Theme: Forgiveness

“I think it’s time to forgive your sister. It’s a fact of life that sometimes unforeseen circumstances prevent people with the best of intentions from keeping promises they make.”   Dear Abby, Sunday, September 07, 2014.

“How can you just get over these things, darling?” she had asked him. “You’ve had so much strife but you’re always happy. How do you do it?”

“I choose to,” he said. “I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my dad did, or I can forgive and forget.”

“But it’s not that easy.”

He smiled that Frank smile. “Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.” He laughed, pretending to wipe sweat from his brow. “I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a very proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No”—his voice became sober—“we always have a choice. All of us.”   The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman

I picked these quotes about forgiveness because they reflect my own feelings. I especially like the idea of forgiving once. So simple and practical. So useful on a personal scale—for everyday living.

I’ve always felt it costs nothing to offer everyone a polite “Good morning” when passing on the sidewalk or bike path. I’ve chosen that course because it was easiest for me, no need to constantly dredge up past wrongs. It’s more of a matter of here and now.

I wanted to use something of this philosophy in my novel, to make a spirit of forgiveness relevant for my fictional families present and past.

I hope I’ve succeeded to some extent. 

First Book Sale

Jody, my neighbor, fellow See YA book club member, milkweed supplier, and all-around great person made my day yesterday afternoon. 

She knocked on my back door and asked to buy a copy of my book.

All I did was mention that I'd picked up some boxes from the Midwest Writing Center. 

I had to scramble to make change. To find a pen. To inscribe something on the first page that was totally inadequate at expressing my feelings. 

Here is my memento. 

Thank you Jody!

(Yes, I always have piles of paper everywhere.) 

Misty Urban, Editor

I have been fortunate to have many fine editors help me with my first book, Clouds Over Bishop Hill. Misty Urban provided line editing on the final leg of my journey to being published with MWC Press, an imprint of the Midwest Writing Center.

Misty took great care and ample time going over my words and sentences, while still being prompt on returning corrected copy.

Misty has a great eye for details, catching the small mistakes that many others, including myself, had missed for a long time. She also found a few “biggies” too. Uncovering those lapses, the kind that would really be embarrassing to explain to a reviewer or a reader, are the ones I’m most grateful for.

She introduced me to the Chicago style and we were able to work together to smoothly shape my manuscript into a coherent whole. I can recommend her editing work to anyone. It would be money and time wisely spent.

The Big Day!

The proof came last Friday. It made for an exciting day of celebration and I was only able to post a photo to my blog.

This Friday Clouds Over Bishop Hill went LIVE on Amazon.

It's a big day nearly six years in the making. I'm wearing my 2010 NaNoWriMo winner T-shirt in the photo. I've saved it all these years for exactly this day.

The Proof Came Today!

ISBN

Clouds Over Bishop Hill now has become a real entity with its own ID number: 978-0-9906190-3-1.

It was real before. Now, it is a little more so.

We are going through the process of uploading files to CreateSpace. I wish I could say all went well and there were no glitches, but there were a few.

There had to be few “somethings.” For us it was: having pages and pages of forms to fill out, proving citizenship, having a nice Midwestern thunderstorm roll through, and losing the modem connection in the middle of uploading.

But so far there have been no total disasters. The forms were filled out and accepted. I can now personally vouch that having a cell phone that can do tethered Wi-Fi is a wonderful sanity-saving thing.

The greatest delay came from the cover spine. It had to be made larger because of a different paper choice. Cream paper is fatter than white paper? Who knew.

Which is the point. We are all learning new things here.

But annoying or not, every step gets me closer to having a real book in hand.

And closer to the time to think more seriously about marketing plans. 

There will be a book!

The New Website

My latest website took a little over four days to make. Two days to play around with the modular components and understand how they work. A half day to make a plan for the overall design of the elements I deemed important for my site. The rest to actually write some copy, capture my cover photo, and fit everything together into two columns.

I used Weebly Website Builder, a site my husband had directed me to. He hadn’t used it himself, but had heard it would be easy to use. His goal was for me to do it myself.

I was able to get it done. Pretty much on my own.

I got my columns set up. I would have preferred one column larger than the other, but couldn’t make it happen. That was probably for the best because two equal columns look really good on small screens like cell phones.

I was able to activate the links to my blog and my Facebook author page. (I had husband standing by to make sure I entered the right info.)

I needed the most assistance to get the cover photo. (I watched him do it and I sort of understood.)

Of all the websites I’ve designed, this one went the easiest and the fastest. I’m confident that my first updates will go just as smoothly.

I will find out fairly soon because I finished the last editorial review of the manuscript last night. It’s really going to happen. Clouds Over Bishop Hill will be out in the world soon and I will be out there trying to introduce it and myself to prospective readers. The new website will be an invaluable tool.