The Blessings Jar

For many years, my church has performed the same ritual, or a variation thereof, on the first Sunday in January..

 

We are given a sheet of paper. On it we write the things we are wishing for in the new year, OR we write the things we want to do away with—bad habits and all. It's the minister's choice. I might write "be on time", or "eat healthy foods", or on the other side of the coin, I might say "I will stop being negative" or "I will not procrastinate."  My statements might be like wishes on birthday candles: " I will be in perfect health this year," or "My books will become best sellers." Then we walk up front and stick the paper into the flame of a candle, and burn those words—send them out to the universe, so to speak.

 

In another version of the same thing, we write on our piece of paper, put it in an envelope, seal it, and put it in the offering plate when it comes around. Next December it will be mailed back to us so we can see that everything that has materialized. (Yeah, right.) I don't think I've ever seen one thing in my envelope come to pass. I'm never more patient, neater, thinner, nor more organized.

 

This year I was expecting the same old same old, but the minister surprised us. She had us bring a jar to church, and she handed out a slip of paper that reads, "My Blessings Jar. When you experience a blessing, write it down and put it in here & count your blessings whenever you need a lift." We taped the message on the outside of the jar and put it where we would see it every day. I think this is going to work--maybe not exactly the way it's stated on my jar, but in an even better way.

 

Counting your blessings is certainly a good idea, but I see another benefit to the slips of paper in the jar—actually looking for blessings. I think we often overlook the good things that come to us, but we are all too eager to tell the bad things that come along. And there are even some people who says things like "that always happens to me" or "nothing good ever happens". With the jar sitting by the computer, and I'm on the computer every day, my attention is drawn to the good in my life—that extra little bump that makes me say "Thank you, God!", since something has occurred that is more than just having a good day. I'm sure I'll be counting those blessings more often than I used to. I'm just as sure that if I wasn't writing them on slips of paper and putting them where I can see them every day, I'd forget to actively watch for them.

 

So that stirred up something else in my thought process. Why not do the same thing for coincidences? If what Albert Einstein said, (or whoever really did say it, if not him,)  "Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous," is true, then coincidences are signposts, pointing the way to . . . what? A discovery? Could coincidences really be arrows showing us the path? Like signs that say, "turn here", "go this way," or "stop before you get hurt," maybe we need to pay closer attention.

 

Some years ago I watched a TV program about people who won the lottery (or more than one.) One of the people they featured was a man who had won (and was still winning) lotteries. He said he watched for numbers wherever he went. He remembered the numbers, and if they repeated, that's the numbers he played. He had trained himself to be aware of the numbers around him: street numbers, dates, time, phone numbers, etc. In one instance, he stopped to help a woman who had a flat tire. As he changed it for her, he took mental note of her license number. When he bought his lotto card for the day, he picked her license number. It won big.

 

I'm a reader. Writers are, you know, or they wouldn't be writers for long. There are times coincidences come by way of the books I choose. I'll pick a book completely at random, and then the next one, and the next, and I'll find that something about them is the same. It might be similarity in the base on which the plot is formed, or the characters have the same name, or the books take place in the same city. Mind you, I haven't read the cover or a review, or anything else that would have told me, but there they are, alike in one or more ways. I remember one time I read three novels in a row that all took place in the forests of the far northwest. I had no idea until I was deep into each book. Just a coincidence. Hmm. Just because I notice the coincidences doesn't mean I know what it means.

 

So I'm putting a little notebook beside the computer, and like the blessing jar reminds me to watch for blessings, I hope the notebook will help me watch for coincidences. I can only anticipate that they will point me somewhere I need to go . . .  or think about. Maybe they'll point me toward a blessing.

 

 

 

 

What's In a Name? A Rose by Any Other Name isn't a Coincidence.

I've mentioned here before that genealogy is a hobby of mine. It's like solving a mystery, going back in time like that, finding our relatives and how they lived. My daughter caught the bug too, and likes to delve in the past--ours or someone else's.

She's currently working on her mother-in-law's genealogy. It is especially interesting because her MIL was adopted at age two weeks, and didn't learn this until she was well into adulthood. The clues they had (such as her MIL's birth mother's name) took her just so far, then DNA took her further.

Before telling more of this story, I have to tell you that her MIL is very patriotic. Her home is decorated in red, white, and blue and she has Americana in every room. She drives a red car, red being her favorite color. July 4 is a really big day at their house.

So a few days ago, my daughter had gotten as far back as her MIL's great-grandmother. She called. "You'll never guess what your great-grandmother's name was."

"Oh, I hope it was Liberty. Liberty or America. I've always wished my name was Liberty or America. When I was a little girl I used to pretend it was!" she replies.

I'll give you two guesses what great-grandmother's name was, and the first one doesn't count.

