Okay, I goofed. This was supposed to post on Christmas Day. But I'm a living example of why we need so much advice 
about "how" to do Christmas. Too busy, too busy.


    Welcome to the 12 Pearls of Christmas!

Enjoy these Christmas "Pearls of Wisdom" from some of today's most beloved writer's (Tricia Goyer, Suzanne Woods Fisher, Shellie Rushing Tomlinson, Sibella Giorello and more)! Please follow the series through Christmas day as each contributor shares heartfelt stories of how God has touched a life during this most wonderful time of the year.

AND just for fun ... there's also a giveaway! Fill out this simple form and enter for a chance to win a beautiful pearl necklace and earring set ($450 value). Contest runs 12/14 - 12/25 and the winner will on 1/1. Contest is only open to US and Canadian residents. You may enter once per day.

If you are unfamiliar with Pearl Girls™, please visit www.pearlgirls.info and see what we're all about. In short, we exist to support the work of charities that help women and children in the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy of Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace or one of the Pearl Girls products (all GREAT gifts!) to help support Pearl Girls.

             Jesus -- The Reason For the Season

                                           By Rachel Hauck

Through the narrow scope of 2000 years, Mary, the mother of Jesus, appears to be one lucky woman. Chosen by God to give birth to His son, the Savior of the world? All right, Mary, way to go.

“Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you,” Gabriel said.

How many of us would like a declaration like that? Highly favored. The Lord is with you. But Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.

The angel told her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Mary’s seems confident and resolved when she responds, “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.”

She’d just been told the Holy Spirit will come upon her, that God’s power will overshadow her, that she’d become with child even though she wasn’t married, and she said, “I’m the Lord’s servant. Let your words be true.”

I find this amazing! A young woman. Ancient Bethlehem. Unwed mother. They stoned women for such things in her day. But Mary believed in God. And submitted to His will. He gave her the Holy Spirit – the same Holy Spirit given to us. If He gave her confidence, He will give us confidence. Even though, like Mary, our situation seems impossible.

Listen to Mary’s song later on in the first chapter of Luke.

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me Holy is his name…”

Conceiving a child out of wedlock, by Divine intervention. Not a girl’s every day existence. Yet she had a Yes in her heart to God. She rejoiced. She boldly said, “Generations will remember me!”

How we struggle to trust God with our children. Our finances. Our emotional well-being. We worry. We fret. And wonder why we have no peace.

Christmas is the season where words like joy, peace and love are bantered around like Christmas candy. Let’s not take them as just words, but as truth. Let’s be like Mary and embrace God’s favor on our lives. Boldly declare "He’s done great things for me!”

Out of the grit of our own souls, we can reach His heart, and feel Him reaching for ours. No matter the pain of our past, present or future, God is there for us. He is able. Best of all, He is willing. “My soul glorifies the Lord this Christmas!”

***

Rachel Hauck is an award winning, best selling author who believes God has done great things for her. She lives in Central Florida with her husband and ornery pets. Her next release is Love Lifted Me with multi-platinum country artist Sara Evans, January 2012. Then in April, look for The Wedding Dress. www.rachelhauck.com.

New Life for First Novels

Today we have a guest post from writer Lyn Cote, whose historical and contemporary fiction has won many awards, including this year's CAROL from American Christian Fiction Writers. Her books have also been named finalists for romance writing's highest honor, the RITA, and the HOLT Medallion and the National Readers Choice Award. 
Lyn approaches her historical fiction this way:

I prefer to take history and gently fit my characters into the historical setting as if they were a true part of it. Many times when I do my research for a new story, I find that the true events are more wonderful than anything I could have made up. One example of this was in my WWII book, Bette. I read that before WWII, two Nazi agents were walking in NY City and arguing. The argument became so heated that they walked out into traffic and one was hit by a car and killed. The Nazis were being followed at the time and the FBI agent was able to find important papers on the dead Nazi. So I used this scene in my book. I mean--could I think of anything more bizarre?

Recently, Lyn went back to her beginnings. And for anyone toiling on their first book -- especially while taking care of little kids -- Lyn's story should give you hope. Her first novel La Belle Christiane is now available on Amazon and Nook sites for .99 cents. Print copies  are also available.   

