Cheryl Grey Bostrom's Blog, page 3
June 29, 2024
To Be a Nighthawk (like my dear friend, who’s dying)
Friends,
Though it snowed yesterday (two days before summer solstice), as the nighthawks begin this evening’s hunt above our Idaho camp, the skies are clear, the golden dusk warm.
And I am pondering the minutes-old news of a dearest friend’s diagnosis.
Aggressive. Untreatable. Hospice.
She’ll show us how to die, I think. As she’s shown us how to live.
Though she’ll protest my saying so, in the decades I’ve known Bevvie, she’s modeled Love so honest and wise, so tender and sacrificial, so joyful and humble and strong that I can’t help but yearn to emulate her. To sprout the pinions such Love produces.
To sprout nighthawk wings.
On second thought, I pray to be a nighthawk, like she is—a strong flier grown into the Imago Dei through a lifetime of trust in our Maker and through her deep friendship with Him. Through her surrender to His love and sovereignty—even in moonless nights of the soul.
Tonight I pretend she’s one of those birds in Idaho’s high desert,
in flight . . .
and roosted in the safety of God’s perfect design for her life.
I consider all this as one of those bird dives toward earth, then snaps new wing angles seconds before impact. Air groans through feathers at the shift, its audible moan a drum, punctuating that split second when the nighthawk vaults skyward.
A fall. A climb. In these, too, I see and hear Bevvie—riding plunges of other hearts and her own, then groaning in prayer that heaves them all toward heaven.
Level flight restored, the bird’s call is electric. In it, I hear my friend’s cries of gratitude over ascents back to joy.
To me, both the nighthawk and she seem part tree swallow—aloft, sky-dancing, gulping nourishment—the bird gape-mouthed for insects in twilight air; my friend gape-hearted for Word from the Breath of God.
This bird and my friend. They seem part kildeer, too, both nesting open to heaven, guarded not by feeble constructs of earthly mud or sticks or grass, but by God’s marks on the birds’ feathers and on the woman’s and her family’s souls.
With Love’s camouflage their shield.
Even their migrations resemble one another’s. Soon these nighthawks will chase summer to another hemisphere.
Sooner, most likely, my friend will soar beyond time, where dawning summer births and berths always.
And always, I’ll love her.
Godspeed, dear one.
May we all be nighthawks.
Aching,
Cheryl
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks
June 22, 2024
This Trip’s for the Birds (plus a Sweet Surprise of Book Awards)
Hey, Friends.
Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Pretty sure the good doctor wasn’t thinking about a Snake River camping trip through Washington and Idaho when he penned that title. Or about swimming in the same Montana hot springs where Lewis and Clark’s’ crew soaked their grimy, weary bones. Or about crossing A’a (Hawaiian for hard on the feet) lava at Craters of the Moon National Monument.
Which is just what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks with husband Blake, a fabulous group of friends, and our old dog Mamba.
Fifteen hundred miles —and half as many photos—later, we’re still exploring, still praising the Maker of all this gorgeousness, including all the BIRDS out here.
Forest birds, dryland birds, water birds. I’m ingesting them like sugar. Thought you might like a taste, too:
A high desert kingbird and his . . .
nesting missus.
***
A Bullock’s oriole . . .
and his state-of-the-art digs.
***
A golden eagle on the Malad River, languid from a full-crop. Think Thanksgiving, after pie.
***
In Payette Lake’s shoreline forest, this female pileated woodpecker, excavating grubs from a decaying, old-growth ponderosa. (Males have a red moustache.)
I couldn’t find her nest. 
***
At a coffee shop on our mid-week wedding anniversary: these cliff swallows with their dab-o’-frosting brows.
***
More:
White pelicans and . . .
OSPREYS! At every stop along the Snake and Clearwater and Salmon Rivers, we watched them. Almost the size of eagles, they build messy homes on platforms like this (which keep them off power poles).
We did see one pair nesting in a pine, but traveling at 50 mph. I missed the shot.
So I snapped this guy at our next stop. I’d fly with you anywhere, my mister.
******
GIVEAWAY WINNERS. Cell service has been spotty along our route, but rest assured. Your entries for the huge Capture Books GIVEAWAY I described two weeks ago did reach me. Two of you won those mystery books (see my June 8 post)—which include tender stories that took bravery to tell. (May they encourage you so inclined to write your inner rumblings.)
CONGRATULATIONS to . . .
JUNE (the June whose email begins with “laabsj . . . “) and
CATHY KUEHNI!
Please reply with your mailing addresses, and I’ll send you each a box of books when we get home next week!
***
And BOOK NEWS!
A few days ago, this.
Such sweet news. An author never knows if or in what literary categories her work will find favor. I’m sure grateful.
***
HONORING EXCELLENCE IN INDEPENDENT & MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING
For Immediate Release
LOS ANGELES, JUNE 2024
AMERICAN BOOK FEST
ANNOUNCESWINNERS AND FINALISTS OF
THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS
Mainstream & Independent Titles Score Top Honors in
the 15th Annual International Book Awards
American Book Fest announced the winners and finalists of THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS (IBA), one of the world’s largest international book award programs for mainstream, indie, and self-published titles. . . Awards were presented for titles published in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Jeffrey Keen, President and CEO of American Book Fest, said this year’s contest yielded thousands of entries from authors and publishers around the world, which were then narrowed down to the final results.
HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, Hachette, Rowman & Littlefield, Wipf and Stock, Thomas Nelson, Tyndale House, Hay House, HCI Press, Bear & Company, Greenleaf Book Group, She Writes Press, Ideapress Publishing, Kogan Page, Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, National Galley of Victoria and hundreds of national and international independent houses contribute to this year’s outstanding competition!
Winners and finalists of this year’s contest join a prestigious group of past laureates, including Pope Francis, Amy Tan, Anne Lamott, George Sanders, Julie Andrews, Clive Barker, Vanessa Williams, Shark Tank’s Daymon John, Brad Thor, Kitty Kelley, and many others.
***
Oh my. What a joy and honor to see Leaning on Air included in the mix.
WINNER
Fiction: General
Leaning on Air, by Cheryl Grey Bostrom
WINNER
Fiction: Romance
Leaning on Air, by Cheryl Grey Bostrom
FINALIST
Fiction: Cross-Genre
Leaning on Air, by Cheryl Grey Bostrom
FINALIST
Fiction: Literary
Leaning on Air, by Cheryl Grey Bostrom
FINALIST
Fiction: Women’s
Leaning on Air, by Cheryl Grey Bostrom
Full results for the 15th Annual International Book Awards can be found at:
https://internationalbookawards.com/2024awardannouncement.html
***
Back to those birds . . . Ever see one of these? 
