Becky Wade's Blog, page 162

Be Prepared

There’s no escaping the news, the fear, the warnings. The
Coronavirus is coming! Beware! Be ready! I understand that I should be
worried—after all, I’m over sixty and that puts me at a greater risk of
dying if I do contract the virus. But strangely, I’m not worried. While I
would like to live another dozen years and watch my grandchildren grow
up, my philosophy is the same as my heroines’ motto in my novel “Where
We Belong.” Whenever their lives were at risk they would say, “God knows
when the end of our days will be; we have nothing to fear.” The
question that should concern me is not “how or when will I die,” but
“how will I live in the meantime?” How well will I represent Jesus?

I keep wondering what Christians are doing in China, where the
outbreak began. Or in Iran, another hard-hit country where Christians
make up a tiny minority. Naturally, they must hope to survive this
epidemic—we all do. But I’m guessing that believers in those hard-hit
nations are reaching out to their sick and dying neighbors with the love
of Christ in spite of the risk to themselves. I’m certain we’ll hear
stories of their courage and faith in the days to come. And of the lives
they saved.

The Apostle Peter urged us to “Always be prepared to give an answer
to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have” (1
Peter 3:15). And non-believers are never hungrier for the hope that we
have in Christ than when they are facing death. Perhaps that’s why God
allows Christians to suffer through the same plagues and wars and
disasters as non-Christians, side by side—so we can proclaim His love
and hope to the lost.

While this particular virus is unusual, the fear and uncertainty it
brings to people around the world is not. Every generation has faced
life-threatening disasters, natural or man-made. In my novel “If I Were
You” (releasing June 2), the main characters live in London during World
War II, and experience the relentless Nazi bombings known as The Blitz.
In the passage below, Eve is worried for her mum’s safety, and tries to
persuade her to quit her job in London as a maidservant to Lady
Rosamunde and go to a safer place.

“I don’t understand why you’re so loyal to her, Mum. Lady
Rosamunde demands so much from you, working all hours of the day and
night, yet she doesn’t have an ounce of consideration for you.”

Mum sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “It isn’t easy to
explain, Eve. I suppose . . . I suppose it’s because of what the vicar
once said in one of his sermons. He read a Bible passage that said
servants should do their work joyfully, as if serving the Lord. Jesus
said if we’re ordered to go one mile, we should go two. And I feel sorry
for Lady Rosamunde. For all her wealth, she is a sad, lonely woman . . .
But she gave me a job at a time when I badly needed it to support you.
So I’ve always thought that God must have a reason for wanting me to
work for her.”

I don’t believe there are any “accidents” with God. Whatever disaster
may strike us—a Nazi bomb, a deadly virus, or a heart attack—we can
know that it is firmly under God’s control, and that it will serve His
greater purpose. We already have eternal life, and so “to live is Christ
and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). We can face the end of our days
with nothing to fear.

If you’d like to learn more about “If I Were You,”  follow this link to see a fun video with more information: http://bit.ly/3828FZS

Inspired by Scripture

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I’m supposed to be editing…

I’ve got edits back on my next book.

I also have a book releasing in three weeks on April 7th. I’m so excited about Flight Risk! I can’t wait to read your reactions to Savannah and Jett’s story. It was a fun…and challenging…one to write with so many layers. From family friction for Savannah to a plane crash to a race to find truth in a fake news world, there’s a lot happening.

I’ve got classes to move fully online post haste as Purdue prepares for all online after spring break. I’m ready for now, but there’s still a lot to think through so that the courses are intentional, interactive, and worthwhile for my students.

And all I want to do is sit and read this amazing book that I’m at 70% of the way through (thank you, Kindle, for the percentage up dates.)

Can anyone else relate?

Life is filled with things I should be doing. Things I actually like to do. But instead I keep getting pulled back to thist story, and it’s got the pacing to keep me scrolling. I love books like that. I love to read them. And I love to write them…when they’re finished!

If you’re looking for some great books that fill that criteria, then you need to check out the Spring Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt. This hunt is filled with my favorite Christian fiction authors, and the books on this list that I’ve read are AMAZING. Truly. These books will all fill the need for a book that engages you from the first page with characters and plots that are well crafted.