Here's a short summary of this historical romance set in the 1770s:

"Can the beautiful daughter of a French courtesan find a love that lasts for a lifetime? Beautiful Christiane Pelletier is next in a line of French courtesans. Her family has been favorites through the reigns of two monarchs. But the winds of change are sweeping Europe, and after her mother's violent murder, Christiane flees France with her renegade father. Leaving wealth and privilege behind, she survives the Canadian wilderness and later finds herself involved in the burgeoning American Revolution. But through all the changes, one man lingers in her memory. Once he was her friend; now he has become her enemy. Will he also become her destiny?"

Also, check out Lyn's website where she offers tips on writing and self-publishing. 

First Book, Now Available 

                    by Lyn Cote

When I began writing my first manuscript, I literally ran after my two toddlers with a clipboard in my hand and wrote whenever they paused! I wrote that story without knowing anything about writing or marketing fiction. In fact, I told myself just to write the book and then I'd think about polishing and marketing it. The thought of that was overwhelming at that time. It took me three years of writing to finish my first manuscript-1,000 handwritten pages. Whew!

I found out that while it garnered interest from agents and editors, it never found a publisher. I think that's because there are "unwritten" rules for inspirational fiction and I didn't know them or follow them. I still think it's a good story and I've revised it and improved it once more. And now it's FINALLY available in digital and print. I did this because I didn't want it to sit ignored in my files forever. So now I'll let the readers decide whether it deserved to be published or not. I hope you agree with me and let others know about it. 

Thanks.

                               -- Lyn

                                                        First page excerpt from Chapter One

British Canada, July 1774

Tonight, I’ll lie beside some stranger as his wife. Christiane blinked away the bright morning sunlight but could not blink away the dread. Once again she had embarked on another journey that would change her life. She sat between her Algonquin father Shaw-nee-awk-kee and his son in a birch bark canoe. To the rhythm of the dipping paddles, they were gliding farther down the Ottawa River. In the cramped space, she hugged her knees to herself and pressed her forehead against her tattered skirt. 

She glanced sideways into the remorseless current, wishing for time, for control. But instead, the river, shimmering with molten sunlight, gave her glimmers of the past--candlelight on silver, soft lace against skin, frosting on the tip of the tongue. But she’d fled France with her father, here to Canada and then. . . She thrust all thoughts of the past year aside. She had to face today. Tonight, I’ll be some stranger’s wife. 

The thought brought fear, a rush of sensation—as if the bottom of the canoe, her protection, parted, and she was plunged into the cool water. She fought her way to the surface of this feeling, gasping for air, pushing down panic. She pressed her face harder against her knees. I will not shame myself. Ever.

A dear friend is expecting her first baby, while writing her first novel.

The baby news filled me with joy, the kind that put tears in my eyes. But the news also led me to think about threading that needle known as Motherhood and Writing.

I want my friend to cherish motherhood, and I want her to finish her novel.

With two kids, six years homeschooling, five published novels, and ten-thousand readings of "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?," I almost feel qualified to offer some advice.

So here's my humble five-point offering to every mom serving in the happy trenches while trying to write.

1. Don't quit writing. 

There will never -- never -- be a good time to write. Never. Ever. Stop thinking the world will someday agree with your compulsion to put words on paper. The world doesn't care. But YOU care and frankly, God cares because God made you a writer.

If that last statement strikes you as pretentious, congratulations. Feel free to pick up your glue-gun and complete all those Martha Stewart projects. You're not a writer.

Meanwhile, we blessed wretches will continue to comb through our minds, searching for meaning and wrestling with words.

Writers need to write. Need, not want. The same way some birds were designed to fly south every winter whether they feel like it or not, writers were designed to translate thoughts into words. You will know if you're among that flock if deep down inside, you feel like you might suffer some kind of death if you don't write. Soul, spirit, emotion. Maybe even physical death. Frank McCourt once said that he wrote "Angela's Ashes" because if he didn't, he would "die howling."

The sooner a writer recognizes this built-in need, the sooner they become a productive person rather than a garden-variety dysfunctional oddity understood by precisely nobody.

2. You're a mom. Make it manageable.

Motherhood comes first.

Scratch that.