Love,
Cheryl
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks
“Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?” —Matthew 6:26
“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” —Psalm 150:6 
June 8, 2024
How Hard Could It Be? When Dreams Start From Scratch
Hi Friends,
I’ve never met Laura Bartnick, but it wasn’t long after we crossed paths online that I knew I admired much about her: her heart for writers and their stories, her faith, her love of beauty in the natural world and people, her creative tenacity.
Early on, she combined them all on behalf of a small group of writers who first met in her living room.
As Laura puts it, [we writers had] “been editing each other’s work for so long that we no longer feared the red swaths of suggestion, the green marks or the purple bruises.” In the process, they’d completed manuscripts, and they wanted to publish.
Since traditional publishers were becoming ever more difficult to access, they decided to form their own publishing house, and voted to put Laura in charge.
“Why not try?” she thought. “How hard could it be?”
Very, she realized, as she dove into webinars on the publishing process. Procured licenses. Consulted CPAs. Hired editors and cover designers and learned to format manuscripts. In 2015, when Capture Books Publishing Company became a reality, Laura’s goal was to survive the year.
Survive she did—and through her efforts, a collection of works entered the world. Her perseverence, enthusiasm, and determination to honor God through these books stand as an inspiration to me and, I hope, to you who also dream.
Though Laura has now retired from hybrid publishing writers not already represented by Capture Books, she’s continuing to spread the word about indie authors through the publicity and marketing arm of her business.
And she’s generously shared an assortment of books for my next giveaway. Since I’ll be camping—not writing—next Saturday, you’ll have two weeks to enter this one. Reply by June 21 with the word CAPTURE, and I’ll throw your name in the hat for BOXES of assorted titles. TWO of you will win. I’ll announce the winner June 22.
Titles of the books I’ll send remain a surprise, but they’ll come from the award-winning medley you’ll find HERE.
*****
Many, MANY of you entered last week’s giveaway for If I Squeeze Your Head I’m Sorry, by Gwen and Rylan Vogelzang. The name I plucked?
COURTENAY LANCASTER
Congratulations, Courtenay! Please reply with your mailing address, and I’ll send the book off to you when I return from Idaho wilds later this month.
*****
And, of course, a few snapshots for you . . .
These brought Psalm 121:1-2 to mind.
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
Ah. Every morning, every day, through His creation, God speaks.
***
Changing the subject . . . One of you asked me why I dig puns so much.
Well, my friend Alice Mills says that a good one is its own reword.
What are you dreaming of these days? Write me? I’m eager to hear,
Love,
Cheryl
June 1, 2024
Foxes in the Backstory (a Poem & Giveaway)
Hi Friends,
I’ve often described how characters in my novels shrug me off, then take charge of their lives. How those people often say, think, feel, or do things I never expected. And I may not know why.
But I need to.
So I prod them. Pester them with questions until, usually, someone confesses.
This time, a long-dead character from my forthcoming novel River Hoarder decided to spill the beans. He shook me awake about 4:00 one morning.
“Big secrets in our family,” he said. “If you’re going to breach that dam, you need more backstory.”
“Okay. Okay.” I rubbed my cheeks, shook away sleep. “Hold on a sec.” Bleary-eyed, I crept from my sleeping husband to our study and found a yellow pad. I scribbled as that character talked—pages and pages worth—before I steamed a mighty why from his tale.
Details would wreck your surprise, so I summarized what he told me. A poem worked best.
FOXES
He told me of
The dark wrong.
How the foxes of it, their tails lit,
Ignited his scream, then
Ran upstairs to the
Sleeping children—
Their pajamas, their hair
Flammable, yet
Only singed, for now, since
He beat the flames with
Love so big it
Could only have come
From You.
(Let your imagination run on this one, but the story will outrace it. It sure did mine.)
****
MEANWHILE, the winner of last week’s giveaway of Kendra Broekhuis’s Between You and Us is—
LAURA CISSON.
Congratulations, Laura! Send me your address, and I’ll mail the book right off to you.
For subscriber-only giveaways, join here:
***
And, of course, more pics for you. These, from our recent trip to the Palouse, give you a glimpse of the Snake River breaks on the road to Almota—during their fleeting green season. You’ll travel them again in scenes from Leaning on Air.
Heading into the breaks on our way to Almota and Boyer Park.
Steep and vast out there.
See the terracing from generations of cattle? More will graze here soon. (They’ll look like fleas from this angle.)
“For every animal of the forest is mine,
and the cattle on a thousand hills.”
—Psalm 50:12
We camped at Boyer Park—on the inside of the river’s far bend—after traveling hairpin turns down the steep grade to reach it.
Burnaby sets out from the marina at that park to fish for sturgeon with Hugh.
Speaking of autistic Burnaby, If you’ve read my novels Sugar Birds or Leaning on Air, you’ve met him. Since many of your lives also intertwine with autistic children or adults, I’m delighted to offer Gwen and Rylan Vogelzang’s book If I Squeeze Your Head I’m Sorry as my next GIVEAWAY.
I had the pleasure of meeting author Gwen at the recent Festival of Faith and Writing, and she generously shared a copy to offer to YOU.
Here’s the gist:
Twelve-year-old Rylan thrives and struggles with Autism and Tourette Syndrome. He and his Mama Bird, Gwen, have created a one-of-a-kind picture book that will uplift, educate, create dialogue, and entertain. Rylan’s art and insightful descriptions will allow readers to enter the brain of a child who sees, feels, and understands the world from a refreshingly unique perspective. This book reminds us how important it is to listen to each other in an effort to truly understand and to assume immense value in one another. Our stories matter and we all have one to share. “If I Squeeze Your Head I’m Sorry,” is an inclusive experience, so get on board Broskis!
Reply with SQUEEZE and I’ll drop your name in the hat. I’ll draw a winner next Friday, June 7.
****
Do you have your summer reading list? Any nuptials planned? I’d love to hear about either—or both!
We’re attending a wedding, and I hear the bride and groom will be horse-drawn. They may wish they’d opted for a photographer instead, but oh, well.
Love,
Cheryl
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks
May 25, 2024
If You’d Told Me I Could Lean on Air: The Greening Palouse, a Story & a Giveaway
Hi Friends,
A little timeline for you—last Tuesday’s:
Under unsettled skies, Blake and I retrieved our pup Doozy from the trainer near Spokane, then drove south—past Steptoe Butte . . .
and deeper into Washington’s greening Palouse. By the time we set up camp on the Snake River and returned uphill for a Leaning on Air book event in Colfax, I’d taken all sorts of photos.
Hours later, I got word that More to Life Magazine had published a piece I’d written for their Intersection Column.
So . . . I thought I’d stir the pics and words—and spill them for you here.
Enjoy!
*******
If You’d Told Me I Could Lean on AirHa! Lean on air? Back when I was a newlywed, if you’d suggested I’d eventually do exactly that, I’d have laughed outright.