In addition to the tour giveaways, many of us have bonus ones. I’m giving away Flight Risk and two more of my books, so be sure to pop by my stop and join the fun.

Writing Retreat Ready!

Hi friends,

Excited to be with you
today! Right now, I’m getting my final things packed and heading to the airport
to pick up a sweetheart of a friend. We’re heading up to beautiful Lancaster,
Pennsylvania for a 4-day writing retreat. I can’t wait! I’ve hosted a writing
retreat up there for a handful of dear writing friends. It was definitely a
memorable time. We got hit with a massive blizzard and had to extend the
retreat a bit until flights resumed, but we had lots of writing time, played
games (thank you, Julie Klassen, for the fun Scrabble game), brainstormed
ideas, took in the beautiful snow, and laughed a ton.

This particular retreat is
one I hosted last spring for aspiring authors. The last day of the retreat
everyone voted to have another one this year and so we are. We have a private
FB group and keep in touch throughout the year. It’s amazing how a group of eight
very different women from all over the region and country can become friends in
such a short time. I truly believe it’s because we share three loves—the love
of reading, the love of writing, and most especially the love of Christ.

We’ve formed a sisterhood
of sorts and it’s been such a blessing for all of us. The ladies have friends
who are in the same spot along their publishing journey—some slightly ahead,
some just starting out. But I truly believe I’m blessed the most from our time
together. I love the joy that fills me as I see the growth they’ve made in
writing, in attending their first conference, in their first agent request or
contest final. We’re a group of cheerleaders in cozy clothes, fuzzy socks
sitting around a beautiful stone fireplace with mugs of extra-strong coffee, of
course. We’ll, most of us. There are a few tea drinkers among us. I will win
them over one day. It’s my mission.

You don’t have to be a writer to attend a retreat. Several phenomenal reader retreats have popped up over the last handful of years. I’ve had the blessing of attending CFRR (Christian Fiction Readers Retreat) and now ACFW Storyfest. I’m looking forward to taking part in Storyfest this September in St. Louis. If you’re a booklover, you should check it out! It’s going to be a ton of fun. There will be panel discussions, games, giveaways, and meals with some of your favorite authors.

A few more reader retreats
that I’ve attended and loved, or that I’ve heard wonderful things about are:

Fiction Readers Summit in Grand Rapids, MI. Chris and Susie and the entire team do a fantastic job. I loved being an attending author their first year.

The Mississippi River Readers Retreat organized in Minnesota this August by a mother-daughter reader duo. They have a fantastic line up!

Reader
Question: Have you
attended a retreat? If so, what was your favorite part? If not, what would
interest you most about attending one?  

I can’t wait to read your answers.

Have a fabulous rest of your week!

Dani

Tea Time is the Best Time

One of my favorite days of the year is visiting one of my favorite book clubs: Tantalizing Ladies Tea–A Christian Book Coterie. This is the group of women I fictionalized as the “Ladies Tea and Knitting Society” in my Tales From Ivy Hill series.

Photo credit: CCT blog.

They invited me to join them again last Friday, and again, it was such a blessing to be included! Best of all, we had a surprise visit from one of the members (Sherri) who has moved away to Chicago, but was able to come back and join us for the afternoon!

Shari, Emily, Sherri, Tiffany, Kristine, Judy, Beverly

What a soul-nourishing time of sisterhood, prayer, tea, and delicious food. Oh yeah, and we talked a little about my latest book, The Bridge to Belle Island, too.

♫♪ On the Road Again… ♪♫

It seems like just yesterday I was telling you all about our 50-day road trip in our Winnebago Travato camper van (that we named Meriwether). But the calendar says we’ve been home now for three and a half months, so I guess it’s time to get on the road again! These were our routes going and coming last time. We’re headed west again, but will be taking quite a different route this time.

When we left on our last trip, we had only been in our new house in Missouri for seven weeks and I was so not ready to leave! Now, not only do we feel wonderfully settled here, but we’ve found a church home we love and have had plenty of chances to spend time with our Missouri kids and grandkids, so I’m feeling much happier about leaving this time (especially since we’ll get to see both of our sons along the way). In addition, this trip is going to be a week shorter, and we’ll come home via Kansas so we’ll get a little visit with Ken’s mom and my dad on the tail end of the trip, which will make it feel almost like we’re already home!