Your husband comes first, even after baby arrives. Then baby. Then writing. Break that order and you'll build an idol.

But because of where it stands on the totem pole, mom-writing needs manageable goals. When my kids were toddlers and took naps, I placed a note card over my computer that read "500 words an hour." My daily goal. With a background in newspapers, my five hundred words seemed like a cake walk. Some days I was surprised by 1000 words. Other days I could squeak out six. (Yes, six: "My brain has turned into Jello.")

But on those difficult days -- both in motherhood and writing -- remind yourself that this glorious gift of life will only make you a better writer, eventually. If you don't quit. I guarantee this. With motherhood, a heart grows new chambers of understanding. It only improves your writing.

If you don't quit.

3. If somebody understands your blessing/affliction, cherish them.

My first novel,"The Stones Cry Out," arrived like a thunderclap. The story came complete with a cast of characters, a setting, and a plot.

Unfortunately, the timing couldn't have been worse: I was seven months pregnant with my first child.

But God's timing doesn't resemble man's timing. And the gift seemed perishable. So, despite the gasps of horror from polite ladies who probably had good intentions, I waddled into the FBI's forensic mineralogy department, asking questions about murder and mayhem.

Only a handful of people understood why I was starting a novel when it looked like my water was about to break. My husband. My dad who was battling stage-four throat cancer. My mom who was also a writer. And an elderly uncle who once attempted to write a novel but quit -- he really understood.

The rest of the world treated me as though the novel was a betrayal of the child in my womb.

Fourteen years later, not much has changed. The other day, a homeschool mom asked me in a baffled tone of voice: "Why do you even feel the need to write these books -- I mean, are you making a ton of money or something?"

4. You can answer those questions, but it probably won't help.

Any explanation will make you sound like a televangelist who can't afford glittery clothes ("God called me"), or just plain weird ("The day doesn't seem quite real until I write about it.")

Most people won't understand. But writers don't live an either-or existence. They live two lives. Here, and not here. Experiencing life, and imagining it.

Yes, I know. I just described a dual personality.

But as Dorothea Brande writes in her essential little book "Becoming a Writer," the writer's double existence is not a bad thing:

"A dual personality, to the reader who has a number of half-digested notions about the constitution of the mind, is an unlucky fellow who should be in a psychopathic ward; or, at the happiest, a flighty hysterical creature. Nevertheless, every author is a very fortunate sort of dual personality, and it is this very fact that makes him such a bewildering, tantalizing, irritating figure to the plain man of affairs who flatters himself that he, at least, is all of a piece."

5. All interruptions come from God.

As though stating the case for me, my kids just knocked on my office door. They want pancakes. They want to start their school work. They want me.

And I am happy to go.

Very happy to go.

I can always write about it later.

My husband recently met one of his harmonica heroes, Charlie Mussselwhite. That's Musselwhite on the left, and Hunk of Italy on the right. (Cute, aint he?)

If you haven't heard Musselwhite's harmonica, you haven't heard the Blues. I could say the same for my hubby, only he's not as famous. Yet.

Musselwhite is rumored to be the inspiration for Dan Akroyd's "Blues Brothers" character. More than just a musician; Musselwhite's an artist.

You can see that artistry in the simplest things. Take the liner notes on his most recent CD, "The Well."

"This tune," he writes of the title song, "tells my story in a nutshell about what happened when baby Jessica McClure fell into a well in Texas. I was struck by the courage of this child at the bottom of the well with a broken arm, singing nursery rhymes to herself. Suddenly my alcohol problem/addiction seemed very minor in comparison to her life and death struggle. I decided as a prayer for her, I would show some bravery too and not drink until she got out of the well. When she was rescued three days later, I was out of the well, too. I haven't had a drink in 22 years."

The story is amazing all on its own. But check out those undertones, resonating like minor keys. Don't we tend to fall into wells of our own digging? Doesn't God stand ready with the rescue crew, if we'll just admit we messed up and need help? And isn't it telling that Jesus waited for a truly messed up woman at a well in order to tell her about "living water"?

Maybe I'm reading too much into it (hey, I'm a writer). But then again, maybe not.

Here's Musselwhite playing the instrument God put in his hands. The song is "Christo Redemptor" from his very first album.

