Beth K. Vogt's Blog, page 24

In Others’ Words: Weathering Spring

It’s the first day of spring. How’s the weather in your part of the country?

As I write this post Monday night, I’ve texted with a friend who lives on the east coast and who’s bracing for the fourth Nor’easter in three weeks to hit the northeast; the meteorologists named this storm “Toby.”

Meanwhile, the weather forecasters here in Colorado Springs are doing their “get ready for anything” dance, mentioning the words “rain” and “snow” and “cold” and “warm” all in the same sentences, and all in the next few days. My daffodils are starting to sprout, and I know I’ll have the chance to take a few photos of them covered in snow.

Springtime in the Rockies is here … and we can look forward to more snow … and flowers starting to bloom … and an ice storm or two (or more) … and warmer weather … and temperatures dropping below freezing. Because that’s what spring is like all over the state of Colorado. You just never know. And the funny thing is, Coloradans are proud of our fickle weather.

In Your Words: What’s spring like where you live? What do you like most about spring?

 

In Others' Words: Weathering Spring https://wp.me/p63waO-2AA #firstdayofspring #spring2018
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'In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.' quote by #MarkTwain https://wp.me/p63waO-2AA #spring2018
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In Others’ Words: Sunshine in the House

I keep trying to record my GRANDgirls’ laughter. 

Their giggles are infectious in the best kind of way, causing me to smile and laugh with them. I’d like to turn their lilting, expressive laughs into a ringtone for my phone. Can you imagine how that sweet sound would catch other people unaware? It would be fun to watch strangers’ faces light up when my girlies’ laughter sounded out at the most unexpected moment . . . and made them smile and laugh, too.

There is something so warm about laughter. The sound wraps itself around you and squeezes tight, like the most welcome hug.

Laughter is healing. In the same way that the gentle touch of a loved one can comfort you, sharing laughter with a friend or family member can ease our pain, unravel frustration, help us see that life is still good, even in the midst of hardships.

The past few days, I’ve intentionally opened my blinds, opened my doors, and let the sun shine in. In the same way, there are times when circumstances make life seem cold and I go looking — go listening — for laughter. Not foolishness, no — there’s no comfort in that. A relaxing conversation with a friend always seems to include laughter, too, and a well-written book or magazine article can sometimes cause me to laugh out loud. One of my favorite ways to get “sunshine in the house”? A night spent playing board games with my family. The house fairly overflows with laughter.

In Your Words: How do you let the sunshine of laughter into your life?

In Others' Words: Sunshine in the House https://wp.me/p63waO-2Al #quotes #laughter
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'A good laugh is sunshine in the house.' quote by William Makepeace Thackeray https://wp.me/p63waO-2Al #laughter #perspective
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In Others’ Words: Creativity Takes Courage

Every time I write a book, I have to get my brave on.

Some of you are probably chuckling, wanting to ask: Oh, come on, Beth! What’s so scary about writing a novel?

All of it.

Figuring out what the book is about.
Developing the characters.
The first page.
The messy middle.
The end — oh, my word! The end! Do you know that it often takes me three or four tries to land the end of a novel?  

I love being a creative — and then there are times I hate being a creative because I have to walk in the valley of the shadow of “can I do this again?” “This” being am I willing to immerse myself in the start-to-finish process of writing a novel — all of it. The days when I know what I’m doing — and the days when I don’t. The days when my characters stick to the pre-plotted storyline — and the days that they don’t. The days when I remember I love what I do — and the anguish-filled days when I don’t. 

On the “I don’t” days, I have to be brave and carry on. Keep writing. Keep living the life of a creative even if the muse has left the building. I don’t quit — although there have been times when quitting sounded appealing. Quitting is for, well, quitters. And brave people don’t throw in the, um, laptop.

In Your Words: Thanks for joining me for that little pep talk. Tell me, what helps you get your brave on when you’re not feeling courageous?

In Others' Words: Creativity Takes Courage https://wp.me/p63waO-2Ac #quotes #creativity
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'Creativity takes courage.' quote by French artist Henri Matisse https://wp.me/p63waO-2Ac #creativity #courage
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In Others’ Words: Hope to Win

For some people, hoping to win might fall into the category of “”wishing doesn’t make it so,” — a quote attributed to novelist Lev Grossman. 