Consider the physics. Who can lean on air?
It took me a while to learn that I can.
We’d been married a sneeze over two months when Blake and I packed his Mustang and my old Chevy Impala to the gills, locked up the house we’d tended for my traveling grandparents that summer, and crossed the state to hilly Palouse country, where we settled the sum of our belongings into a rundown cabin sandwiched between railroad tracks and a river culvert.
Our new address: the tiny town of Colfax, Washington, where I’d soon teach English and drama to wheat farmers’ kids at the local high school. Come fall, Blake would commute twenty minutes to Pullman to continue his veterinary studies at Washington State.
We bought a secondhand couch. I wrote lesson plans, made curtains and lasagna. Played house.
And had absolutely no idea how to be married.
Fresh from a broken, faithless home, I had trusted Christ for only four years. A distractible spiritual baby, I was a classic Hebrews 5 milk-drinker, for whom the sparkling concept of Trinity-mimicking oneness in my new marriage was as foreign to me as that Alioth star in the Big Dipper’s handle. Light years away.
Regardless, I was determined to build a marriage and home unlike the one I’d known.
How hard could it be? I’m a bootstraps sort of girl . . . a resilient, goal-oriented self-starter, and I keep my word. Since I’d promised Blake at our engagement that I’d travel whatever deep space necessary to assure our love lasted a lifetime, I believed I would simply do my part alongside the rock-solid man I’d married. Straightforward, start to finish.
My unverbalized mantra in those years? Coach me, God, then turn me loose to perform for you. I’ve got this. Watch me.
Right. If you’ve stayed married for any length of time, you’ve been weeding that strategy from your garden every time it sprouts—just as I do. The longer I’m with my man, and the better I know myself, the more frequently I instead lean on, and into, holy air—the Breath of God that holds me when life’s storms and detours, wonders and routines test me.
I was thinking about those early days when I conceived my Sugar Birds sequel, Leaning on Air. The prospect of writing a story experienced through lenses of Burnaby’s autism and Celia’s unbelief (and set in the breathtaking Palouse I love) cloaked the tale in layers of meaning for me.
As I shaped characters, I identified with ornithologist Celia in a number of ways. Our shared love of birds was a given. On a deeper level, she approached her relationship with equine surgeon Burnaby with self-dependence and relational evasiveness characteristic of my youth. As my own did, her upbringing had hurt her and made her skittish.
In an experience unique to Celia, however, autistic Burnaby’s explanation of how quantum entanglement and the Three-in-One Godhead illustrated their future oneness baffled her. The night he asked her to marry him, a confused Celia pondered his views:
“His science told him they would meld into the single identity of conjoined atomic particles, and his faith said they would become one in a spiritual world she knew nothing about, a world where he and she and this God of his would be indivisible, body and mind and spirit. Marriage would breach every boundary she’d worked so hard to fortify, every barrier she’d built against pain.
“She shoved him, and he pushed himself away, his palms on either side of her, his arms posts for the roof of his body above hers.
“ ‘What?’ he asked.
“ ‘I don’t want to disappear.’
To avoid spoilers, I’ll only say that she doesn’t vanish—but instead learns physically, emotionally, and spiritually to lean on air.
Because of Love’s holy physics, I have, too.
*******
*******
Speaking of air and marriage, when I endorsed Kendra Broekhuis’s new novel Between You and Us, I said this:
“Broekhuis extracts love’s essence in a story so creative and vivid, so tender and compelling, I scarcely came up for air. Smart, flawless dialogue and fluid plotting build to the unthinkable—and a woman’s decision for her family that readers will ponder for a long, long time.”
Here’s the gist:
When a grieving woman unexpectedly steps into a different version of her life, she must choose between the husband she loves and the daughter she lost in this brave, gripping novel.
***
Two possible lives to live. One impossible choice to make.
When Leona Warlon heads across the city to meet her husband, David, for a rare dinner out, she hopes they can share a moment of relief after their year of loss. But Leona quickly realizes this is no ordinary date night. She hasn’t just stepped into an upscale ristorante; she’s stepped into a different version of her life. One in which her marriage is no longer tender, in which her days are pressured by her powerful in-laws, and in which her precious baby girl lived.
Now Leona must weigh the bitter and sweet of both trajectories, facing an unimaginable choice: Stay in a world where tragedy hasn’t struck but where the meaningful life she built with David is gone? Or return to a reality that’s filled with struggle and sorrow but also deep and enduring love?
***
Would you like to win a copy? Reply with “BETWEEN,” and I’ll drop your name in the hat. (You’ll need to subscribe first.)
I’ll draw a winner next Friday, May 31.
BTW, I just bought the Titanic soundtrack. When you come for dinner, I’ll play it for you.
It’s syncing right now.
Love,
Cheryl
May 18, 2024
Umami for my Snerty Heart: RAPT Interview & Giveaway WINNER
Hi Friends,
The best-laid plans would have seen me writing you last Saturday, but . . . well . . . sorry. I’ve told a few of you that the launch buzz around Leaning on Air’s May 7 release has felt like walking though a field of grasshoppers all blasting off at once.
And me without a jar to catch a single one. Even stringing two sentences together has been a stretch.
It’s sure been fun, though. And the launch day GIVEAWAY for my subscribers was part of it all.
The WINNER? Congratulations to . . .
GAYLA GRAY!
Please reply with your mailing address, and I’ll send the book right off to you.
Meanwhile, interviews and podcasts are going live—including this one, with RAPT. If you haven’t visited their site before, pop over. You may not emerge for weeks.
Such creative questions. Here they are—along with my replies.
Cheryl Grey Bostrom has an inspired way with words. She is a novelist with an international best-seller fiction book, a photographer, and an observer of nature and human behavior. When she’s not devoting her time to practicing her craft through daily writing, you can find Cheryl outdoors, seeking to slow her active mind “enough to grab Christ’s hand.”
In this interview, Cheryl shares with vulnerability about her kryptonite—her fear of failing at doing the very thing she was created to do. She opens up about her inspirations, her weaknesses, and how she tricks the left side of her brain into surrendering to still, creative, quiet moments with God.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINTThere’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
Let’s set the stage. A century ago, the Netherlands immigrants who established family dairies near our tiny NW Washington town preferred meals they remembered from their Dutch homeland. Far as I can tell from the restaurant menus around here, generations since still favor that hearty, rich diet.
Now I’m an enthusiastic eater, so the hearty part pleases me to no end. But after my husband and I switched to a mostly whole-food, plant-based diet a dozen years ago, the rich component no longer worked for us. Since entrees at restaurants around here skew to high-fat foods, we learned to cook with bountiful spices instead of added oils, and we rarely eat out.