God Bless . . . .

My Valentine

This is the tenth Valentine's Day I've spent without my own Valentine. It's easier than it was the first one.

The first one, he'd been gone six months, and I was really sad to be without him. It had been getting better, but Valentine's Day is the day of the year you really want your sweetheart with you.

I had cried off and on all day. Not the big, sobbing kind of crying, just the kind that catches you off-guard and has the tears flowing again. Memories that flash suddenly, without warning, and puts that lump back in your throat.

I cried a bit as I went to sleep that night. As is common among those of us who are 'a certain age', I woke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I was still sure-footed enough that I didn't turn on the light. Coming back, in the doorway from bathroom to bedroom I stepped on something soft and furry. I backed up a half-step and turned on the bathroom light. It was a small stuffed rabbit which a friend had given Jim when he was in the hospital. There it was, in the path I had taken a minute earlier.

I stopped telling people this story when they started saying, "It must have been there before. You just didn't notice it." Yeah, right. A stuffed animal was on the floor in the doorway to the bathroom and I just didn't notice it. I guess that's as likely to some people as the thought that Jim put it there for me.

The rabbit sits on the old trunk that serves as my nightstand. It's been there for ten years now.

Some people will say it was just a coincidence it appeared there on Valentine's night.
I say it was Jim letting me know he is still close by.

Genealogy and Books

((Sigh)). Ok, I admit it. I've been so lazy about this blog. I haven't posted in . . . well . . . it's been a long time. Not that I think anybody has missed it, but still, when I start something, I really should keep it up. Like cleaning house . . .well, let's forget about that.

I'm still noticing coincidences, and one of these days I'll get back to writing about them. For now, let me tell you about my writing, and, come to think about it, about how coincidences shape the series that Betrayal on the Brazos has turned in to.

The idea really started with genealogy. That's one of my interests, and one of my daughters, the one who lives nearby, has inherited that interest. We have both my family and that of my late husband, traced back a long, long way. And the weird thing we found was the coincidences that show up along the way.

Now I don't know if I can explain this properly in a blog, but stay with me while I try. We keep finding long ago relatives who live next door to, or marry into a family, of people who show up in 'modern times'. Example: My mother-in-law was orphaned and adopted as a young child. Her adopting mother was a cousin of her father. That branch of the family had moved here from Indiana maybe 50 years previously. Her adopting father's family moved here from Tennessee a generation previously. In Tennessee, they lived NEXT DOOR to the ancestors of the man my mother-in-law would eventually marry.

And my daughter and I have ceased to be surprised at the numerous coincidences that pop up. People from one side marrying into a branch of the other side, a hundred years before the modern couple even meet.

She's working on the tree of her mother-in-law, who was adopted and knew very little of her biological parents. Wouldn't you know I'd find that in her lineage was the same ancestor from my husband's side of the family--back in 1700s Virginia. That means my daughter and her husband are very distant cousins.

Edgar Cayce said we reincarnate with the same groups of people, and it looks like that is what is happening. If you believe in reincarnation. And I do.

So what does that have to do with my books?

Betrayal on the Brazos is the first in the series Tales From the Brazos. All the books will take place on or near the Brazos River. Some of them will emphasize the complete name of the river, The River of the Arms of God, and that name will have meaning to the story. They will not be written in chronological order, but can be read in any order. Each one is a stand alone story, but characters will show up in various books, much as in real life we meet a person, lose track of them, and meet them again later. Just as coincidences happen in real life, they'll happen in the lives of my characters.

So far, the earliest book in the series, time-wise, is Betrayal on the Brazos, which starts in approximately 1875 when Maggie's uncle sends her to the fictional town of Rock Springs, Texas, to care for her cousin's children. There are laughs and love, along with murder, before the Happily Ever After.

My WIP (work-in-progress) is set a couple of years later, and it is about Rachel, who moves her family by covered wagon from Mississippi to Texas to join her husband on the same ranch where Betrayal on the Brazos takes place. There are lots of surprises, both good and bad, and you'll meet some characters you met in Betrayal. The title of this one is Wherever Life Leads. Coincidences play a big part in this one.

Just because it is the next chronologically, that doesn't mean I haven't been writing others in the series. Gussie and the Cherokee Kid is next one to be released.  It is set in 1901 and follows the daughter of a character in Betrayal on the Brazos as she accompanies orphaned six-year-old Julia, to  her   uncle in Rock Springs. Full of more laughs and love, I think you'll like it. Release date is Feb. 10, 2016.

Next is The Marriage Bargain, set in 1932. The Brazos River plays a big part in this one, along with the full meaning of the river's name. It has a lot more action and some sadness. That's the way life is, you know. Some fun. Some not so much. But if you have faith, it all works out in the end. Release date for that one is March 30, 2016.