But there’s something to be said about mindset, isn’t there?

You have to think like a winner — believe you can win — if you’re going to act like a winner. Perform like a winner.  Defeatist thoughts of “They’re a better team” or “I’ll never learn how to write a novel and land a contract” or “I can’t (fill in the blank with whatever you want to accomplish)” can all become self-fulfilling prophecies. 

Negative thinking produces negative outcomes.

Why not hope for more? Why not hope to win? Why not look at the competition, size them up, and decide to outplay them? And sometimes our greatest competition is our negative thoughts.  Hope to win — and then go out there and win! All we have to remember is that sometimes “the win” isn’t the score at the end — it’s  doing our best.

In Others’ Words: How do you maintain a “hope to win” attitude day in and day out? 

In Others' Words: Hope to Win https://wp.me/p63waO-2zX #quotes #perspective
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'He who does not hope to win has already lost.
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Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt Stop #12

Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all 30 stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 5 grand prizes!

The hunt BEGINS on 3/1 at noon MST with Stop #1 at LisaTawnBergren.com.
Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer).
There is NO RUSH to complete the hunt–you have all weekend (until Sunday, 3/4 at midnight MST)! So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books.
Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the CLUE on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the Rafflecopter form at Stop #30. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way!

I am excited to be hosting Carla Laureano today on my site for the Hunt! Carla and I have often commiserated together over working through our deadlines…while usually being sick…and tired. Her latest novel The Saturday Night Super Club has just released from Tyndale House (our shared publisher!): When a targeted smear campaign costs award-winning chef Rachel Bishop her restaurant and all her dreams, she vows to do whatever it takes to get it back, even if that means joining forces with Alex Kanin, the writer who inadvertently set the disaster in motion. As they work together to rebuild her reputation by co-hosting an exclusive pop-up supper club, Rachel realizes Alex is not the heartless opportunist she once thought he was… and that perhaps there’s life outside the pressure-cooker of her chosen career. Can she trust him with her second chance…and her heart?

Confessions of a Fine-Dining Dropout by Carla Laureano

It will surprise absolutely no one who know me or who has read my latest release, The Saturday Night Supper Club, that I love food. Or that I love the dining scene in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. I couldn’t tell you who is playing in the World Cup, but I can tell you which restaurants opened and closed this week. Fine dining is my entertainment and my sport … and I’ll defend my favorite spots like a Broncos fan defends his team on Super Bowl Sunday.

It started a few years ago when my husband and I picked up a copy of 5280 Magazine’s “25 Best Restaurants in Denver” issue. We’d lived in the metro area for years, but having young kids, we didn’t tend to venture out much beyond the local chain restaurants that were guaranteed to serve chicken fingers and mac ‘n’ cheese. Now that they were getting older, it was time to reinstitute date night—and we had the perfect excuse. We would work our way through the magazine’s list backwards and see if we agreed with their rankings.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it? I’ll save you the suspense—we didn’t make it. Not even halfway through, we realized that these are really expensive restaurants and more suited for a special occasion than a regular date night. Also, the magazine’s definition of “Denver” tended to be broad, and we didn’t feel like driving over an hour for dinner on a Friday night. So we put the project on hold and chalked it up to a good way to have discovered a few new favorites.

Fast forward to the writing of The Saturday Night Supper Club. All the restaurants in the book are fictional, but they’re based on real dining establishments. We started up fancy date nights again, this time with a more curated list of restaurants that fit the settings I wanted to describe in my book, and we hit the town. And it was fun.

For a while.

The most shocking  revelation was that after a while, I get sick of fancy food. When I began perusing a menu that advertised things like “Deconstructed Shepherd’s Pie: foraged mushrooms, foie gras, parsley foam” I started to wish we’d just hit up the barbecue joint down the street. (By the way, that menu item—not a real thing. Thank goodness.) I had finally hit critical mass, maximum saturation in fine dining, where the preparations and over-the-top descriptions and expensive ingredients that had once felt so special and innovative suddenly became ho-hum and vaguely ludicrous in their earnestness. I started wishing for the corner diner where my husband and I could laugh over coffee and pie instead of keeping our voices down to a discreet level, or the noisy fast-casual place where we could show each other stupid cat memes on our cell phones without getting judgmental looks from the tables beside us.