But when we do? Ironically, it’s at the 116-year-old bakery in the heart of town because, behind all those glassed in shelves of high-fat pastries, they keep a pot of erwtensoep warm. Snert (its other Dutch name) is easier to pronounce, but you likely know it as split pea soup.
I love the stuff. In our Dutch bakery’s version, there’s no oil to skim, and it’s so hearty my spoon stands upright in refrigerated leftovers.
I like it for more than dietary reasons though. Pea color aside, a bowlful is nothing short of a culinary artist’s rendition of…well…how Christ is cooking me to nourish others. Besides its base of dried split peas, the soup’s full of veggies—pureed, of course. I like to think of those added plants as holy, fiber-rich wisdom and love that make the dried peas of my experiences edible and, in Romans 8:28’s context, good for my soul. Each pea and carrot, spud and onion? Ingredients in the Lord’s recipe for my long and slow-cooked life. When digested, that soup fuels my stories and poems with savory, stick-to-the-ribs hope.
And those little ham bits? Gotta be puns—umami for my snerty heart.
QUESTION #2: REVEALWe’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?
On her recent visit, my favorite nine-year-old sidled to a craft table where I sorted paints amidst an assortment of watercolor paper, sketches, and brushes. She dunked a rigger brush in a cup of water and tapped it on the edge like any experienced artist would. We’d done this before.
“You like quiet things,” she said.
“Hunh,” I said, surprised. With kids I can be rather noisy. I’d never thought to consider my interests through the lens of quietness.
“Painting, knitting, reading.” She dabbed the outline of a fir’s limb with green. “Watching birds, writing, hiking. You like ‘em, and they’re all quiet.”
Point taken, little girl. I added photography to her list, and thought of how few things please or spiritually nourish me more than solo excursions with my camera into fields, forests, or mountain trails to snap pics of raptors and passerines, insects and sunrises, leaf nodes and snowfall, tadpoles and coyotes and bears. I haul lenses—long and wide-angle, telephoto and macro—and have mastered the quick swap to whichever perspective can best capture the voice and character of God in His created world.
“And your garden,” she said.
Ah, yes. That, too. That, too.
QUESTION #3: CONFESSEvery superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
As soon as I read this question, I thought of Chuchundra, that muskrat who creeps around walls in the 1893 short story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” Author Rudyard Kipling describes the animal as “a broken-hearted little beast. He whimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but he never gets there.”
Stay with me on this. That rodent has a lot to do with my lifelong fear of failure.
Specifically, my fear that I could never write fiction, though I have a vivid memory of myself at age ten telling my grandmother I would write a novel. Little did I realize then that I would guard that heart’s desire against disappointment by refusing to try.
Almost fifty years later, I still hadn’t written that book. Though God had been infusing my life with His transforming love for decades, this crazy fear of writing fiction was true kryptonite. I did my best to hide it by writing poetry, a master’s thesis on writing, short form essays, and non-fiction books. I edited others’ works and taught students to write. I stuck my toe in fiction’s pond through a couple of classes in creative writing, but I only typed a single—that’s one—short story. Scared and dodgy, I was a figurative muskrat, faking disinterest in writing any sort of fiction. Skirting edges of the room where fiction writers create, I glowed green.
But at the birth of that little nine-year-old I told you about, something in me shifted, and I welled with yearning to write for her. I see it as calling now—God’s response to that buried lifelong desire of my heart as I trusted Him. My love for this child swung my self-centered spotlight from a paralyzing fear of my imagination’s limitations to a desire to bless her with one empowered by my creative Creator.
Honestly, it was like floodgates opened. In succeeding months, a story poured out of me for that sweet girl. Then two more novels arrived for my next two grands. In God’s kindness and to His purposes, my work has reached others, too. With three novels mostly wrapped up, I’m still listening, still transcribing for Him in the middle of the room.
I couldn’t be more grateful.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UPTell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
I put in full days of writing. Five or six days a week I start at the crack of dawn and write until I reach the word count goal that keeps me on track for my deadlines. Some days I’m in the zone and others I’m pulling hens’ teeth, but listening hard and keeping my hands on the keys or my pen on my yellow pad works, and the words add up.
Professionally, my fiction comes first, now that I can actually write it. In some days’ later hours, I work on my blog Watching Nature, Seeing Life, which I’ve posted along with my photography on WordPress for years. Intrigued by authentic engagement on Substack, in January 2024 I began posting duplicate content there, too, under Birds in the Hand.
Great fun.
If you read enough of my stuff in books, blogs, and social media, you’ll know pretty quickly that I’m utterly captured by nature. I see the created world as an expression of God’s character, an illustration of the Word, and—someday, when it’s not groaning anymore—the place where we’ll hang out for eternity. Caring about, and for, creation is nothing short of a response of love and gratitude to the One who made it, and meditating on its wonders can be a boundless source of joy. Besides, nature helps us love better. By humbling us with awe, it redirects us away from Babel-style tower building.
We all ought to care about it.
QUESTION #5: BOOSTCashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
Among pics, prayers, verses, and a couple of punny cartoons above my desk, I’ve pinned a few quotes. One of them, which psychologist Carl Jung had carved over his door (and requested for his tombstone) reads, “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” A second by Francis Chan includes this: “I couldn’t be doing this by my own power.”
This is absolutely true for me. When I begin a day’s work, I usually have no idea what I’ll write or how I’ll write it. Only after I ask and wait do the words arrive. All I can say is that I feel like a scribe taking dictation. This work’s not originating in my mess of neurons and synapses. When characters begin talking of their own accord and phrases arrive from out of the blue, I’m under no illusion about Who’s sending them.
For fifty years I got nowhere with fiction on my own. That lesson’s burned into me. I need Him to write these stories, and He’s here. Oh, He’s here.
QUESTION #6: INSPIREScripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin’ best for you right now?
I have a jackrabbit, non-linear brain. Concepts coalesce all at once for me, much like the scenes that sharpen when I twist focus rings on my camera lenses. Also, I read very quickly. Combined, those traits have proven hugely useful for checking boxes, assimilating data, and shaping practical plans and conclusions.
But a left brain in high gear can be a closed-circuit tyrant, leaving little room for the full expression of worship in both truth and spirit that John talks about in his gospel. My bossy left hemisphere digs the intellectual part of truth but can overpower its reflective, deep-souled absorption and my emotional and spiritual response to God.
So…I trick it. Quiet it with detours. “C’mon,” I say. “Let’s go walking. Hum a little.”
Most days, we do—for miles and miles over trails and fields and country roads.
Outbound, worship music plays on my phone until the rambunctious kid in me slows enough to grab Christ’s hand. By the time we turn and head for home, my Bible app’s playing a dramatized version of the NLT. The reading’s slow, and I can hear it with all of me.
Often, I weep along the way. If you’ve ever studied tears, you’ll know that their composition differs depending upon their emotional inspiration.