Wait for the harp to come in. And enjoy.

I wrote the following blog post for Novel Rocket (if you haven't subscribed to that excellent feed, do it now. Especially if you're hoping to learn more about writing fiction). 




       I can still remember the ringing telephone.
 Coming through the door -- beach sand still in my hair -- I lunged for the phone, always certain somebody has just died.

     But it was my editor at Revell.
     "You won!" she exclaimed.
     It will sound disingenuous but the truth often embarrasses: I didn't know what she was talking about. Several significant moments of silence passed. Then an idea dislodged itself from my beach brain. 
     Oh. Christy Awards. This weekend.
     My first novel, "The Stones Cry Out,” was nominated for best first novel.
     "What's wrong?" the editor asked, as the silence stretched on.
     "Nothing."
     "You’re probably in shock. Isn’t it great news?!"
     Yes.
     And no.
     Despite the nomination, I never expected to win. Given the great novels competing in the same category, I didn't think my book would win.
    Actually, I didn't think it should win. 
     My first novel reminded me of a knock-kneed colt struggling to stand up on its own feet. That it would win an award like the Christy seemed absurd. I wondered if a mistake had been made.
     Ever since, I've felt a certain ambivalence about winning that honor. I figured my problem was pride (I’m human; there is always pride). But four novels later, I can see some sense in my ambivalence. And I can share three important lessons. 

One: Pray that your first book is not your best. 
     Despite the award in my hand, I remained busy grieving my novice abilities. Fortunately, God countered the sackcloth-and-ashes with a spirit of perseverance. I decided the only way to get better was to keep going.
     “Most people won’t realize that writing is a craft,” said Katherine Anne Porter. “You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.”
     Of course, you will find your own ways of enduring the early apprenticeship, but one of my favorites was The Tour of First Novels.
     One day, at my most frustrated, I stormed into the library and checked out first novels by my favorite authors. Within hours, relief was humming through my veins. Not that schadenfreude sort of relief, but something productive.
     Most of those first books were bad. Some even stunk. And none matched their author’s later output.
     Like most first novels, those first books read like seed pods yearning to bloom. 
    Or: knock-kneed colts struggling to stand. 

Two: In the modern era of e-books, the first book might not be so final. 
     Some months ago, the copyright to "The Stones Cry Out" returned to me.
     Here came my colt, running for home.
     Unfortunately, temptation was riding with it.
     The rationalization went like this: It won a Christy. Received good reviews. Launched a successful series. You should just put it on Kindle. As-is….
     But we’re called to be workers who need not be ashamed, “rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Tim 2:15). Since I still didn't love my first book, it was my responsibility to do something about it.
     With prayers for humility and discernment, I proceeded from Page 1 and continued to the end, rounding out scenes, adding flesh to characters, trying to bring the story closer to what followed in the rest of the Raleigh Harmon series.
     And when "The Stones Cry Out” was put on Kindle, I didn't hesitate to add the Christy Award honor.
    Because it looked different to me now.
     Not only for the new work done, though it played a large part. The difference was lesson three.
      I didn’t write that first book to win an award; I am grateful for it. But I am also grateful that the honor didn’t fill me with (more) pride. The simple fact is, I write because God made me a writer. That's what I’m supposed to do. Any honors, awards, or leading positions on the best-seller list can only be viewed through the lens of grace.
     Completely undeserved: And yet, there it is.
     And the apprenticeship carries on accordingly.

For the Love of Dog

Our family dog, Jesse. Ever protective, she's watching the kids swim in the river.

Here's a short story by Ray Bradbury, posted on mockingbird.com.  You will never look at dogs the same way again.

Read and reflect.

And rejoice.

The Poet as Prophet

Today's news is that Usama Bin Laden is dead.

Today is also Holocaust Remembrance Day.

God's timing is ceaselessly fascinating. While each individual can draw their own comparisons between the two events, I found myself recalling lines from a W.H. Auden poem, "1st September 1939."

September 1, 1939 was the day Hitler invaded Poland. The 20th century was never the same again.

They say history repeats itself. It does. But history also rhymes with itself.

And Auden's poem fits both then, and now.

Here is the poet reading his poem.