This blog is probably TMI (too much information), but I’m getting ready to have my first colonoscopy tomorrow, so I’m writing this while getting ready to start those lovely pills that get one’s insides ready for the doctor to look at. This screening colonoscopy is something everyone needs to get when they’re 50, because this test can find colon cancer, which is very curable if caught early, and the polyps that can proceed the development of colon cancer can be removed.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a few years past when I should have gotten this, but E.R. nurses tend to be control freaks, and having to go through the prep and getting and I.V. and being sedated means a loss of that control. I’ve used a lot of excuses to put this off–not wanting to put daughters to the trouble of driving me home, but once Tom came into my life, that excuse was gone. Then I used the excuse of my revived writing career, when I sold to Steeple Hill. I was on deadline! I couldn’t spare the time! Or I was going on vacation…perhaps I’d do it after that.

I’ve finally run out of excuses. God willing, I will have writing deadlines for a long time to come. It’s the right thing to do for the sake of my health, and I’m going to do it tomorrow. I sure will be glad when it’s over. Right now I’m starving, or at least it feels that way, because I can only have clear liquids–tea, broth, jello, clear pop, etc. I’m dreaming of what I can eat tomorrow.

If you’re 50 or over, get it done too. You know it’s the smart thing to do. Thanks for listening, and I’ll “see” you later. I’m sure I’ll be better able to concentrate on MARRYING MILLY than I was today.

Blessings, Laurie

Just sitting here in my office watching the golden leaves fall from the maple framed by my office window, sometimes one at a time, sometimes several, sometimes all are trembling but none fall… Change is coming to the trees, and to our country as well. I went to vote this morning, and hope you did too, or will later today. Tonight I’ll be working at the E.R., so unfortunately I will probably be exposed to election returns all night long. I’d really prefer to rent a good movie, go to bed early, and forget about the whole thing….

I’m dillydallying, trying to figure out how to approach this dancing scene. Kudos to Steeple Hill for allowing our characters to dance now–it would be hard to imagine an after-the-barn-raising party without fiddling…and where there is music, there would naturally be dancing! But it’s the hero’s turn to have his point of view, and I just need to decide how to play it.

HILL COUNTRY CHRISTMAS’s release month is nearly over. If you haven’t found it yet, why not order online from eharlequin.com or one of the myriad of other online bookstores? Remember, Christmas is coming….!

Blessings, Laurie

Just took a new reference book out of the package–COWBOYS AND THE TRAPPINGS OF THE OLD WEST. It looks to be a fabulous find! Sure wish I had time to pore over it page by page, but as soon as I get done with this blog, I need to Get To Work on my book.

A Bronx cheer (pffft!) to Amazon on their ordering screens for this purchase, however–I’m reminded of why I don’t like them and stopped using them awhile ago. One screen excitedly told me I was eligible for free shipping, but in the course of making several clicks to attempt to achieve that, I somehow unknowingly ordered the book twice. The next day when I got the confirmation by email, I emailed them right back to try to head off the error. I don’t know why they even pretend it’s possible to fix the problem at that point–well, yes I do, actually; it’s in hopes that I’ll be too weary of the whole thing and busy with other matters and just keep the extra book.

Not. I didn’t even receive the book I’d gone on the site originally to buy, THE LOOK OF THE OLD WEST. I’ll jump through their stupid hoops and return this thing, and then go on Barnes & Noble or Books-a-Million’s sites  to order the book I really wanted.

Sorry for the Monday mood. I was sick over my weekend off–a low-level virus that suddenly went into painful pleurisy. I’ll be more cheerful next time, I promise.  And now the dogs have been bribed with chewies and it’s Time to Write.

Blessings, Laurie

One of the neat things about being an author is that I am able get to meet people I might never have met otherwise, and that my book will go places I never will. One such instance is when some traveler left one of my old Laurie Grant books in the unlikely location of a hotel in the Ukranian town of Ivano-Frankivsk. One of the workers found it and gave it to Natalia Kupchak, who read and spoke English, and one day she sent me a letter telling me how she had come to possess and read my book. With pleasure, I answered her by snail mail, but the lengthy time and expense involved in international snailmailing was discouraging. But then she was able to get internet access via the family computer, and she sent me her email address. I answered via that, and an almost-daily back and forth emailing relationship blossomed.

Today Natalia is one of my best friends. She lives across the world, and she’s my daughters’ age, but our relationship is as close as if we were family who lived next door to one another. Together we have mourned over the losses of 9/11 and celebrated the Ukrainian Orange Revolution.  We have learned about life in each other’s countries and discuss books we’re reading and movies we’re seeing. We share photos and the ups and downs of family life and love.  She rejoices with me on my writing success and sympathizes with me on my writing trials; I admire her amazing needlework.

And last week, through the wonders of SKYPE, the online telephone service, I talked to and saw Natalia for FREE through an online phone connection. She couldn’t see me, only hear me, as I don’t yet have a webcam, but this I think I will have to get one in the future. This is the neatest thing since the internet was invented.

Natalia, I just want to thank you for reaching out to me, so this blog today is a tribute to you.

