Weekly Summer Giveaway!

I'm working on building up my author page on Facebook.

So I've decided it is giveaway season!

I'm EXCITED!

This week, win a 1990s Christian music CD, new in package. Answer one fun question (and like my page would be nice too, but not required) to enter! 

Answer the question HERE! Include an image, graphic or new Facebook gif in your reply, and that's a second entry! 

If I have at least 10 entries by midnight (Pacific) on Thursday evening, June 29 [already reached this goal before this blog post even got posted!], I will pick a random winner and PM and contact our winner by Facebook PM (private message) Friday morning, June 30, 2017. 

If I message you as winner, please reply with your mailing address within one week and I'll drop your choice of any of these 1990s brand new (still sealed other than the autographed one) Christian music CD classics in the mail to you!

Please tag your friends, share this contest, and check back every Saturday this summer! If these contests are popular, I'll add in a second contest per week! I have 16 CDs, mailers, and postage (US only, unless you wish to pay for international shipping) just waiting to fly (ok, snail mail) out to my fantastic reader friends! Please play along each week and make this a fantastically fun part of your summer!

Enter!

Naomi and Job's Tree

BibleGateway does fantastic weekly sketches on various women of the Bible. From one on Naomi they wrote, in part:

Naomi could not see past her suffering. Like many of us, she may have felt as though her tragedies were punishment for her sins. Yet had she known the blessings in store, she might not have felt so hopeless. Instead, she may have compared herself to the tree that Job so graciously describes:

At least there is hope for a tree:
If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
and its new shoots will not fail.
Its roots may grow old in the ground
and its stump die in the soil,
yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put forth shoots like a plant. - Job 14:7-9

Though she didn't know it, the scent of water was in the air. Naomi's life was beginning again, her story still unfolding...

In heartache, hold on, the season of Harvest will come again! You might appreciate my recent article entitled What About Me? If you are specifically dealing with infertility or sterility, you will find a supplement of this article, written just for you, by following that link as well.

Please come visit me on my new official author page on Facebook. I'm gearing up to publish my next book and would love your support at www.facebook.com/HarvestingHope/. Please help me show potential publishers I'm serious about this book writing thing. They need to see numbers of likes well into the thousands while I'm only in the low hundreds, so far.

Wow!

I have PLENTY to share, more to process than I know how, in fact!

God very unexpectedly blessed me with much restored hearing 10 days ago. 

I am hearing tones I have never heard in my left ear since infancy, and the crackling and constant confusing whistling that have been constants for 5 1/2 years since stroke are simply gone. The pain issue caused by the strokes, where loud music causes vomiting, is also erased overnight.

Feel free to read more at www.Facebook.com/HarvestingHope

On Writing and Contracts

I've been focusing a lot on my writing since coming home from Mount Hermon. This is in spite of juggling major health issues - x-rays, MRIs, therapies, several-per-day appointments, weeks of missed school - for two of my three kids, and an ear infection for the third. Oh, yeah, and I'm a driver's licence-less strokie with my own significant health needs. Thank you God for your provisions that are keeping Rick and I with our noses above water the past few months.

Facebook.com/HarvestingHope

I started a new Facebook author's page last week (And added over 100 new members in my first 72 hours - wow God! Won't you please join me there too, friend?) and I've posted several new articles over at InfertilityMom, ranging in topic from head covering to the continual letting gos of parenthood.

Facebook.com/HarvestingHope

This week, if the Lord so wills, I will turn my formal book proposal into a potential literary agent in hopes of confirming her willingness to represent Harvesting Hope from Heartache to potential publishers. This has been a long road (six years!), but perhaps God is bringing me near the conclusion of this particular battle to share what He's put on my heart for this book? I would greatly appreciate your prayers for contracting both agent and publisher and finishing my manuscript to God's glory!

Facebook.com/HarvestingHope

New Book

"I hope to see a new book from you soon!" - Alicia F.

I needed that encouragement in my inbox this week. Thank you, Alicia!

Mount Hermon was amazing! I posted a quick recap on my InfertilityMom blog. Thank you to all who prayed and in any way helped send me!

Perhaps the funniest moment of the week came when I won a door prize. I got to go to the front of the dining hall where 350 authors were assembled and do a very brief interview. After sharing my stroke story in a couple of sentences, the MC looked like he wanted to crawl under the table or disappear into a crack in the floor, Mortified, he announced the title of the book I had won, Don't Write My Obituary Yet. I felt so bad for him!

I told him the title was actually perfect. I had wanted to die, been repeatedly told I would die (and was mad that God wasn't following the doctors predictions), but that Jesus is the author and finisher of both my faith and my very life. It took five years to get to this point, but I can now gladly say, I am thankful that God was writing my story rather than those doctors. I am finally fully thankful that I am still here!

Writing Roadtrip Hastags

My mom just bought me this butterfly notebook for my trip.

I'm leaving on Wednesday to start making my way to Mount Hermon Christian Writer's Conference. I will be tweeting daily updates from @RenoMom (my personal page, with motherhood and stroke focuses, along with northern Nevada interests, if I can get my phone to work with that account) and/or @InfertilityMom (my big infertility, miscarriage, adoption page, where my phone likes to post by default), using hashtag #MHWriters2017 either way. Please journey with me! :)

Want to leave me encouragement or post your prayers for the journey? Please use #HarvestingHope as your tag so I am sure to find you. :)

Hubby and oldest miracle baby preparing to leave for his prom this past Saturday.