When I finish Wherever Life Leads, I have lots of options about what to write next. I have sticky-notes all around my computer monitor with ideas, and I have ordered scads of books to give background whichever direction I go. I even have one that will involve the mob and be full of tension, but I can't write that one yet until I pull the series closer to present time so I can connect the characters. I don't know yet how it will connect to those long-ago people I've already written about, but it will. The coincidence just hasn't shown up yet.

In the meantime, maybe I'll start with the young man who comes back from WWI damaged in mind and body and the young woman who helps him. Or maybe the young woman who learns to fly airplanes, or Julia, who grows up to fall in love with the boy next door, who owns a vineyard and winery--during prohibition.

In YOUR meantime, start looking for coincidences in your own life. Remember, they are signs of something. It's up to you to figure out just what!

What is Truth?

Recently one of my daughters shared a 'saying' on Facebook that has been in my thoughts since I commented that day. It wasn't the first time I had reflected on the idea, just the most recent.

 

I can't quote it exactly, but it was something like "Just because it's popular doesn't make it true". And that, my friends is very true. It started me thinking, not for the first time, about all the ideas over the centuries society has declared true—ideas that turned out to be very wrong.

 

I could write a whole blog just on that—and sometime I might—but today I want to talk about just one such happening.

 

I've been reading a lot recently, some books for just fun, some books on interests of mine, and some as research for a possible sequel to BETRAYAL ON THE BRAZOS, my romance/western/mystery to be published by Soul Mate Publishing this summer. Which character shall I base a sequel on? What direction will it take? What time period should I use? Some of my reading is exploring these questions, and one of those books related a situation in which society treated a whole segment of people in a manner most people at the time thought was wise and true. I think differently. See what you think.

 

This winter has been especially hard on people in America. The weather has been severe, with snow deep and temperatures colder than usual. Now, imagine yourself and your family—your whole family—walking 900 miles in this snow and ice. This winter is the 175^th anniversary of the Trail of Tears: the forced removal of 18,000 Cherokee Indians from eastern Tennessee, northwest North Carolina, northeast Alabama, and northwest Georgia. Seven thousand soldiers rounded them up, put them in stockades, burned their homes to the ground, dug up graves looking for gold and silver, then marched them 900 miles through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas until they reached "Indian Territory", the place that is now called Oklahoma.

 

Society thought they were doing the 'right thing'. They were sure the 'truth' was that Native Americans were immoral heathens, hell-bent on murdering virtuous white people. Society thought it was noble that the army didn't just kill all the Cherokees, and 'gave' them new land that they could possess and live on "as long as rivers run and grass grows". Some promise, huh?

 

It may be a surprise to some people today to learn that the Cherokee were a civilized group. They had towns and lived in houses, not teepees. They farmed and raised cattle and various crops. They had a written language and published their own newspaper, which was printed in both Cherokee and English. In many instances they came to the aid of whites when needed. In my own husband's genealogy, the Cherokee chief Nancy Ward gave orders that  corn be given to his ancestor when a party of white men in a canoe came asking for help to survive the winter.

 

Many of the Eastern Band of Cherokees hid out, and therefore avoided the Trail of Tears, but in the decades that followed, some of these families decided to join their relatives in Indian Territory. That included ancestors from my side of the family and my husband's (separately).

 

On my side, the Jacob Knight family came to northwest Arkansas just after the Civil War and visited back and forth with family members who had settled previously in northeast Oklahoma. Although they didn't march on the Trail of Tears, they seemed to have followed the same route, since at least one of the older children stayed in Kentucky when they came through there.

 

On my husband's side, Naomi Cherokee married a white man, Charles Brumbelow and they started west. When they paused in McNairy County, Tennessee, an older daughter, Louvenia, stayed there and married John Gillentine Gooch. They were my husband's ancestors. The rest of the family proceeded west, where they stayed in north Arkansas during the Civil War, then proceeded to Texas. Naomi didn't make it that far. She died on the trip.

 

During the Trail of Tears, 4,000 people died along the way and were buried in shallow graves along the way. Most of them were children and the elderly. Could you walk 900 miles? In the winter? Not me. And I would have had to have gone. No excuses.

 

All this is recounted in WALKING THE TRAIL, by Jerry Ellis, who walked the trail on the 150^th anniversary. He walked it in reverse; that is, he started in Tahlequah, Oklahoma—the Cherokee capitol—and traced the trail back to his home in Alabama. The scenes in Tahlequah brought back a lot of memories for me. That's where my grandparents lived after my grandfather retired from the oil fields. We used to visit Tahlequah every summer, where I would stretch out and enjoy the cool wood floor as I listened to my step-grandmother's stories of the ghost who scared her and her friends who spent the night in the old Murrell house when she was young.

 

So what does all this have to do with coincidences?