I’d never driven the Travato before this past weekend! Ken loves to drive and I am happy to let him, plus, I was on deadline during our last trip and needed to write every possible moment. But this time, I’ve just turned in a full-length novel and a novella, so I’m much more free. At Ken’s urging, I took Meriwether for a little spin last weekend…just around the parking lot, then a couple of miles to home. I was surprised how great “she” handled. I’m ready to drive!

We’ve started getting the camper ready for the trip, de-winterizing, cleaning, gathering what we want to take, and organizing everything just so. We learned a lot from our last trip about what works and what doesn’t. And I had a little fun this weekend “making” canisters for all the staples we take. We discovered the plastic containers our favorite cashews come in stack perfectly without wasting space the way round containers do. Same with the boxes from the instant chai latte Ken drinks. So I labeled all the containers and decorated them with the leftover wallpaper we put up in the Travato. With help from an old-fashioned label maker, I think they turned out pretty cute!

I’m excited to see what kind of adventures we’ll have this time around. Hopefully, we’ll see some beautiful views like the ones above from our last trip! I’ll be posting my next few blogs from the road, and if you’d like to follow our travels on Instagram, you can find us at Raney Day Trippin’.

Before I sign off, I wanted to let you know about a giveaway I’m doing for members of my Facebook Readers Page. Two possible chances to win the first two Chandler Sisters novels along with a pretty ring box that’s a miniature of one that’s featured in Chasing Dreams! The giveaway happens today, so you’ll need to enter RIGHT AWAY! But you can find out how by clicking here to join the group.

Inspired by Scripture

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Book Release and a Giveaway!

This week I’ve been celebrating the release of The Runaway Bride, the next installment of my Bride Ships Series. It’s been such a fun week as readers eagerly set sail on a new reading adventure!

I’m
thrilled to announce that the book recently received a Starred Review from Book
List, which is a pretty big deal since starred reviews are only given to a
small selection of books.

Book List said: “The Runaway Bride is an uplifting and well-crafted second installment in Hedlund’s Bride Ships series. Hedlund has a knack for creating unlikely yet alluring matches . . . Period details, such as relations with local Native Americans and a smallpox epidemic, help immerse readers in the story’s 1862 world of cultural, class, and gender injustices. Tender moments of light sensuality infuse this inspirational romance with delectable heat.”

Thank you to Elisabeth Espinoza for this picture!

During the rewrite and editing stages of The Runaway Bride, my editors and I had
some frank discussions about the sensuality level and how much is appropriate.
Often it’s tough to find a balance that will please every reader and their
tastes. In the end, I decided I needed to stay true to my voice and style,
which the Book List review stated succinctly with “alluring matches,” “light
sensuality,” and “delectable heat.”

As I said in this post “How Much Sensuality is TOO Much For Christian Fiction?” that Christian fiction has varying amounts of sensuality. Some romances are really sweet and chaste. Others have a little more sizzle and passion on the page. Mine tend to lean toward the sizzling heat side of the spectrum!

Thank you to Blessed & Bookish for this graphic!

If that’s something you enjoy, then be sure to pick up a copy of The Runaway Bride today! Or enter to WIN a copy in the Rafflecopter form below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

How about YOU? Do you like your romances to be sweet or to have a little sizzle? (NO wrong answers here! Both are perfectly okay!)

Dr. Seuss’s Birthday

This week marks the birth of a literary legend. Theodor Seuss Geisel, more famously known as Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts. It’s hard to imagine a childhood without Dr. Seuss. I vividly recall several of his books being among my childhood favorites. Those catchy rhymes and silly stories. What child wouldn’t be captivated? I remember my favorites being One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish , Blue Fish and Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now!

Ted Geisel entered Dartmouth College in 1921 and graduated in June 1925. Dartmouth was where he first began using the pseudonym “Seuss,” when he was writing for Jack-O-Lantern, the college humor magazine. Seuss was his mother’s maiden name and was pronounced in the German manner: Zoice (rhymes with voice).

Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book was published in 1937 after it was previously rejected by publishers 27 times. And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street was based on his recollections from life in Springfield. Geisel was walking down Madison Avenue, about to throw the book away, when he ran into former classmate Mike McClintock, who had just been appointed juvenile editor of Vanguard Press. McClintock promptly took him up to his office where they signed a contract for Mulberry Street. Dr. Seuss once said, “That’s one of the reasons I believe in luck. If I’d been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I would be in the dry-cleaning business today!” Author Beatrix Potter called the book “the cleverest book I have met with for many years.”