Like Rachel does in the book, I began to realize that maybe I was looking at food and dining the wrong way completely. When viewed as diversion or research, the constant demand to be entertained and amazed starts to take your focus off the reason you left home in the first place—to connect with the people you love, in this case, my husband. Sure, it was fun to marvel at the ingenuity of talented chefs and to analyze the food between courses (thank God I’m married to both a patient and a thoughtful man), but mostly it was the interaction at the table with him that I enjoyed the most. Maybe it was time to keep date night, but kick fine dining to the curb.

Now our nights out are a lot more likely to involve pizza and a grown-up movie, a meandering trip through the bookstore, or a late night trip to Target where we look at televisions that won’t fit in our living room and try on hats that we don’t intend to buy. The fancy places still have a place in our routine, but we save them for special occasions and celebrations, or we opt for the more accessible, laid-back weekend brunches served by our favorite restaurants.

The main attraction then, no matter where we go, is some quiet time spent together. The food is just the vehicle by which we get to enjoy it.

Carla Laureano is the RITA Award-winning author of contemporary inspirational romance and Celtic fantasy (as C.E. Laureano). A graduate of Pepperdine University, she worked as a sales and marketing executive for nearly a decade before leaving corporate life behind to write fiction full-time. She currently lives in Denver with her husband and two sons, where she writes during the day and cooks things at night.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the Stop #12 Skinny:

You can order Carla’s book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CBD or your local bookstore!

Clue to write down: this

Link to Stop #13, the next stop on the loop: Carla Laureano’s own site!

Thank you for stopping by my site! Before you go, be sure to fill out the entry form below for a chance to win a $20 gift card to Etsy and when you sign up for the gift card and become a part of my newsletter list, you’ll receive exclusive access to my new novella, Revisions, shared just with my newsletter subscribers!

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Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt Stop 12: Confessions of a Fine Dining Dropout with author @CarlaLaureano https://wp.me/p63waO-2z9 #giveaway #chrisfic
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In Others’ Words: Making Changes

 

Some quotes you just can’t argue with. 

I could leave it at that and this would be a very short blog post, wouldn’t it?

Yep. Feeling a bit sassy today.

Expounding on the whole “making changes” theme:

People in my life can influence me so that I see the need to change.
People can inspire me by the changes they’ve made in their lives so that I want to do what they did and change, too.
People can even confront me and tell me I should change. Demand that I change.

But only I can change my life. It’s as simple, and as hard, as that.

Realizing that I’m responsible for the change in my life — or the lack of any change — is a sure sign of growing up, wouldn’t you agree? You can’t blame someone else for who you are, who you’re becoming, or what you do or don’t do. 

Now for me, because I’m on a faith journey with God, there’s also a spiritual element to this “only I can change my life” principle. Because sometimes … sometimes I tell God “I can’t” and He tells me “I know.” And His words are bathed in grace and love. And I’m reminded that some life changes — the best life changes — are miraculous.

In Your Words: What produces change in your life? What’s been one of the biggest changes in your life? Or even one of the smallest, but its had the most sweeping effect on you?

In Others' Words: Making Changes https://wp.me/p63waO-2zC #quotes #lifechange
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'Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.' https://wp.me/p63waO-2zC #quote #CarolBurnett
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In Others’ Words: Crowding Out Trust

Last week didn’t go exactly as I planned.

This week isn’t going exactly as I planned, either.

My husband, 17-year-old daughter, Christa, and I traveled to Washington, DC last Friday so Christa could compete in a volleyball tournament with her club team. We started off the trip by showing up at the Denver airport — only to find out that our flight left from Colorado Springs. Did I mention that we live in the Springs?!

Can you say “stunned”?

We arrived home Monday around midnight in a snowstorm in Colorado Springs (right airport). Our car was still in Denver. Tuesday, I discovered an odd lump on my daughter’s dog, Jo. An unplanned trip to the vet resulted in an even-more-unplanned surgery being scheduled for Jo tomorrow (Friday). And all sorts of concerning possibilities being discussed.

Yes, I know Jo is “just” a dog. But she’s our dog. And I’m worried.

