Wordless Wednesday

Come, sit awhile.

Copyright

I thought after a few read throughs (understatement) I'm close to setting up Summer Triangle to publish with CreateSpace. I lay my head on my pillow the other night and "copyright" barged into my mind. I used a lot of song lyrics and I don't know a thing about copyright laws. Well, enough to know I can't use words without paying for them.
I whipped off a quick e-mail to one of my new published writer friends. She confirmed what I knew. I look at the calender and heave a big breath. One more revision that I hope some day to get back into the story. I felt down. I felt pressure. I felt, "Oh, is this worth it?"
I know it is. I know I will make it. I know it won't be hard to make those changes and I look forward to when I'll have the money to publish it the way I want it published. I thank you, my readers for all the support you have shown me. I thank you for clicking on the ads in the right hand corner that bolster my ad earnings. That encourages me more than any of the monetary gain.
Actually I imagine this novel made into a Hallmark movie with all the music I thought about as I wrote. Now, I'm really dreaming. I know how hard it is to get a book made into a movie. It is a wonder they get made at all. I also know the movie can never be what is in your imagination. That is the best movie of all.

Conneaut Lake Park

As I write about my teen years, the end of school trip to Conneaut Lake Park, north of us, begs to be written. Ninth grade allowed us to ride the yellow school buses through the windy State Route 18 countryside  to the small amusement park in Crawford County. Maybe it was small but it kept us occupied all day.
Set in the lush western Pennsylvania northwest, I remember the trees shading the midway. The elegant Conneaut Hotel at the end of a stretching green lawn bordering the lake. A sandy beach for swimmers, but we didn't swim on the school day.
The first year I had a boyfriend. We didn't date, as he didn't drive. Our only real date was the Sadie Hawkins Dance in the fall, when my friend encouraged me to ask him, as she needed a double date for her car date. Our first kiss was after we got "married" by Marryin' Sam.
He couldn't hide his excitement at the ride called the Hell Hole, with centrifugal force allowing some strange positions until it pinned you against the wall. He pointed out some of the guys turning upside down during this process. Of course, there was the Blue Streak, the creaky old wooden roller coaster that whipped us kids around. Someone always got a minor scrap or scrap on that trip. My shin received a gouge from a turn. At last, we rode the Ultimate Trip, a scrambler inside a building with a black light and wild rock music. We kissed on that ride. I couldn't at fourteen have felt better.
The long ride back on those straight seats provided some necking time as well. The rural roads dark until we hit Greenville, then a few "Ooh's" as the neckers were discovered if they didn't realize how close they were to the light. My boyfriend knew and we ceased through that borough.
In tenth grade, we  had broken up about a month before school ended. Being a fickle girl, I ended it to go to prom with a senior. Maybe one of the stupidest mistakes I made relationship wise. He was a good boyfriend, but we could never get back together. I wanted to that summer when I realized how much I missed him, but it wasn't to happen, no matter how often I contrived. I rode back on the bus with his friend, commiserating. I'm sure that wasn't what he wanted on that dark ride with all the necking going on.
I'm not sure if I went my junior year. Driving for a while, we probably all thought we were too old to ride that bus anymore and found something else to do that day on our own. My senior year, I was working, grateful to have graduation day off.
I had other trips to Conneaut Lake Park with groups on buses, like with Degree of Honor Lodge and Rainbow Girls, when we had Grand Assembly at Edinboro College, then. I was more interested in the swimming that time in hot August. The bathhouse reminded me of the old beach movies.
A few trips with my nieces and the girls when they were small. The last time, Conneaut was just a shadow of itself. Maybe like that first boyfriend, never meant to be again and we grow up and on to different avenues.  

700!

Seven hundred posts I have written. Seven is complete, but I'm not complete in my dreams. Number one novel set to be published soon, but not the first I wrote. I like the way it is working out. Main Street, the first of Gables and Gingerbread Stories, will come out later. The second in that series named, Country, that needs to be finished, then Crossroads, which is yet to be written.
So Summer Triangle I wrote for NaNoWriMo in November and completed will get my five free copies from CreateSpace. This story is not historical fiction that the other three are. Maybe even a little bit biographical, although, I'm not as strong as Maria. Are any of us as strong as we want to be? My husband is not Brendan, Maria's husband, and the children are not mine. I poured much of myself into it, but it is not my story of my life.
I have always wondered when I read books where the authors' minds were. How much is personal? How much is factual? Except for fantasy, I don't wonder. Maybe those are the most real, though, huh?
I sit on my dreams right now. I wonder where the seventh month of 2013 will take me. Anita Mathias, a blogger from England wrote a post today http://anitamathias.com/blog/2013/06/16/a-very-long-pregnancy-or-how-to-live-in-the-land-of-unfulfilled-promises-and-deferred-dreams/  that addresses waiting on dreams. It is not waiting, though, as she writes, it is working toward them. The hardest part of writing is that sitting and writing. Then rewriting. And rewriting. I want to move on now, finish Country. Write the Nanny Princess children's books. Yes, I anticipate writing for a long time.