I would especially appreciate your prayers for Rick and our kids as they hold down the fort while I'm away. I'm cutting three days off my original trip plans, but still will be gone for nearly a week.

March, 2017

Last Friday, I finally got the first 1/4 of my Harvesting Hope from Heartache manuscript is as finished as I can make it and off to Jill Jensen Amack for her fantastic editing services. I'm exhausted and happy!

I started this book in 2011, one week before my strokes. 

I committed to the third major restructure/rewrite of the entire project around Thanksgiving of 2016, and with the holidays, was finally able to give the project my full attention around mid January of 2017, still typing the entire piece with significant short term memory and word recall challenges and only one hand.

Four chapters down, twelve left to go. I'm praying for God's divine connections next month at Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference that will lead to the right publisher and a contract to get this book into many hurting hands! I travel over on April 6.

If you are interested in learning more about my conference, please visit https://www.gofundme.com/StrokeOfGrace

Thanks for your prayers, support, and encouragement!

February 2017 Writing Updates

I have been seriously dedicated to the re-write of my Harvesting Hope from Heartache
manuscript since Thanksgiving.

With the holidays in there, realistically, since the half way through the first week of the new year.

The initial chapters flew together quickly and so very well.

I have ended up adding significant amounts of new material I had not planned to include, requiring dozens of hours of new research on my part. As a result, I've been stalled at the "not quite 1/4 of my final draft" finished mark for about three weeks now.

I am SO EXCITED about all the new things I'm learning, how these early chapters now flow, but I am also physically/mentally exhausted (I'm often in bed for the night before our 11-year-old who has a 7:30/8 PM bedtime) and rather discouraged to feel like I'm rather spinning my wheels, not at all in book content, but in manuscript finishing progress.

My hubby and our youngest watching birds together.

Would you please pray with me to include every single word God wants me to share, but to also get this accomplished QUICKLY? My personal desire is to have a finished draft ready before I head to Mount Hermon Christian Writer's Conference in early April. At this rate, that is not a feasible expectation, but if God returns me to the speed I was seeing at the start of the year, it is still possible!

The other two people I keep keeping on for.
Now 17 and 14, both "seniors" of their campuses this year, high school and junior high.

An update on Mount Hermon, between a few gifts (THANK YOU), this past year's royalties still trickling in from Hannah's Hope (I'm very blessed to still be seeing any income from a 12-year-old title!), my money from my birthday and Christmas, and a partial scholarship directly from the conference, here's the breakdown:

My registration for the conference itself totals $1,285 this year, since I'm not going for the extra early pre-conference like I did last year. This amount is due in full by March 5.

I don't know how God is planning to provide this. I'm looking around at things I can ask my daughter to list on eBay (I'm InfertilityMom if you want to watch for my auctions) for me in the next week or two, to try to raise part of the needed funds there.

I currently only need $180 more in order to finish paying for conference registration. (If that comes through GoFundMe, I'll need a little over $200 there to pay their fees and still have the $180 to pay off the conference. If you wish to PayPalMe and select Friends & Family (without "PayPal Purchase Protection") rather than “Goods and Services,” I will receive 100% of your gift and not have any fees incurred).

This covers Thursday, April 6 dinner through Tuesday, April 11 breakfast, all meals, training, seminars, and lodging.

I will likely get a ride to go half way on April 3 and spend a few pre-conference writing days with my ride / co-author / conference buddy.  So the conference registration amount listed above will not cover my portion of gas or meals between April 3-6, or on the way home.

I will come home on April 11 or later, depending on ride provision. I can get at least half way home that day, even have a place to stay at the half way point if I need to spend another night or three there, but am still looking for a second leg ride home back over Donner pass.

Thank you for prayers for all of God's provisions in this matter!

Why I love butterflies.

Book Research

In digging through mountains of research for my book, one very brief article I read on

Why did Jesus choose John to care for His mother Mary?

touched me deeply.  The article was only about three paragraphs long, but gave me much to ponder on faith and God's timing. I couldn't give the article justice without rewriting both the points given by the author, but it is worth your read!

1/4 way there!

Here's the writing update I just posted on my Go Fund Me page tonight I'm excited about all of this, but paragraph four will give you specifics about my current manuscript status:

As you can see, I have dropped my goal from $4500 to $1,525. This new amount includes the funds I already spent for last year's tuition. 

This remaining $395 request will completely cover the remaining cost of this year's tuition need, account for Go-Fund-Me fees deduction, and provide some funds for meals and travel.

I have dropped my funds request by $3,000 because my travel buddy and I each have received enough outside funds that I am under $400 from meeting my need. My conference buddy is still awaiting God's final provision too, but I'm taking this funds request down to just my need and if extra comes in, I can share with her. :)
So, bottom line, our registrations are in, our deposits are paid, and we have until early March to make final conference payments.

Meanwhile, the final draft of my book is 1/4 completed. After 5 years of struggling to write with brain injury, I started fresh and scrapped the old manuscript. God has blessed and allowed me to get through 1/4 of the rewrite since mid November, even with the holidays and travel happening during this season.

Thank you so much for your love, financial support, and especially your prayers!

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