 

You'll have to read WALKING THE TRAIL to find out. When you do, I think you'll agree with Albert Einstein. And I hope you'll think more about whether most people believing a certain way makes it true.

As The Pendulum Swings

Decisions, decisions! Do you have a hard time, sometimes, choosing between one thing and another? Do you ever use a pendulum to make the choice?

 

I learned about pendulums way back in what (in the old days) was called Junior High School. Our science teacher explained the way farmers divided a bunch of chicks into hens and roosters.

 

The farmer would make a pendulum by threading a needle so it could hang down about a foot. He would hold it over each chick. It would either go around in a circle or swing back and forth. Now I can't remember which way was which for male/female, but that's the way it was done. I learned it doesn't have to be a needle, it can be anything you can hang, like a button or key.

 

Yes, I know you are going to say that you influence what it does and can make it swing any direction you want it to. You're just going to have to take my word that I don't do that. I hung it over my belly each time I was pregnant, and it came out right all four times. Test it out over your friends or pets. You'll see.

 

One of my friends uses this method to choose what she is going to order off a menu. She points to an item with her left hand and holds her keys dangling from her right. Of course to me that's no test, since anything would be right, IMO, but I tried something similar today.

 

I've decided to try to find a literary agent for my novel, BROUSSARD COURT. This takes a lot of research, as all writers know, to find an agent who (1) is accepting new clients and (2) likes the genre you are pitching. One of my first choices is a firm that represents one of my favorite authors. This author writes women's lit with an edge of mysticism—sort of like what I do. In researching this firm I found a couple of agents who are taking new clients. I couldn't decide which one to pitch to.

 

So I made a pendulum—out of a paper clip, of all things. It swung forward and back for one agent and side to side for the other. I'm taking forward and back as nodding 'yes' and side to side as shaking my head 'no'.

 

And in that way, I chose which agent is for me. Now it may not work out. She might not like my work. I'll let you know what happens. Nothing fast, I'm quite sure. The publishing business is a slow process.

 

I have a beautiful agate pendulum that I bought at a bead and stone shop some years back, but I don't know what I did with it. It probably wouldn't work any better than a paper clip, though, or a needle.

 

Have you ever worked with a pendulum? Let us know how it worked.

 

Someone Dark Has Found Me

Those readers, friends, and family who keep up with what I write know that I have a varied and quirky subject list for my stories. Leprechauns, hoo-doo, ghosts, angels, djinns, spirits, out-of-body travel, spells, the mystical properties of gemstones. Nothing is out of reach in my stories and novels, both published and yet-to-be published. That makes it hard when I'm submitting to agents and publishers. My stories don't fit into any one genre. A little bit of western. A touch of paranormal. A soupcon of romance. A dash of murder. A few spells thrown in for good measure. Sure! Why not? Because it makes it hard to find the right 'place' for them, that's why not. Publishers want specific genres, not the mystical stew I cook up.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find a book as varied in genre and quirky as those I write—if not more so.

Someone Dark Has Found Me, by John Orr, starts with three debonair, witty, attractive, private detectives (imagine Remington Steele, Sam Spade, and…well, any other good-looking, wise-cracking PI), and they meet a witch…with a W, not a B. She's a well-known restaurateur in their town of Pala Alto, California, and she needs their help, more than you'd ever believe. With disbelieving 'normal' cops trying to arrest them at every turn, it's hard to fight the evil that (or who) is trying to destroy them. It's the witch's brother, of all people. There are murders that aren't murders, an eccentric computer developer, a magic cat, sympathetic trees, and all sorts of interesting things going on. I'd try to explain it to you but I don't think I can do it as well as author John Orr did. He made the whole thing make sense. You won't get lost in this story, I promise.

Written with a lot of humor and a terrific voice, Someone Dark Has Found Me would make a great TV series, IMO. I can see this group solving 'everyday' crimes, as well as those with magic involved. I'm looking forward to another book featuring these people. The only thing I'd change is the cover. The author would be well-served to see what Farah Evers could cook up for him. She produces spot-on covers at a reasonable rate, and this book deserves a different cover.

So if you relish weird and unusual stories, and I have to assume you do or you wouldn't be reading my blog, buy a copy of Someone Dark Has Found Me by John Orr.  Enjoy!

In the meantime I'm working on a sequel to Broussard Court, the story of spirits, hoodoo, rescued people, spells, charms, protective gemstones, et al, set in New Orleans. No, you can't buy it yet, but a publisher is 'interested', so hopefully you will be able to before long. I'm working on a new cast of people the spirits are sending to Broussard Court.

On the side, I'm working on "Sissy and Miss Boo", about a jilted bride and an old lady who encounter murder when they 'run away' to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Let me know what you think about Someone Dark when you read it.