I figure mine speak of time with God.
QUESTION #7: FOCUSOur email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources—lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are three resources that have impacted you?
Hmm. My top resources? I’ll share four. Though I may answer differently next week, at the moment I’d list these:
Early on, the Parallel Bible, with its side-by-side translations, was immensely useful to me as I became familiar with the Word. More recently I’ve used BibleHub.com to compare versions and deepen my understanding of the verses I’m stowing.
Through many seasons, I’ve read rafts of non-fiction books on faith and Christian growth. While I remember learning and benefitting from so many, their contents all blended into that soup I told you about. Collectively, they’ve had an impact on me, so I’m mentioning them as a wrapped bundle here. No single book’s distinct, but I’d probably be different without any one of them. Ongoing learning was the key.
When it comes to illustrations of biblical principles to which I’ve returned time and again for myself and for others, C.S. Lewis’s fictional Chronicles of Narnia take the cake. Funny, right, that they’d be my choice? They’re for kids from nine to ninety, I guess. I can’t count how many times their scenes have returned to me. Apart from Scripture, I’ve cited no works more often. For this girl who thinks in pictures, the visuals speak.
Hands down, the game-changer and rocket in my faith trek has been Bible Study Fellowship. I joined when my youngest was a preschooler and have attended or led discussion most years since. Through its four-pronged approach, God’s Word has sunk into my bones and bloodstream, my heart and soul, equipping me, fortifying me, and solidifying my identity in Christ. I recommend BSF every chance I get.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season—and tell us what it’s done for you.
If I had to pick just one thing that helps me survive and thrive, I’d say I depend upon memorized Scripture. I have no doubt that, when held inside me, the Word’s living and active in all the ways Hebrews 4 describes. I’ve been downright gobsmacked at how the Holy Spirit will bring verses I’ve learned to the fore in creative, instructive, and protective ways I would never have come up with on my own, much less with such perfect timing. As our culture goes blurry, I need that wisdom and truth—need Him—if I’m to put one foot ahead of the other.
Runners-up? Gotta be corporate worship and birds in flight. Singing with a pack of Christ-followers connects me to heaven, and winged creatures assure me that we’re all being carried.
Come for coffee. One way or another, we’ll talk birds.
QUESTION #8: DREAMGod is continually stirring new things in each of us. So, give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
After I wrap up edits for my 2025 novel River Hoarder, I’ll tune in to the next story that rumbled me awake from a dream a few weeks back.
Yeah, rumbled. As in earthquake.
I think the story will be multi-generational. Maybe a dual-timeline piece with its epicenter on historic seismic activity that collapsed not only buildings, but a family’s relational foundations. Fault lines will run through land and lives.
I cried when the idea first arrived, but given marketing tasks for Leaning on Air and revisions for River Hoarder, I haven’t yet prayed much about the characters or how to flesh out their arcs. The snippets I imagined suggest the story will be culturally relevant, spiritually thought-provoking, and emotionally charged. Already I sense it’ll fill one novel. Or two. I have only a vague idea of how my own history will inspire or dovetail with it, but since my experience has influenced my other three novels, I expect this one will, as well.
More redemption, for even life’s hardest scenes. Nothing’s wasted.
Thanks for asking.
Cheryl knew at an early age that she was passionate about writing fiction, but her dream didn’t come to fruition until decades later. She shares that for fifty years, she tried to write stories on her own, but the realization that God wanted to write the stories with her has now been etched on her heart. Overcoming the fear of failure and allowing His inspiration to move her beyond her own limits, Cheryl knows the joy of partnering with God in creating.
Take some time to ask God if there are dreams in your heart He’s given that haven’t had a chance to come to life yet. Ask Him to reveal any hindrances standing in the way and for His inspiration to fill you and move you forward into realizing those dreams.
Tyndale novelist Cheryl Grey Bostrom, M.A., writes surprising prose and poetry that reflect her keen interest in nature and human behavior. Her four books include her international best seller Sugar Birds—the winner of more than a dozen fiction awards, and Leaning on Air, endorsed as “a reader’s dream,” and a “cross-generational masterpiece.” An avid photographer, she and her veterinarian husband live in the Pacific Northwest.
*****
ONE MORE THING? If you’re in EASTERN WASHINGTON his coming TUESDAY, MAY 21, I’ll be at the COLFAX Library at 6:30 pm for an interview/Q&A/ reading—and a happy reunion with you!
Ticks will have LEANING ON AIR available at the event, and these area bookstores have already have it in stock.
Colfax: Tick Klock Drug
Coeur d’Alene: The Well-Read Moose and Sower
Moscow: BookPeople of Moscow
Post Falls: Kindred & Company
Spokane: Aunties and Barnes & Noble – Northtown and Spokane Valley
(Read more in Cindy Hval’s FRONT PORCH column in the Spokesman Review column this Sunday.)
*****
Okay, okay. Changing the subject . . .
My online friend Alice Mills heard about a study that says men who are losing their hair run faster than men who aren’t.
She thinks that’s balderdash.
What say you?
When we head to the Palouse tomorrow, I’m taking my camera, so I’ll have new shots for you soon. (Send me your favorite spring pic?)
Love,
Cheryl
Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks
May 4, 2024
Parsing the Elephant: Thoughts on Book Reviews
Leaning on Air in Washington’s PalouseHi Friends,
The fable’s an old one, about a group of blind men surrounding an elephant. Asked to describe this unfamiliar animal, each touches the feature nearest him: trunk, ear, torso, tusk, leg.
“It’s like a python!” shouts the man near the elephant’s trunk.
“No, it’s a fan,” says the man at its ear.
“A wall! . . . A spear! . . . A tree trunk!” say the others.
Unique interpretations, each drawn from wherever an interpreter was standing and how that elephant felt to him.
Those men and that elephant came to mind this week as I read GoodReads reviews, all written by early readers who received pre-release publisher copies of my forthcoming novel Leaning on Air. There are now close to a hundred of those reviews on that site—all from those who have laid hands on the story.
A reader with one view of the elephant wrote
“This may be the most perfect book I’ve read.”
From a different angle, another’s response:
“I did not enjoy the book.”
Ear, tail, leg. Each connection of book to reader as wonderfully distinct as are readers themselves. If you assemble enough of them, you may get a glimpse of a novel’s true shape and features.
You can test that theory with other Leaning on Air reviews HERE.
Last week I shared the book’s opening pages with you. Want to read a few more? The following excerpt picks up where I left you dangling. If you recall, Celia had fallen in the road while attempting to save a filched gosling.
No need to have read Sugar Birds before this, but if you did, a few references here will return you to Celia’s early interactions with autistic Burnaby. And if you were wondering about Aggie . . . :).
Enjoy!
(Subscribe, and I’ll enter you in a RELEASE DAY DRAWING for LEANING ON AIR!)