After an article in Life magazine ran in 1954 claiming that boring school primers were a major cause of children not wanting to read, William Spaulding (then director of Houghton Mifflin’s education division) challenged Dr. Seuss to “write me a story that first-graders can’t put down,” while using only 225 words chosen from a list of 348. Dr. Seuss accomplished the task using 236! The runaway success of The Cat in the Hat inspired Beginner Books, a division of Random House that would publish books designed to help children learn to read. In the fall of 1958, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and four other titles launched the Beginner Books series. One of his next huge successes, Green Eggs and Ham, was published as a Beginner Book in 1960. Dr. Seuss’s publisher bet him that he could not write a book using fifty or fewer different words. The resulting book, which has the fewest words of all his books, is his best-selling title. 

Try this fun quiz to see which Dr. Seuss character you are most like.
Take the quiz here.
Here’s my result:

Which character are you?
Which Dr. Seuss books do you remember most fondly?

Information for this post was quoted from content found at:
https://www.seussville.com/dr-seuss/.

Book Movies

In the past few weeks, my husband and I have watched three book movies—movie adaptations of classic literature. (One was technically a mini-series, but still.) We love these kinds of movies, both because we know the story will be good, for it has endured the test of time, and also because we enjoy the historical world on screen. 

Also, It’s always interesting to see how closely a filmmaker or screenwriter will stick to the original work. We often find ourselves wondering about a line of dialogue or an unexpected scene. Was that in the original work? Or was that added for this interpretation? In the end, watching a movie or mini-series based on literature always drives me back to another read of the original story, which is a good thing! 

So here is what we have been watching—and what I am now ready to read once again. 

Howard’s End

Our PBS station showed this 2017-2018 mini-series recently. I had read Howard’s End in a literature class in college eons ago and wasn’t sure I remembered the story. I just remembered I had enjoyed it. But a few minutes in and I did remember it! At least I remembered the ending. Which is pretty remarkable considering how long ago I read it. While they did a good job with the depth of the characters in the show, I now want to open the book and see exactly how E. M. Forester portrayed Margaret and Helen Schlegel as well as the other characters. I also want to go back and watch the older version (which I think I did see at some point!) with its all-star cast of Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Anthony Hopkins and more! I wonder which version will feel more satisfying. 

Little Women

We went almost the first weekend the movie opened, and I’ll admit I went with fear and trepidation, for I am a huge fan of the Winona Ryder version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic story. (And, I must say, of the musical Little Women, too!) Of course every adaption chooses different aspects of the story and its characters to emphasize, so there were some major differences between the two films, but overall I enjoyed this newest version. The actors were fabulous, the score beautiful and the visual aspects a feast for the eyes. But again, there were bits and pieces, both of this version and what I remember from the other, that I now want to compare to the actual book, even knowing that this latest version pulled in some biographical elements and attributed them to Jo, which I’m fine with since it was obviously a very autobiographical novel! Even after several readings, I still sometimes confuse the movie details and the book details. 

Emma

My very first Jane Austen book was Emma. I read it in a literature class in college and fell in love. So my husband arranged for us to be at the first showing of the newest version of the film in our city. Again, I went in a little unsure because I so love Gwenyth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam as Emma and Mr. Knightley. But like Little Women, I kept an open mind. And also like Little Women, I can embrace this version of Emma. This version focuses more intensely on Emma and Mr. Knightley as they fall in love over time—or rather as they discover their love for one another. Which was great, actually. It just meant that some of the awesome minor characters (who happened to be played by amazing actors!) weren’t in the story as often as they might have been. But still, I loved watching Emma and Mr. Knightley fall in love a little more obviously. And so now I’m anxious to go back to the book once more, to see if these moments were implied and the filmmakers simply expanded on them or if they were there all along and weren’t as emphasized in the Paltrow-Northam version. 

Three really great movies based on three really great books, and I am so excited to read each one of them again. 

There are so many great book to movie adaptations out there. What is your most recent favorite? Did it spur you to re-read the book?