Blesssings, Laurie

At long last, my second book from Steeple Hill, which will be released in August next year, has a title. Ta da–the new title is THE OUTLAW’S LADY, which was one of my list of suggestions. I think it’s a lot better than my working title, PICTURE OF AN OUTLAW. It just wasn’t an easy task to come up with something that suggests old-time photography without sounding stodgy, so I’m hoping the artist will give some hint of her profession on the cover. To that end, I searched endlessly for digital pictures on the web of Daguerrotype-style cameras to send to Steeple Hill to help the artist. If they chose not to use that, however, I imagine there will be some hint about it on the back blurb–which the writer doesn’t usually get to write, in case you didn’t know. I sent them lots of south Texas scenery pictures too, so I can’t’ wait to see what they come up with. That’s months away, however, so I might as well get back to MARRYING MILLY.

I just attended a dynamite talk (at Central Ohio Fiction Writers’ monthly meeting) done by my writer-friend and accountant, Donna MacMeans, on her “W” method of plotting, which came at just the right time because I was having trouble deciding which events should come first in the middle of the book, and the way I was doing it wasn’t working. So today I took my first hour of writing time and studied her handouts, and then replotted the order of that pesky middle. I think this is going to work! Thanks, Donna! It may have taken me some time, but I think it’ll save a lot of time and anguish later on.

That’s all for now.What do you think of the title? How do you come up with your titles? Please comment!

Blessings, Laurie

It’s a whole new month, and just eleven days until the mid-month release of my first inspirational historical romance, HILL COUNTRY CHRISTMAS! It’s meant a flurry of activity for me in promoting the book, sending out postcards with the lovely cover on the front and the details on the back (by the way, if you’d like me to send you one, just email me your snail mail addy via the contact info on my website!), doing an interview on Margaret Daley’s website and that of Favorite PastTIMES.com, and guest-blogging on Pistols and Petticoats. The one on Margaret’s site will be up on 10/12, the one on P&P, 10/15, and the one on Favorite PastTIMES is already up. Whew! This makes for very little time to work on the current work-in-progress, MARRYING MILLY, but next week should be better.

I’ve also gotten a couple of new distractions –first, the arrival of the complete set of the workshop disks for the 1008 ACFW conference which was just held in Minneapolis,which I can already see is going to necessitate the buying of at least a cheap MP3 player. I’ve got to be about the last person in this country to learn how to download MP3 files, but who wants to lug around a laptop to listen to these workshops. And then there’s my nifty new white “eee-pc” by ASUS, a computer that’s about the size of a DVD player and which has wireless internet. I think this is going to revolutionize my traveling, since I’ll no longer have a groove in my shoulder from carrying my 7-pound laptop around just to have email accessibility. AND I got the model that is Word-compatible, so theoretically I can write on it. But I know how much writing I usually get done when I’m away, so this may remain a theory…My cyberfriend in Ukraine is also eager for me to use Skype on it to contact her. But playing with this eee-pc will have to wait until I get this one particular top-secret writing project out of the way….

In a past couple of blogs, I mentioned the horrendous service at a French restaurant in the Sofitel Hotel in Minneapolis. I finally did get an apology from their management, but just that. They know we writers don’t live there, so there’s no use offering us a refund or something, but somehow I was hoping for something more in the way of service recovery than what I got….f

Blessings, Laurie

I’m back home safe and sound, thankfully! I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to find a spare moment to blog again from the conference, especially since my last post was a bit on the negative side. (At this point, I’ve heard nothing from the Sofitel hotel which owns the restaurant, Chez Collette, by the way–poor service recovery!)

The conference was amazing! Where to start? Perhaps at the ending worship service–if 500 Christians in the book industry singing “Amazing Grace” doesn’t send wonderful chills up your spine, your soul needs help! This conference gets bigger every year, those who’ve been in ACFW since it was ACRW (R was for Romance) tell me. I think I’ve figured out how to capsulize the difference between how going to RWA and ACFW makes me feel–I come back from RWA drained and empty, I come back from ACFW feeling filled.

I wasn’t signing at the Mall of America this year, since HILL COUNTRY CHRISTMAS was out just one month too late to be there, but it looked to me as a witness that it went very well. I wanted to shout Halleleujah out loud, watching hundreds of people-passersby who were there at the mall, not even knowing the signing was going to be there, being exposed to the depth and breadth of Christian fiction, some of whom didn’t even know what Christian fiction was! I’ll bet Heaven thought it was pretty cool, too! :)Kudos to Barnes’n'Noble and all those at ACFW who made it happen.

The Mall of America is an amazing place, by the way. Imagine an indoor amusement park in a mall. I barely plumbed the depths of one side of the first floor before my legs gave out. I would probably have done better to stay out of Coldwater Creek, though, but my shopping jones was hitting me hard….:/

I thought the best workshop was one of the very last ones, by Chip MacGregor, superagent, on Branding. I learned a lot. A close second was the 2-session one by Jim Bell, writer extraordinaire, who gave us a dandy 3-sentence fill-in-the-blanks formula for “elevator speeches” (so-called because it’s when one often gets to pitch to agents and editors) that’s going to revolutionize how I do my synopses. Thank you both and all the others who put on extraordinary workshops.  I bought the conference CD of all the workshops, so I’ll be able to listen to all of them.