*****
(Leaning on Air – Chapter 1, cont.)
“Burnaby?”
He answered with a grin, also unfamiliar. Back then, she’d spent a summer coaxing the corners of his mouth to rise.
“Hello, Celia.”
She jigged with pain as he knelt on the road beside her.
“Here. Plant your heel here.” He tapped the ground and pressed firm fingers inside her knee until she steadied, then he sluiced blood from her skinned leg. She looked away at the sting, then back to his hand, wielding gauze like an instrument to remove bits of gravel. “Superficial scrapes, but I’ll need tweezers, unless you’d prefer an aggregate tattoo to commemorate this event.”
His lips curved upward, wry, and he laughed again—a single-syllable marvel. Burnaby had cried back then, but laughed? Never.
“Which event? Skid of the Year? Running into you? Finding our eagle?”
“Our eagle? Millie?”
“Pretty sure she’s the bird I was chasing. That wing you rebuilt has carried her into old age.”
“The bald eagle population here is—is significant. What makes you think—?”
“How many bald eagles hereabouts have a red band on one leg and a chartreuse one on the other? I watched you attach them.”
A new smile spilled into his cheeks. “A delightful find, Celia.”
Delightful. He said delightful. Who was this remade man?
“Are you staying at Mender’s?” He dabbed her congealing wounds.
“Yeah.” She wanted to say more, but the hurting half of her body stung the talk right out of her.
“I’ll take you back. Think you can hang on with that hand?” He inspected her palm’s scuffed heel.
She wiggled unaffected fingers and nodded.
“Good. Climb on. Once we’re underway, please don’t lean.”
“My binoculars. By the tree where I—”
“Right. I’ll get them.”
Celia boarded gingerly. With her cheek pressed to his spine and her good arm tight around him, her abraded limb’s fingers hooked his belt. She was actually clinging to Burnaby Hayes, a fact that astounded her. Little more than a decade earlier, he’d flinched when she so much as touched his shoulder. Curiosity rattled her, competed with her pain.
The cruiser rumbled forward, first to the field glasses, then back up the empty, narrow road. A mile later, Burnaby turned the bike onto her grandmother Mender’s treed lane, drove past the cavernous barn, and parked at the hilltop farmhouse.
Inside, Celia slipped off her shoes. Burnaby studied a framed photo on the entry wall of Celia, her father, and her grandmother, their identical eyes wide and dark, their cheekbones sharp. A blurry Ferris wheel filled the background and the three of them grinned over double-scoop ice cream cones.
“Our last pic together,” she said. “Look at us. Not a care in the world. That fair was in August, and he was gone by December.”
“I’m sorry, Celia.” His index finger tapped the glass over her grandmother’s gray braid, then outlined her father’s face. “A good man.”
Celia shrugged.
“Is Mender here?”
“Gone for a week. She took six flats of strawberries to her friend Imogene in Sequim. They’ll make jam ’til they run out of jars.”
He peered down the hallway, up the stairs, and into the kitchen before he crossed to the wide living room windows, where the blue Hawley River ribboned through mixed forests and fields below them. Past the farmland, the North Cascades rimmed the valley like a jagged fence. “Nothing’s changed out there.”
“Nothing, and everything.” Celia parked herself at the kitchen table and picked another rock from her forearm. “We were kids then.”
Burnaby unzipped his jacket, hung it over a chair, then sat beside her in jeans and a gray cotton tee, its sleeves and shoulder seams tight against bulging deltoids and biceps she’d never have guessed possible for the skinny boy she’d known. He looked good. Better than good.
He laid open hands on the table. “Let me see that arm.”
She eased her forearm to him, and he lifted it, inspecting. “Does Mender still keep those sterile supplies beside the dryer?”
“Yeah. Doesn’t rehab birds much anymore, though. I can’t blame her. She turns eighty next year. Third drawer—”
“I remember.” Water drummed in the laundry sink after he left the room, and he returned holding a small metal pan of surgical instruments. Sunlight poured through an east window and raised a sheen on his damp hands. He chose tweezers and set to work on her gravelly arm.
“So. Catch me up, Burnaby. I think the last time I heard from you, I was at Texas A&M, right? My sophomore year?”
“Yes. I last wrote you from MIT in—in January 1989. The fifth letter to which you didn’t reply.” His voice still lacked inflection and caught in those little stutters now and then, but sounded warmer than she remembered.
“Sorry about that. I met a guy that fall.”
Burnaby tweezed another stone. “Are you still with him?”
“No,” she said, scoffing. “Distant history.”
“Others, then.” A conclusion, not a question.
She cringed as he plucked. “Ow, Burn, you’re hurting me.”
“Hold on. Got it.” He pulled a sharp-tipped sliver free of her palm. “I heard that after College Station, you left Texas.”
“And you know this how?” He kept tabs on me. She watched his face but saw nothing to read. His eyes remained on her hand.
“Dad kept me apprised. He said you studied avian sciences at UC Davis.”
“Yeah, first Aggieland then the Aggie Pack school. Funny, right? Reminders of your sister wherever I went.” She laughed as an image of Burn’s tiny, tree-climbing sibling, Aggie, came to mind. “I loved Texas, but I loved California more.”
“I imagine so.”
“Where’s Aggie now?” Another friend, left by the wayside.
“Kenya, but when she’s not on assignment, she calls Denver home. A freelance wildlife photographer she’s been working with, and dating, broke his leg a—a week before he was slated to shoot a National Geographic piece on Grevy’s zebras. The team was scrambling for a replacement, so he recommended Aggie. With her—her inoculations and passport already current, they spliced her in. Needless to say, she jumped at the opportunity.” Burnaby pointed to his thigh. “You can stand, or place that leg right here.”
“Well. I’m happy for her,” she said, though guilt stained her long neglect. How many of Aggie’s letters had she ignored? She slid her chair next to Burnaby’s, stretched her calf across his lap, and rotated her foot laterally so the wide, stone-pocked scrape faced the ceiling. He rested the side of his hand on her heel and chose his next embedded target.
“Both your MS and PhD behind you now.” He nodded thoughtfully. “What’s next?”
His interest surprised her. Buttered her. “I thought I had a research grant at Davis, but the funding never came through. Hope to be here ’til August. I still have a couple of options in the hopper for next year, but if neither pans out, I’ll stay here, submit a paper or two on West Nile virus antibodies in raptors. I can help Gram until I find a position. Ouch, Burn. Easy.”
While the blond giant excavated her leg, Celia rewound more than a decade. Remembering the half-formed boy a year her senior, she hunted for evidence of him in this appealing man who was already, literally, under her skin.
“What about you, Burnaby? Four years at MIT? Sorry, but I lost track of you.”
