I'M BAAAACK!

This is the quilt I made for my grand daughter's new big-girl bed.  I got another picture up on here but I had a lot trial and error involved. Yikes! I have to improve at this.

Life sure is interesting. We have to get up in the morning to see what is going to happen that day.  I have started actually writing a new book. I'm calling it Ivy and Esther in my head, not sure what the title will turn up being. It centers on two young girls during the years of the Civil War.  These young girls are based on what I know about my children's great great-grandmothers. One was the daughter of an Indian squaw and a white man. The other was the daughter of a town doctor. I have the barest of information about these women and so will have to make  most of it up.

I have done a lot of research on the civil war era but there is so much to know. I am concerned about making some horrible mistake that will make me look like a dummy but I will forge on. The story takes place in southern Ohio before and during the time of Morgan's Raid through the southern Ohio area. I am very interested in these two girls and what they get up to. The doctor's daughter has diabetes and the squaw's daughter becomes her companion.  The relationship between the girls in intersting to me and or course what was going on with the war as a backdrop.

I have one chapter written and am encouraged.

In the meantime my husband is not feeling so well. He fell off the toilet and cracked his head on the cupboard on Friday. I know, it's almost funny, but it scraped the skin off his forehead and since he is taking blood thinners we had to get his brain checked out. It was a long morning in the emergency eventhough when we arrived there was not a single person in the waiting room. Not one. I couldn't believe it. Ended up he was a bit dehydrated and was given IV fluids.

So that's what I'm doing for fun this day. I'm not going to explain about my failure to stick to my proomise to write every week. I'm just going to try doing better.
 

Here I am again!

It's been a big week. There is more to writing than writing. My friend Darlene and I went to a book signing at the South Lebanon Quilt Show on Friday. Oh my God was it hot and humid. It was a wonderful show with the life quilting works of                  .  We were privileged to  meet her when she came into the show. She is delightful and 80 years old. A very beautiful woman.
     We sold some books and met some wonderful people.  We met Peggy Logue who was also selling her book called Skin in The Game which is about the year her nineteen year old soon spent in Iraq as a US Marine.  I am particularly interested in this becasue my son and I are collaborating on a book about the year he spent in Kuwait and Iraq.

     I am also very excited to have received a review of Glory from the Midwest Book Review.  I am including it here so you can see what a complete stranger had to say about the book. I am very excited that they liked it. You can find it at http://www.midwestbookreview.com/ if you don't want to read it here.

Glory Pruitt has just spent two months holed up after her husband died
of a heart attack. In another woman's bed. That is the first of several
shocks she is about to receive. The roughly 2.5 million in assets from
their business have disappeared, and her husband has been sending
flowers to a number of women in town. Camden, Ohio is a town full of
pedigrees, and its insulation begets snobbery that Glory doesn't really
understand. But the shadows are full of menace, and it is up to Glory to
put it all together:

I I .
"My front door was unlocked when I arrived home. I couldn't remember
ifl'd locked it before I left for Studs Unlimited or not. It seemed like I'd
left days ago and anything was possible. I pushed it open and stepped
inside.
'Anybody here?' I called out.
My voice echoed in the stillness. For a moment I stood quietly, listening
for an answer. The silence in the house was heavy, artificial. The
drawers of my desk were open and papers were strewn across its top. I
knew I hadn't left it that way. I fingered through the papers and saw the
mail was still there where I'd left it and felt a shiver crawl up my back. I
didn't know if it was seeing the envelope from my mother's lawyer or
something else. I wondered if Kate might have stopped by to have
another look at the desk."

Forrester's talent is that she sets up scenes guaranteed to make the reader
want to scream out at Glory to be careful. Glory's character is someone
who has been sheltered her entire life and suddenly has to function on
her own in the midst of an evil presence determined to bring her down.
Forrester carefully paces the story so that Glory has to either adjust or
literally die, which makes for a hair-raising spine tingler of a mystery,
and one that the reader simply can't put down. GLORY is a winner.