Thanks to those two who wrote the novels I took on the plane with me to while away the hours in the air–THE OUTSIDER, by Ann Gabhart,  about the Shakers, and COURTING MISS ADELAIDE, by one of my many friends among the Love Inspired authors, Janet Dean. I read the first book on the trip to Minneapolis, started the second on the way home. I’m not done with it yet, but it’s wonderful and proof that all American historicals don’t have to be set in the Old West.

Lastly in this long blog entry, the raspberries (Pfffft!) to the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, which, like DFW, makes sure the only internet you can get in it’s “wifi” environment is too expensive for most of us–$10.00 or so for 24 hours. And since there were NO electrical plugs in the passenger waiting area I was in, I wasn’t remotely tempted. I’m proud my home airport, Columbus/CMH, has truly free wifi.

Enough for now!

Blessings, Laurie

The banquet before the Book of the Year and Genesis preparations was the culmination of several days of amazingly wonderful food put out by the Sheraton folks. (though steak knives would have been nice). This was truly one of the nicest conference hotels I’ve ever been at.

I was with a party of (well-behaved) authors who went for a nice dinner at Chez Collette in the Sofitel Hotel of Minneapolis. We arrived at 7:15 pm in a mellow mood. By the time we left at ***9:45*** we had been waiting for our bills for ONE HOUR, and my mood was anything but mellow. Mine was presented incorrectly twice. Our young waiter had been great, but there were 20 of us and he received no help from any other waiter. By the time we were getting a bit upset, the manager, a supercilious French-sounding character straight out of Central Casting, showed up not to conciliate us and offer us free dessert, a discount, etc. but ***to argue with us that we had not been there that long, that it was our fault for moving around, etc. etc.*** At our table (one of 3 tables our party occupied) NO ONE HAD MOVED AROUND; WE HAD HAD ONE PERSON ARRIVE  A LITTLE LATER, but that was the only “moving” that happened–unless he meant no one should go to the restroom during our interminable stay????

I meant to blog about an enjoyable third day at ACFW, topped off by a superb dinner. The convention day was great, full of great workshops and good food at breakfast and lunch, but dinner was anything but superb. Guess we should have eaten at Burger King.

Laurie

Today was the official start of the ACFW conference, though many of us arrived yesterday. This morning I attended the EarlyBird workshop for published authors done by Allen Arnold, senior editor at Thomas Nelson. Boy, I love hearing that man talk. I heard one of his workshops last year, and he just breaks it all down and makes it all so understandable. Any author would be fortunate indeed to be working with him–and I sense it would be a partnership in the truest sense of the word.

Had lunch with several of the folks from ACFW-Ohio. Wow, what a long way we’ve come in a year. Just last year at the conference, I was wondering why Ohio wasn’t represented with a chapter and now we have one, thanks to the willingness and hard work of our president Sharon Lavy, and several others. And it’s a wonderful group of people! It’s really nice to have “faces from home” to meet up with here–there was none of that last year.

After a nice long break in the afternoon, we had an agent panel, a delicious dinner, an editor panel (I always learn a lot from those panels!) and a worship service, then the late night chats. I went to hear Allen Arnold once again, since he hinted that he had other important things to say in the morning sessilon, clever man.  And now I am officially POOPED, and no closer to catching up on my email than before.

Blessings, Laurie, who did not let it ruin her day when the roomservice breakfast brought to her was oatmeal rather than the eggs she ordered But my Tom makes it better!

Once again I’m blogging in the airport, getting ready to start the first leg of my journey to Minneapolis and the American Christian Fiction Writers conference. Currently, I’m sitting on the floor plugged into the nearest outlet while a businessman hogs the only table nearby with his stuff spread out over a space that would easily hold two if only he’d move his stuff and invite me to share what is, after all, public space. Maybe if I was more aggressive I would just ask him if he minded if I use the other spot in a tone that assumes the answer can only be “no, of course not, help yourself,” but I’m old fashioned (and polite) enough to want to be asked first. Hopefully he’ll get on the plane that leaves soon, and I can have the chair before my seat gets totally numb on the floor. Chivalry seems to be totally dead when it comes to flying businessmen. Pffftt!!!!

It’s nice to have electricity again! Sunday the central Ohio area caught the tail end of Ike. The weirdest thing was that it was just winds–75 mph winds, hurricane force, BUT NO RAIN. Trees and big limbs are down everywhere. 60% of the area was without power, and we were among them for nearly 36 hours. We were blessed–there was no damage to the house, other than a few blown-off shingles, and hopefully that will enable my handy husband to put on the new roof we needed anyway with the help of some insurance $. We were also fortunate to have a generator so we lost no food. I was never so glad to throw a switch and have a light come on! I was having email withdrawal , and visualizing arriving on the plane with my hair undone and makeup askew from lack of proper light. I had 202 emails waiting for me! I hope to report from ACFW Minneapolis as I did from San Francisco RWA.

Until later, Blessings–Laurie