She wished she hadn’t. Her intense study regimen and a string of demanding boyfriends for whom she fell too hard and fast had consumed her completely—and shelved relationships she now wished she’d nourished. She’d returned home to Houston, and her dad’s hospital bedside, four days before he died of pancreatic cancer. And until this trip, she hadn’t seen Mender since his funeral, two years earlier.
So much lost time.
“Yes. I studied physics at MIT until 1990, then attended Cornell for—for veterinary school. On May nineteenth I finished my residency in orthopedic surgery. I’ll begin work as an—an associate professor at Washington State this fall.”
Bones. Of course. He had reconstructed skeletons when she last knew him, had been obsessed with them since childhood. “Congratulations, Burn. That’s a good gig.”
He scooted his chair nearer and began swabbing her thigh, close enough for her to detect his fresh sweat, sweet breath. Did he smell this wonderful before? She couldn’t remember.
A hank of straight hair fell past his forehead as he worked on her. “This summer’s the first I’ve spent in—in the Northwest since I left for college. My parents are expanding Hayes Seeds, so Dad asked me to help him build a new equipment shed. He and Mama bought the former Hillman land, east of the home place.”
“And in your off hours you patrol country roads on that Triumph like some sort of mobile medic. You tow that bike here from Ithaca?”
“I rode it. I shipped my belongings to my parents’ place and gave myself two weeks to cross the country.”
“Ah. Nice. You follow an itinerary or just wing it?”
“Celia. Can you imagine me without a plan?” He lifted his chin and looked sidelong at her from under thick blond brows. “I altered the schedule as I went, however, to deter my compulsivity. I slept outdoors whenever an inviting location presented itself.”
“You camped on whims? Multiple nights? Burnaby, I’m having a little trouble with all this.”
He shot her a worried look. “What kind of trouble?”
****
Thanks for reading, friends.
Can’t believe it’s May already. Is your garden in yet?
We’re trying. No wonder it’s called May. May rain. May hail. May be thirty degrees.
Love,
Cheryl
P. S. Leaning on Air releases next Tuesday, May 7! Click below to get yours.
April 27, 2024
When the Stork Delivers Your Baby
Hi Friends,
After the raft of late nights and early mornings I’ve come to anticipate during launch month, I curled up for a snooze Tuesday afternoon, then awoke to a SPECIAL DELIVERY from Tyndale! My very first soft and hard cover copies of LEANING ON AIR!
My beautiful new baby. I’m giddy.
Here’s how I’d describe her:
She’s a layered tale of wonder, loss, and restoration—a love story (and a companion to the award-winning Sugar Birds). Her protagonists’ relationship is intimate and heartrending and soaring. Early reviewers are saying they’ve never read a novel like this.
Here’s the gist:
Ornithologist Celia is passionate, adrift, and yearns for affection. Equine surgeon Burnaby is autistic, principled, and Celia’s touch makes his skin crawl. Even so, after a whirlwind summer, they elope on a whim and plunge into the most unusual romance of her life.
After a decade of marriage, the two have found a unique and beautiful rhythm. Then tragedy strikes while Celia hunts for the nest of a research hawk near the Snake River. Reeling with grief, she’s certain Burnaby won’t understand her anguish or forgive the choice that initiated it.
She flees to kindness at a remote farm in Washington’s Palouse region, where a wild prairie and an alluring neighbor convince her to start over. But when unexplained accidents, cryptic sketches, and a mute little boy make her doubt her decision, only a red-tailed hawk, the husband she can’t touch, and the endangered lives of those she loves can compel her to examine her past—and reconsider her future.
*******
Want a peek at her fingers?
Think of these opening pages as her very first ultrasound.
Enjoy!
(Preorder her HERE and that stork will land her your hands week of May 7.)
*******
Chapter 1 ~Celia
Scrape
Northwest Washington State, 1997
Above the pond, a cloud of gnats shimmered in the June morning as a Canada goose rousted her brood through reeds of yellow iris toward a floating gander. On the opposite shore, Celia Burke leaned against a fat alder tree and watched the goose family cross the pond like a giant centipede.
Over them all, its white head a beacon in the green-black needles of a Douglas fir, an enormous bald eagle aimed its beak toward the paddling geese. Celia raised her binoculars slowly, anticipating the apex bird’s strike, her eyes peeled for the twin metal leg bands her grandmother had spotted during repeated sightings of this aging raptor.
She didn’t wait long. The eagle lifted its wings in feathered angles, flapped, swooped, and snatched a downy chick from the swimming spine of birds. The gosling’s parents—their honks frantic, necks extended—launched their heavy bodies after the attacker. But the eagle rose nimbly out of range, the chick in its talons.
Celia dropped her field glasses and sprang from beneath her tree’s leafy cover. The raptor passed overhead, swift and low and parallel to the narrow road beside the pond, the gosling a mere ladder’s reach away.
She sprinted after it, her ridiculous urge to prevent the baby goose’s demise as reflexive for her as breathing. For the next few seconds, she chased the eagle, propelled by the illusion that she could mob the raptor like a crow, that she could startle it into dropping the chick. She ran with abandon, watching the bird, not the ground, prepared to catch the baby when those wicked feet let go.
Instead, a rise in the country road caught her sneaker edge and sent her sprawling. Midair, she twisted, then hit the road’s rough surface in a skid. From her outstretched right arm to her ankle—wherever her tee and jean shorts weren’t covering skin—gravel, secure in its tarry substrate, scraped her raw. The spectacular tumble entered her memory in vivid, agonizing slow motion.
A goldfinch sang from a nearby field. Celia lay in the road, listening to it and a distant rumble. Numbed by endorphins from her sprint and the sweet relief of adrenaline, she felt oddly peaceful. Only her hip throbbed. Detached, she envisioned its purpling contusion as she ran her tongue over her teeth. Finding them intact, she inhaled a lungful of fresh rural air. On her exhale, a wave of pain arrived with a motorcycle’s roar.
And with a motorcycle. Its tires crunched the shoulder’s gravel as the engine’s RPMs slowed and stopped. A kickstand scraped, and heavy footfalls hurried toward her. She pushed herself to an upright position with her good hand.
“No paralysis. That’s favorable.”
She twisted toward the deep, steady voice and craned her neck at the helmeted man in a brown leather jacket and goggles who shaded her like a tree. A smiling tree, with a two-day’s growth of blond beard and a wide mouth of straight white teeth.
She rolled her shoulders. “I couldn’t jump off a dime right now.”
“Think you can stand?”
She nodded, reached, and the man pulled her upright with a leather-gloved hand.
“Oof. Hip pointer.” Groaning, she cupped the bony protrusion at the top of her pelvis with her uninjured hand and winced at the condition of her other palm—and the arm attached to it. Blood dripped from her elbow.