Shelley Glodowski
Senior Reviewer

     Isn't that nice? Don't you just love it? I do.

     We have a book signing in  Port Clinton, Ohio on June 23 and a signing at the Logan Antigue Mall on June 26 from 1-3.  Quuilters are busy here in Columbus this week at the NQA show. I am not going to make it down. My family is taking first priority at the moment. My husband is very ill.

Two weeks in a Row

I'm very proud. I got a picture put up all by myself.  This is my grandaughter and her dog, Gus at our farm. I made the dress and hat. I love this child in a way even I cannot believe.

The point of this blog is to tell you about my writing experiences but I haven't had any this week so I will talk about something else. My husband has a stage 4 gastric cancer. The entire family has been dealing witih this almost two years now and we are getting to a harder part. It takes all our energy some days. I think Bill (my husband) is depressed. He doesn't feel good, that is for sure. He has lost his appetite and had two embolisms in his lung last week. so now he is on blood thinners and the dosage is not yet adjusted. This morning he had a bloody nose. It did stop but his INR is too high and needs to come down.

He is not the best patient in the world and I am not the best caregiver. We have fun around here. I had him eat advacado which he does not like this morning. That will help with his vitamin K intake. I told him to think of it as  medicine. I have to call the Zangmeister Center and find out what they think we should do.  A lot of  my time is spent in this sort of activity, so no writing gets done. Bear with me.

I am going to a book signing on Friday in South Lebanon, Ohio. This will be interesting to me as it is my first experience as a vender at a quilt show. Hopefully we will sell some books. I still have a lot of them in the garage. I will let you know how it goes next week.

I am still thinking about the civil war book I want to write next. My main characters are named Ivy and Esther. They are ten and fourteen. Esther is ill, gravely ill, as a matter of fact. Her father is a doctor and he suffers over not being able to help her. The year is 1862 and the Civil War is raging down south and threatens to spill over into Ohio where Esther and Ivy live. See, it sounds interesting, don't you think? I have to schedule some time to work on it. I want to begin to find out what's really going on. That is the  main reason I write. It is the only way I can find out what the story is.

Check back next week and see how things are going. I'm relly pleased I got a picture up all by myself.

Only a week has passed!

Only a week has passed and I am blogging again. So far I am  keeping my word.

I have to learn to do photos. Tht is the reason for the flower. Mary showed me how to do it. 

It will take me a few times to get the hang of it. I want there to be soomething interesting for you to read, so I'm not limiting myself to writing about writing or quilting oro just life in general. I'm going to be

writing about all of that, probably all mixed up together and tell you what I am doing and learning as I

go along.

One of the things I do is lead a book club. It started at Always in Stitches quilt Shop and from the

book club we decided to write a book, which we did. That book is The Guild in the Granary and it is

available for purchase at McDiggspublishing.com.

Then we publlished Glory which I wrote all alone and it is also availabe for purchase. It has nothing to do with quilts.I am working on a couple of other booksthat may be published in the future. Nobody really knows for sure.

Anyway the book club met on Monday. We had a field trip to the Gantz Farm herb garden which is located in one of the city parks in Grove City, Ohio where we are from. It was very interesting and we appreciate the city making the efforts it makes on behalf of the citizens.  The book for the month was The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen. Most of the group like4d this book but we didn't get to rate it. The meeting was sort of as mess because pre-schoolers were having end-of-the-year activities at the park.  It was hard to hear and we didin't get to have  much of a discussion. Sometimes things don't work out that well. Monday was one of those days. We broke up early and will try to do better next month.  Next month out book is The Castle of the Flynns by Michael Raleigh.   

Starting Over!

This is Glory! It has been getting great reviews!

I find it helpful to start over every now and then. I mean begin again with my life. I don't know how it got from November to May without my posting a message but it did. Glory is out and response to it has been very good. I gave a copy to our library, because they have no money to buy books, pay staff or do much of anything else and there are reserves on the book. People have to wait in line to read it. I am so excited about this I can hardly stand myself.

