Journal Entries

August 17, 2009

A Book Deal!!!

Exactly one month from today, I’ll fly to Denver where I’ll meet Rachel Meisel, the editor of Summerside Press. Rachel has offered a contract for a book to be published September 2010. I’ve been working toward this moment for over ten years. Writers fantasize about getting “the Call” — the moment when an editor or agent informs them that a book they’ve crafted will actually see print. Ask any published novelist where they were when they first got “the Call” and they’ll lovingly describe that exact moment in time with as much detail as someone describing a marriage proposal. Actually, in some cases, more. For me, it came on a bad day–a day when I sat down at the computer to write and felt an overwhelming sense of failure so intense I gave up. I shut down the computer and poured my heart out into my prayer journal–asking God if my sense of mission in writing inspirational fiction was misguided. I apologized to Him for misinterpreting my own selfish desire to write–as a directive from Him. Folded into this emotional storm was various writing articles I’d recently read saying that in this bad publishing economy, absolutely no editors were buying […]

September 4, 2009

An Amish Letter

SerenaJournal Entries Amish, Letter 0

With the help of my computer guru son, Jacob, I’ve become fairly proficient in this brave new world of e-mail, blogs, and Facebook. It is all so fascinating–especially as I connect with friends I haven’t seen in years. In fact, I have to discipline myself not to become addicted to all the information and chatter that is available at my fingertips. I’ve found, to my dismay, that an entire day can evaporate if I’m not consciously frugal (I set a timer) with my on-line time. The last time I wrote an actual pen-on-paper, lick the stamp, and address the envelope kind of letter was a few weeks ago when I penned a thank-you note to an Amish family with whom we’d had dinner up in Sugarcreek, Ohio. I had been there on a research trip for my first contracted book. Since the book has an Amish theme, my bed and breakfast hostess used her connections to get me an invitation to an Old Order Amish family’s home–where I could ask questions. It was, for me, a magical evening filled with the sight of beautiful Amish children playing on the lawn while we enjoyed a delicious meal served picnic style outside […]

July 1, 2010

A Box Of Books

SerenaJournal Entries 1

“I had no idea why the Fed Ex man was pulling into our driveway. I hadn’t ordered anything. My husband hadn’t ordered anything. Then the man lifted three largish boxes out of his truck. He acted as though they were heavy. This was a puzzle. I decided that my son must have bought some parts–he works as a computer tech and frequently orders computer parts. Still, I wondered what he could have ordered that would be so heavy. Usually his purchases come in much smaller packages. Then I looked at the labels and realized that they were all addressed to me. How strange. And then it hit me–I’m actually an author. And these are my author copies. How wonderful. I was so excited, I had to force myself not to hug the Fed Ex guy and dance him around the porch. Opening those boxes felt like all my birthdays and Christmases rolled into one. It was kind of like embracing one of my newborns after a long and difficult labor. I grabbed a copy, and thumbed through it. My words. My story. My beloved characters. In an honest-to-goodness book. It had that new-book smell. The cover was gorgeous. I ran […]