is new, I’m not sure where this will go.  :D

This week, I’ve chosen to do a sample from A Husband for Margaret.  It’s one of my favorite parts of the book, and in my next post, I’ll explain why.

***

Joseph Connealy grunted as his three-year-old son jumped on his lap to slap one of his brothers across the head.

            The wounded brother, of course, let out a high pitch wail.

Brother number three promptly smacked the three year old, and the youngest brother barely stirred from his slumber, proving that two year olds could sleep through anything as long as they spent most of the night running up and down the aisle.

A very tired Joseph barked out, “Enough!” and the three boys immediately stopped their bickering.  Joseph had no idea the train ride would be this long.  Sure, it didn’t seem like it’d be much when he packed their things and lugged them all to the station in Dayton.  But now that they’d been traveling for what seemed like years, he was ready to get off the train, hand them to Margaret Williams, and hightail it right back to Ohio.

Of course, he wouldn’t do that to the poor woman.  They were his children, after all.  But they sure did need a mother in the worst possible way.  And he needed them to have a mother as well.  He could only pray she’d be willing to marry him instead of his brother.

“Are we there yet?” Doug, the seven year old, asked.

“Almost,” Joseph mumbled, closing his eyes.  His head hurt.

“But you said that an hour ago,” Doug whined.

“Compared to when we started, we were almost there.”

“And now?”

“We’re even closer.”

“How much closer?”

“Five minutes,” he guessed.  At least, based on the itinerary, they should be ready to pull into the Omaha train station.  Dear God, let the itinerary be right.  My sanity depends on it.

“How long is five minutes?” Bob, the six year old, asked.

“I don’t know,” Joseph said.

“How come you don’t know?” Doug asked.

“I do know.  I just don’t know how to explain it so you’ll understand,” Joseph clarified.

“Is five minutes long?” Doug asked.

“No.”

Then Charles leaned his head back and knocked his father in the jaw.

Joseph grumbled and rubbed the sore spot.  “Alright.  Five minutes is long.”

“Longer than an hour?” Bob pressed.

The train finally—mercifully—began to slow, and Joseph breathed a loud sigh of relief.  God did answer prayers!

Following One’s Purpose

So, I keep thinking of what I can post that is more the “real” me.  My problem is that outside my writing (with my characters), I’m not really able to tell many amusing stories to entertain people.  In my head, I can make up stand-up routines about my kids and in my mind everyone laughs because I’m funny.  But then I try to write it down or tell someone in person, and it just doesn’t come out the way it does in my head.  Which means I suck at real life storytelling.  You know the people in your life who tell a joke and no one laughs?  Yep, that’s me.

But that’s okay.  We’re all different, and the key is knowing your own strengths.  :D

And that’s what my post is about.  It’s about finding your purpose.  Today I saw a movie with my husband (while the kids were in school so it was an actual date).  He’s the one who heard of it and I thought it was going to be okay (not great but I was going to be with him, not to see the movie).  Anyway, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  The movie was Last Ounce of Courage, and it’s about this father who is the mayor of a small town and he uses his position to celebrate Christmas by putting up traditional Christmas decorations (which does include the Christian focus of Christmas).  He’s under pressure by those crying separation of church and state to remove the “offensive” decorations.  That’s the gist of it.  I don’t know if anyone plans to see this movie, so I won’t spoil it by saying what happens.

The theme of the movie was standing up for what you believe in.  And then I got to thinking about writing. (Yes, most of the time, I think about writing.)  I’ve been feeling out of sorts lately, wondering what I’m writing for.  What’s my purpose?  What’s my goal?  Why do I keep doing it?  Should I give it up and choose a less stressful job? (Writing is very stressful.  I know all jobs are stressful, but writing happens to be one that is even more so because it’s personal.  An author cannot separate him/herself from the work because stories originate from the heart, unless the author isn’t writing what they believe in.)

A couple times a year, I play out the whole “I should give it up” fantasy where I walk away and live a quiet life out of the public eye.  Not that there’s paparazzi outside my door, but I’ve had my share of stalkerish types.  This is why I don’t like to post about my children or husband or other things that involve my personal life.   The best I can do is discuss the more personal side of my writing (if I am to be personal).

Writing and publishing (esp. on your own) is not for the faint of heart.  You need a strong resolve.  That’s what the movie reinforced today.  Anything worth doing is worth doing with your whole heart.  Last Ounce of Courage was a Christian film, so there was a theme in there about doing what God has put you here to do.  It also had a patriotic theme running through it, and that had to do with defending your freedoms.

My philosophy is that it’s better to take a stand and fail than to never take a stand at all.  It’s why I went into self-publishing.  When I was seeking out publishers back in 2008, I was told that I couldn’t put Christian material into a romance novel with sex in it.  I was told to stop straddling the fence.  I gave the matter a lot of prayer.  As in, I prayed for about a year before I finally let Eye of the Beholder be the type of book it was meant to be.  It was the first book I wrote with sex in it.  Early on An Inconvenient Marriage, An Unlikely Place for Love and a couple of my earlier books had no sex in them.  They didn’t because I let fear hold me back.  It was fear of what others would think when they read my books.  ”How can you be a Christian and have sex in your books?”  I still get emails criticizing me for this, but you know, I’m fully convinced that this is what God has put me here to do.  Whenever I start to doubt or wonder, He finds a way to reassure me that I’m on the right path.

And lately, I have been thinking of compromising.  When I say “compromising,” I mean taking Christian aspects out of my romances so I’m more popular with a greater number of people.  I would keep sex in marriage (can’t budge on that one, guys).  I was thinking, “I need to write books that will appeal to more people because it’ll be easier to sell more books that way.” But then, today I realized that it’s not about me.  It’s not about what I want but what He wants, and I have to be yielded to His will.  So my Christian content will remain in my books.  If my characters are supposed to go to church, they’ll go to church.  If they want to discuss God at some point (some do and some don’t), I’ll let it happen.  If there’s a preacher that plays a role in the book, I’m going to let that preacher in there.  I’m not the “in your face” kind of writer when it comes to my faith, but you can see how my faith influences my work.

[If anyone wonders, after publishing Eye of the Beholder, I went back and revised my earlier books so they had sex in them.  This is why Falling In Love With Her Husband (originally Todd's Bride and Ann's Groom), An Inconvenient Marriage, An Unlikely Place for Love, and The Cold Wife were revised.]

Sometimes it takes a while to find your purpose.  Sometimes you don’t get it right the first time.  Sometimes you need to go back and do revisions.  I’m not afraid of failing.  I’m afraid of not improving.  So keep striving to find your purpose, and if you falter, know you’re not alone.  I’ve faltered, too.  Whatever God has planned for you, know that even if you don’t see the results from your efforts, He is in control of it all and will use it for His glory.  We do what He’s given us to do with the resources we have, and He does the rest.