Careers Form Life

I'm out of ideas today. So good-bye.
Not really. I am tired and trying to get back the thread I picked about a month ago, now. I wrote about my dad earlier this week, (tomorrow is Father's Day) although I could pay tribute to my dad, all the time.
I watched All the President's Men, about a month ago when I started exploring my teen years and the decision to be a nurse. I wanted to hear all of Robert Redford's commentary before I wrote. Then I never finished it and Katie mailed it back to Netflix. Aw, research aborted.
The doggedness of the two men with the bone in their mouths impressed me. Observing how young Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman were reminded me why I had problems concentrating on the movie when I was young. I did yearn for the investigative reporting, but knew I didn't have the guts to put my life on the line for a story. Would I let a story lie? Or would I keep digging and digging? Seventeen, I don't think I knew or had the heart for that.
Finally, being a home health nurse allowed time to be a detective. Nursing also requires the digging below the surface. Dad had that nose about Mom's health when she had cancer. He sat observing her during her first round of I-131 radiation therapy, "She's not moving like she should."
Seasoned senior nursing student, I, replied, "Well, Dad, she had back to back surgeries within a week and just finished treatment. It has been a rough six weeks."
He refused that answer, "No, there is something else."
Thank God, the doctor, who had some issues, did listen to my dad. He ordered a myelogram of Mom's spine, revealing a tumor on the spine. I admired Dad even more. I thought if Dad weren't sixty, he could go to nursing school. He should be a nurse. Later that year, he would read the free RN copies I got that year.
I developed that sixth sense about patients "going south" as we say. Some doctors listened to that "gut" feeling. Some did not. Even in nursing school, I didn't brag because it scared me in a way, but I could tell when a person would make it through a code or not. We coded everyone when I worked in ER. I tried to over-ride those feelings because everyone needed our best in a code. Yet, one look and I knew.
This is more than studying, more than knowledge, although, that is very important. An inner voice that must be heard and powers of observation lead to decisions. A nurse and a journalist follow very similar paths. Nurses chart precisely with no time for proof reading. My love for writing helped with nursing.
Life prepares us for our careers. Careers form our life. As much as nursing seemed the easy decision when I was in high school, not necessarily my heart decision, I am a nurse. I have stuck with it through thick and thin, highs and mostly lows. I am proud to have never quit. The writing at this time of my life as more of a career seems to be in a plan that my high school years equipped me.

Time Crunch, Again!

So sorry, no time to post a message. Did a lot of Kingdom work this morning. Please keep me in prayer with prayer ministry, Bible quiz ministry and my novel publishing. Oh, and Clepper Manor for grace in my thoughts and actions. Thank you. Keep clicking on the right hand corner ads, too. It helps me feel like I can be a professional writer.

Dad's Bible

One morning I went to our basement before church, not even sure right now for what reason. It was only a few months ago, but other posts clambered for attention and I needed to take a picture of Dad's Bible.
The Book stared at me from the bookshelf with his books on commentaries and other Bibles. I reached for it, as a connection to his faith. He loved the King James version. I looked to see if he had made any notes in margins or underlined verses.
Only notes on paper from the BBC- Be A Better Christian- Sunday School class taught by Barb and Bob Hettrick, good friends of my parents, gave me inklings of his thoughts. Barb told me later how Dad would not cut up scripture of old Bibles for a project they were doing. He honored the Word of God by not allowing himself to do that.
I thought as I handled Dad's Bible, he read this every day. I heard last night, "To be ignorant of the Word of God, is to be ignorant of Christ." My dad knew Christ. He knew the Word and he lived it.
That Sunday, the Gideons spoke in church. Dad was a Gideon, a group who gets Bibles into people's hands. Another Gideon speaking at church on Bible Sunday twenty four and a half years ago, when I was pregnant with Katie, inspired me to get back into reading the Word every day. The Bible is powerful, as Hebrews 4:12 states, " For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."
The Gideon both days spoke of examples of getting a Bible into a person's hand, then heart, that changes lives. 
Last night Pastor Bernie Elliot, the director of our Assembly of God's National Teen Bible Quiz traveled from Pittsburgh to speak to the youth about quizzing. He inspired them to not only read God's Word or memorize it, but to live it. He spoke of how his moment of reckoning came when he had a half sawed off shot gun in his chest. Yes, your life does flash before your eyes when confronted with death. I watched this man worship and pray before he spoke to the teens, his heart humbled before God. He told of the power of prayer and how Bible Quiz is growing more this past month with people joining him in forty days of fasting and prayer for this ministry than at any other time in his thirty six years of ministry. He is busy setting up kids in teams to study and quiz around the country and getting calls from Africa. At sixty five, he is nowhere near stopping. The energy fueled by an awesome God.
My daughter, Katie, affected by the influence of her years of quizzing, had the heart to revive this ministry. It has always been on my heart, but I prayed for the right time. The pastors at church were praying. Pastor Bernie prayed Hermitage would become involved again, all about the same time. In fact, Pastor Bernie prayed about our teens, when ten minutes later, our youth pastor messaged him on Facebook to come speak to our youth group.
We have two teams. I'm excited for the study. I love working with teens. I love to see the miracles that come from this ministry, the answered prayers, the honoring of God. Kids reading the Bible many more hours than they would have otherwise, hearing the Word in quiz matches and tournaments on Saturday mornings, and hiding It in their hearts are some of the blessings.
The love of the Bible instilled in me early in life,  not only from Dad, but I think of Jack Stevenson, too, Reverend Hatch, Barb Hettrick, Edna Wencil, and so many others makes me keep my commitment of reading it every morning. I stretch myself with memorization. I read and listen to commentaries and lessons on this Book. I pray this next generation will catch the love of God's Word and Him.