Thoughts from a writing mom

Timothy is a bit of a mystery, even to those who know him.   He is quiet and usually only speaks if spoken to.   His voice is deep, but soft.   His facial hair is usually a scruffy mess and he can be seen scratching at his chin and cheek hair as he is thinking.   He has rough, calloused hands and is always wearing work boots and torn jeans. Timothy looks hard on the outside.   His tall stature and dark features attribute to this.   He always looks serious.   His silence is often mistaken for arrogance and behind his back people have called him uptight and hard to read. He works very hard.   Before falling in love with Stacey, the main character in Absolved, his life revolves around work and it consumes him. Stacey gets through to him though.   Her simple beauty and vulnerability attracts Timothy instantly and he feels a great desire to take care of her, to protect her.   He allows himself to fall for her, completely, neve...

Susan is a divorced, middle-aged mother of one adult daughter. She is a devout Catholic.   She doesn’t believe in divorce.   She hates speaking of her divorce.   She is ashamed of being a divorced woman, even though she had no choice in the matter. Her daughter was 12 when her husband left.   One week he was the seemingly perfect husband, coming home after work, eating dinner with the family, playing with their daughter.   She thought of herself as blessed to have married such a wonderful man.   She occasionally had a sinking feeling of doubt about his fidelity, as sometimes there were unexplainable absences.   But she ignored them.   Her denial was so great she happily looked the other way, until she couldn’t anymore.   He left her for his mistress, moved out of state, and completely exited the life of Susan and of their daughter, Stacey. Stacey was the child that Susan had prayed for every day for years.   She was a miracle b...

I haven’t been around lately. I haven’t blogged, haven’t tweeted, and haven’t been updating my facebook author page.   I’ve worked some on the second book, but not as much as I would have liked.   It most definitely isn’t because I don’t want to.   I do.   I really, really do. The truth is that I’ve been too tired.   Yes, I’m always tired.   I joke about it but it’s a reality.   Having even one child to chase all day will make you tired and I have four.   Being pregnant will make you tired.   I’m chasing four kids and am pregnant.   Add tired to tired and that is how I feel right now.   I can usually do alright, and work through the tired. (Because I truly WANT all of these things that make me tired!) But lately my husband has been working a ton of overtime so I have less help because he is away.   It is absolutely not my intent to complain about his working so much.   The man actually makes me want to do a bette...

I was talking to a family member earlier about how badly I used to let other’s negative opinions of my family size get to me.   I told her that only recently have I woken up and realized what a waste of time it was to ever let it affect me at all…because the bottom line is that we’re happy.   We love our kids.   We know how blessed we are.   And the kids are happy too. I told her that one of the arguments I’ve heard against us having a large family is that “it’s too hard.”   This always baffles me how this can be an argument against something.   Aren’t the best things in life “hard”? Seriously.   If people gave up when something got hard, no one would finish school.   Run a marathon.   Start a business.   Get married.   This list could go on and on.   Personally, if I was afraid of “hard”, I would have never joined the Navy, and I would have missed out on so much.   As hard as it was to leave home at 19 to go to ...

Okay, so he didn’t come up to me personally and tell me to write a blog post tonight.   He did however speak this evening about John the Baptist telling people about Jesus being the Son of God, and how we as Christians are called to do the same.   Called to tell others of Jesus.   He even had us all read aloud the first line of the first reading today, “The Lord said to me: You are my servant, Israel, through whom I show my glory.”   Except we were to read it exchanging the word Israel with our own name.   Yep.   This had me thinking… am I doing my part? This particular priest is named Father Uche, and I almost didn’t hear this homily today.   I didn’t think I would make it to church.   Not because I couldn’t, but because I didn’t want to get four children and myself ready to get out the door.   It was just one of those afternoons in which I was tired, and irritated with the kids, and I just wanted to have an easy day and stay home. ...

My first published book will be released in a little less than three months.   Not much is happening with it on my end at the moment.   I did finally send in acknowledgements for the book to my publisher.   They’re very short and simple.   And, while I wait for word for them on edits they would like for me to make, I read online about book marketing.   There is a lot of advice out there.   “Use social media!”   Yes.   I have set up a Twitter Account, a Facebook Page and have a profile on GoodReads.   “Blog!” Okay.   I have this little blog set up that I actually showed to absolutely no one – seriously, no one – until I had a contract coming in for my book to be published.   I started the blog originally so that there was some proof out there somewhere that I had a desire to finish a book and an even bigger desire to have it published. Now, I am finding that I do want to share more, but this isn’t always easy for me.   Th...

On this third day into the New Year I am reflecting on 2013 and some of the moments that really defined the year for me personally.   So, here they are. 1.          My Son’s Birth February 22 nd I gave birth to my fourth child and first little boy.   We had chosen not to find out his gender.   After he was born, my husband started laughing.   I hadn’t seen if I had just had a boy or a girl yet so I was asking him “what is it, what is it?” completely expecting his laughter to mean we just had our fourth daughter.   He said “It’s a boy!”   And the tears just started streaming down my face.   I was so happy to meet the baby I had felt moving around in my belly, and to experience having a son for the first time.   It was really wonderful and that little boy continues to be a joy every single day.   2.          Enrollment in the Brown Scapular In September my h...