“No doubt.” He scanned her body-length abrasion. “I do not believe that hip is your immediate concern.” Stripping gloves from huge hands, he pulled a thermos of water and a packet of gauze from a saddlebag on his bike, then held the supplies toward her. “May I?”
“Let me get this right. I trip, out here in the boonies, not a soul in sight. Fast as gossip you show up out of nowhere with road rash supplies.”
“Ha.” He crouched, inspecting her bloody leg. “I’m still awaiting permission.”
“Fine. Have at it. I’ve got a mile hike home and I’m not going to carry half the road with me.” She plucked a seed-sized stone from her forearm and flicked it away. “Dang. I’m sandpapered.”
“An apt description.” He turned from her to the bike, removed his helmet, and placed gloves and goggles inside it. His hands made one smoothing pass over corn-colored hair.
Celia eyed the backs of his ears, tight to his head, their lobes plump and flared. She’d know them anywhere, though nothing else about him matched the seventeen-year-old she hadn’t seen for . . . what, almost twelve years? Well, apart from that hair. And his height, though this man seemed even taller.
“Burnaby?”
He answered with a grin, also unfamiliar. Back then, she’d spent a summer coaxing the corners of his mouth to rise.
“Hello, Celia.”
*****
Such a glad day. Thanks for celebrating it with me.
Love,
Cheryl
P. S. You can find the book lots of places. Click a link and PREORDER now.
March 2, 2024
Do You Like Green Eggs? (On sharing a birthday with Dr. Seuss)
Hi Friend,
On a March 2 decades ago, a high school senior in Washington’s Palouse hills lumbered to the front of the English class I was teaching and commandeered my podium.
Surprised, I quickly stepped aside. As a first-year teacher a mere four years older than he, I was still wet behind the ears at handling disruptions. Besides, he outweighed me by a good sixty pounds.
Fortunately, he grinned. “From all of us,” he said, and handed me an envelope. “Happy birthday to you, Mrs. B.”
“To you and Dr. Seuss,” a girl in the back said. “Would you like green eggs and ham?”
“One fish, two fish,” another kid piped.
Others chimed in with poetry on-the-fly. When I ran with it, iambs, trochees, and anapests hijacked the rest of the hour with whimsical, sing-song rhyme. Funny, happy stuff.
Dr. Seuss lines? I will eat them ANYWHERE—especially on my birthday.
Send me your favorites? Plunk some classic Seuss in the comments? I’d love to hear—and I’ll savor each like cake.
Then I’m dodging away for a while. I just received editorial feedback from my Tyndale publishing team on novel #3. For the next several weeks I’ll be devoting my headspace to manuscript revisions that incorporate their thoughtful input.
And I’ll be prepping for another party. In less than two months, Leaning on Air—the second book in my Sugar Birds duology—will release into the world!
I’ll pop in here when I can.
But today? I’m heading out with my beloved and my long lens for BIRDS.
“I will show some to you.
Your mother
will not mind at all if I do.”
(—Cat in the Hat in Fine Feathered Friends)
More than red shoes.
“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment . . . Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit . . .”
—1 Peter 3:3-4
***
Meanwhile, I’ll keep hunting a tree pun for you. So far, I’m stumped.
Love,
Cheryl
February 24, 2024
When Fog Becomes Butter
Hi Friend,
I haven’t thought of Thoreau for years. But mired in a to-do list the length of a three-day drive, I recalled a few of the guy’s lines.
Remember this?
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”
Easy to say, but you know commitments—how they multiply like field mice . . . or bacteria . . . or flies.
And how they chirp at you like nestlings. Or like smoke alarms at 2:00 am.
So when my publisher offered a Chris Croft time-management webinar, I joined a raft of other Tyndale authors for salient insights exactly right for this zero-margins season, when one more to-do brick could sink the ship.
For weeks I’d been praying for direction about all that. Then, a mere two days prior to that webinar, a beloved sat me down with an important request that would require even more of my time.
Within seconds, my boat swamped.
Needless to say, when Croft offered an extra month a year if I employed his suggestions, I muttered heartfelt thanks to God.
While it wouldn’t be right to dish out all that speaker’s proprietary info here, I’ll share one of his foundational thoughts and an exercise that shined a buttery beam of realignment into my fog of busy days. Maybe they’ll do the same for you.
Here goes:
To have more time for what’s important, I must spend less time on the unimportant.Duh. Another talk about priorities? I nearly logged out.
But before I could, he snagged me by defining important as that which matches my goals and feeds my soul with joy.
I licked the tip of my pencil and engaged.
First, I listed who and what was important to me—people, projects, beliefs, and activities.
Then I calculated what percentage of time I devote to them.
Second, I asked myself where I spent time elsewhere. You know, minutes, days, and years consumed with
All that’s urgent, stressfulNecessary time-drinkers that aren’t on my “important” listUnnecessary (even detrimental) time-wasters“Shoulds”—important to others, but not to me.“Almosts”—aligned with my “Importants,” but not bullseyes. Runners-up.I figured time-allocations for each of these, too.
Then, with the goal of increasing how much time I give to what’s important while decreasing time spent on the unimportant, I asked myself this:
What needs to change?
Which entities could I cut entirely?
How could I fence unimportant demands into smaller lots of time?
How could I shift my ratios—reallocating five or ten or thirty percent of the time spent “elsewhere” to what’s truly important?
Simple math, right? While my beloved’s significant time request meant that I cut out many activities, including those in the “Almosts” category, even a small five percent redistribution of time has potential for more investment in progress, joy, love.
Proof?
When the woods and creek whistled me outdoors today, I went.
I’d made time.
*******
(Any ideas on how you might restructure your days? I’d love to hear.)
Even When You’re Different.
(See him?)
“Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.”
*****
Mansions.
” Do not let your hearts be troubled . . . In my Father’s house are many rooms . . . I go to prepare a place for you. . .”
—John 14:1-2—2 Cor 13:11
*****
Mud snooze.
“I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.”
*****
Fleece.
“Pray without ceasing.”
—1 Thessalonians 5:17—Psalm 3:5
*****
Debt will stay with you if you can’t budge it.
*****
Breakthrough.
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
—1 Peter 5:10
*****
When beauty perches overhead.
“Isn’t she lovely?
Isn’t she wonderful?
Isn’t she precious?
… Isn’t she lovely made from love?”
—Stevie Wonder
Rough-legged hawk, Skagit Flats
*****
Now . . . the WINNER of the ADOPTION UNFILTERED audiobook offered in last week’s giveaway:
LEANA OSTERMAN!
Congratulations, LeAna! Watch your email for a link to the book from Audible.
*****
And a little FYI: despite the high cost of living, it sure remains popular.
Love,
Cheryl
P. S. Speaking of audiobooks . . . Wednesday I heard the audition of my publisher’s chosen Leaning on Air narrator!
Verrrrry excited about her!
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