In the midst of all this, I’m on deadline. Well, deadlines, plural. And I’m unpacking and doing laundry and telling myself it’s okay and crying and trying not to cry and you know … doing life.

What I want to do is trust. 

And to do that, I need to slow down, which means ignoring the laundry — yep, it’s still here. And ignoring the deadlines — just for a moment or two. And tell the worry it’s not the boss of me. And I must choose to trust.

God got us through the mixed-up airport fiasco. Yes, it cost us some extra money, but the most important thing was getting to DC. And we did that. And my daughter was happy because we got on a flight with some of her teammates and her coach. And God knows we love Jo — and He cares about what we care about, including our dog.

In Your Words: What do you do to keep worry from crowding out trust?

 

In Others' Words: Crowding Out Trust https://wp.me/p63waO-2zv #quotes #BillyGraham
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'When worry is present, trust cannot crowd its way in.' https://wp.me/p63waO-2zv #quotes #BillyGraham
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In Others: Be More Courageous

If at all possible, I like to hang out with courageous people.

People who don’t back down from a challenge.
People who aren’t scared of the unknown — or, if they are, stare it down with their own brand of moxie.
People who’ve been through the worst that life can throw at them and have held onto their faith and their sense of humor — while letting go of all those little things that seemed important, but were merely emotional clutter.

If at all possible, I like to hang out with people who dare me to be brave. 

People who believe I’m more courageous than I think I am — because then I start believing them, too.
People who bolster my less-than bravery with theirs — and make me stronger.
People who say “Yes, you are” and “Yes, you can” because the affirmation of friends and loved ones is a powerful force to be reckoned with.

And yes, it’s possible that I have far more courage than I ever dreamed possible. That you have far more courage than you ever dreamed possible. Stop and consider that truth for just a moment. You and me … we’re more courageous than we imagined! If there’s anything we don’t want to waste, it’s courage. Think about all you could do if you believed you were more courageous than you ever imagined.

And then act like it.

In Your Words: Who encourages you to be more courageous than you think you are? And who do you encourage to be brave?

In Others' Words: Be More Courageous https://wp.me/p63waO-2zl #quotes #courage
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'Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.' https://wp.me/p63waO-2zl #quotes #DaleCarnegie
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In Others’ Words: Still Learning

Attitude changes things, doesn’t it?

From our perspective in time, most likely we don’t consider Michelangelo a “learner.”  Being able to look at his works of art, to read about and marvel over his accomplishments, we call the man one of the greatest, most inspired artists of all time.

 Michelangelo’s willingness to keep on learning could only help him be more creative. He was open to new ideas, to possibilities, to what might be — to what he didn’t know yet. There was more to know, and he was going to discover it.

When you think about it, “I am still learning” are four very powerful words. They have the potential to change not only what you know, but also what you can do, and as a result, who you are … and maybe even the world around you.

In Your Words:  What’s something new you’ve learned recently? How do you ensure that you keep learning new things?

In Others' Words: Still Learning https://wp.me/p63waO-2z5 #quotes #perspective #Michelangelo
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I am still learning.https://wp.me/p63waO-2z5 #quotes #Michelangelo #perspective
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In Others’ Words: Taking the Time

To everything there is a season, right?

But how many of us consider “now” the perfect season?

We don’t want to wait. We want what we want right this minute because, of course, “now” is the best time, the right time, to have it.

And yet, rushing things often ruins things. Let’s be honest: rushing things often ruins us.

Can we get things accomplished fast? Absolutely. But will the finished product be our very best effort — something great, even? Not likely.

Time provides space for us to learn. Time allows us space to revise, adjust, perfect our abilities. Time allows us opportunities to build relationships with others — mentors, teachers, friends — and we are better for all of these relationships.

Time provides us space to mature. We discover what’s important … and what’s not. Maybe our dream is worth striving for … or maybe, just maybe, someone else’s dream, someone else’s need, is more important than ours.

In Your Words: What achievement has taken longer than you expected — but it’s been worth it? Why?

In Others' Words: Taking the Time https://wp.me/p63waO-2yV #quotes #achievements
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All great achievements require time. https://wp.me/p63waO-2yV #quotes #MayaAngelou
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