We have been to a couple of book signings with Glory and the stack of boxes in my garage is shrinking.  This is good news.People like this story. It is the story of almost any small town and it's people. I want you to read it and let me know what you think.

I am making a pledge to blog once every week into the future. Mary is going to help me  put a picture of Glory up. I hope I will learn to do this myself eventually.  I didn't say how long the blog would be so I'm going to stop now and gather my thoughts before I do this again. I have been advised to talk about other things going on in my life, besides just my writing so I plan to do that. Tell me how I'm doing. Please?  I get nervous when I am all alone.

Book signing in Columbus

Mary and I went to a quilt signing at Columbus S        Quild on Tuesday evening. Again it was fun. There was a lot of interest in the way we managed to write the book.  Most everybody agred with me that Sleimer was not a good last name for a love interest for one of Caroline's girls. I felt vindicated for saying, "We can't use that name. It's dreadful. 

We sold some books and met more great quilters. This guild has a man. Is he the cat who ate the canary in a bunch of women?  We went to dinner before the meeting and Rita bought my supper though she barely knows me. I love it. There was an H1N1 innoculation sight next door to the quilt meeting and the parking was brutal. Mary is a member of this guild and that makes things extra nice. Jan wasn't able to go with us becasue she was visiting family in Chicago. We missed her and I have to say sort of screwed up her part of the program. Sorry Jan.

We asked the guild members to vote on our potential titles. Well three of them. I couldn't remember one of them so we couldn't ask about it. Results were 9 votes for Star-crossed quilt, 3 votes for the Timeless Star and 1 vote for the Timeless Star. Some of the other suggestions were Star Everlasting, Magically Pieced Star, Threads of History, and Stars and pieces.  One quilter saud she didn't like any of the suggestions and thought we should keep working on it. The input really does help us decide.

Glory should be arriving from the printer in the next couple of weeks. I have a few pre-sales on my list and will be having a signing at the Always in Stitches Christmas Open House on Sunday December 6. I am excited about this.

We are having some problems with getting our second book on the page. We are to Chapter 19 and not sure what direction to go. We will try to resolve it soon and get moving again. Jan and I may start working on a quilting story that takes place during the Civil War soon. It is going to be really fun to write. I'll let you know when we get it started.

Book signing in Marysville

        We had a great book signing at LoneStar Quilting in downtown Marysville on November 5. It's a great new shop that opened in September. It is a great little shop in a used-to-be bank. Can yo believe I bought some fabric? Don't know yet what I will do with it but I'll think of something.  Mary had to get back to Columbus for the Kids N Kamp auction at Ohio State so Jan, my husband and  I had supper at Old Bag of Nails. I love Old Bag of Nails so that was a treat. Then we went to the Union County Quilt Guild to do their program and to sign books for their members. We met another great bunch of quilters and  had a wonderful evening. Thanks to all who shared the fun with us.
       The more quilters I get to know, the more I like quilters. The Union County ladies have a finish it challenge going on. Did you ever hear of such a thing. They actually get points for finishing projects that have fallen by the way side. I was impressed and we got to see some great finished work at the meeting.
       We also got to share the cover for Glory which is at the printers right now. This was the first viewing of the cover and I am very happy with it. I hope you all will like it too. The book should be ready for release by January 1. We are excited about that. It will be available through McDiggs web site and from Amazon.
     We are still working like crazy on the sequel to The Guild in the Granary. We are ready to really name the book. One of the ladies at the Union County Guild suggested we let readers have a chance to help name the book, so we are going to try that. So how about voting on the title you like or thinking up something we haven't thought of yet.
Our suggestions are: A Timeless Star
                                A Star in Time
                                The Antique Star
                                The Star-crossed Quilt
Send us your votes and suggestions and we will consider all of them. I promise.

I will have a few advance copies of  Glory at Always in Stitches Christmas Open House  on Sunday, December 6 from 2 to 4 pm. I will be signing books while they last.  They are going to make great Christmas gifts for your reading friends. Price is $14.95 plus tax. Hope to see you there.