Radio interview, Writer’s Digest guest post, and more!

Radio interview, Writer’s Digest guest post, and more!

Hello, friends! Well, it’s starting to feel like summer, isn’t it? 🙂

We just got back from a lovely trip to Tennessee, where I officially launched The Alliance, my third book baby, with signings at Burdett’s Tea Shop & Trading Co., Parnassus Books, and FoxTale Book Shoppe.

As an extrovert, I LOVE connecting with readers!

 

This morning, I had so much fun doing an interview at WDRT, Driftless Community Radio! You can listen in by clicking the “Play” button above.

 

Last week, I also did two guest posts, which I will share with you in case you missed them. The first is called, “How Missing My Deadline Brought Life to My Novel.” This post was shared through Writer’s Digest.

My second guest post was for Tyndale House, my publisher. It’s called, “Refined by Fire”:

Last spring, a hollow root, twenty yards from the maple tree it once supplied with nutrients, caught fire from the small brush pile burning in our front yard.

 

The fire followed the dry root as if it were a buried rope dipped in gasoline, scorching its way up the base of the century-old maple until the fire began burning the tree from the inside out.

 

My husband was the first to notice this phenomenon. He stood at the storm door of our farmhouse, watching the smoke weaving around the branches. He couldn’t believe the tree was actually on fire because of the distance from the pile, and because the ground was wet.

 

Nevertheless, he went outside to inspect and heard the flames inside the tree. He ran and got a garden hose and a ladder. I put on my rain coat and went outside to help him. Smoke poured out of the maple tree’s numerous holes, like an irregular chimney.

 

He held the ladder, and I climbed. The heart of the tree was on fire, glowing embers crackled and popped. Water from the garden hose gushed out of another hole around the base.

 

My husband looked over at me, rainwater and soot speckling his face. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Green wood won’t burn, so the tree must’ve already been dead.”

 

I could hear God speaking to me through that quietly burning maple, as if it were my own burning bush. I stared through the screen of rain up at the tree’s branches, blooming with life, and yet I knew from the smoke pouring out of the holes that it was standing-dead. Parched.

You can read more here: “Refined by Fire”

I would also like to thank the beautiful reviews posted by Fiction Aficionado, Katherine Scott Jones, Chapter 16, and Examiner.com. We writers can’t make it without ya, so thanks for coming alongside me during this crazy and wonderful launch season.

Finally, I am going to leave you with a quote my friend shared last week:

Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days.

I believe Nic Haralambous wrote this, but the Internet is up for debate. Regardless, though, the author is onto something here.

It is good to plan ahead–to make choices each day that will move us closer to our future goals–and yet it’s equally important to live in the now: to take time to connect with the hearts of our spouses and children, to literally stop and smell the roses as they bloom, to stand in a field at the end of day, eating strawberries picked from the garden, and watching the moon rise as the night breeze cools our skin.

If we’re too busy to do these things, we’re just too busy. How are you going to “live in days” today . . . and this week? I will be right there beside you, trying to live in the “now” too.

Hugs, Jo