It is a pleasure today to feature a guest post from Janet Stobie. In it she shares an announcement about her newly released children's book and some reflections that will ring true with many of us. But first, let's find out some more about Janet.

Bio for Rev. Janet Stobie
 
A writer, inspirational speaker and ordained minister, Janet Stobie spent nineteen years in pastoral ministry enjoying children, teens and adults. She is welcomed as a guest speaker at fundraisers, men’s and women’s group meetings, book clubs and studies and of course, Sunday morning worship.
 
In her retirement, Janet has continued in ministry both through pulpit supply, and her writing. She has written ten books:

• four children’s books,
• three biblically-based short story collections enjoyed by families,
• two adult novels,
• a worship resource.

 
Janet also writes a newspaper column titled “Today’s Faith” for a local newspaper.

Announcement from Janet Stobie
 
I’m pleased and excited to announce the birth of my latest book, “Rajah Finds His Wisdom: Using Our Differences Wisely”.
 
In his new home, young Rajah, the African elephant, faces rejection. He is different. As an adult he grows up to be the biggest in the herd and  a bully. Opportunities to do well, and acceptance by others lead Rajah to the wisdom of using his differences wisely. The colourful watercolour illustrations were created by Lois Sexsmith.
 
We are hoping “Rajah Finds His Wisdom” will bring delight and learning to a host of children, their parents, aunts, uncles and neighbours. I’m sure he’ll make a great gift for the children in your life.
 
Rajah Finds His Wisdom: Using Our Differences Wisely is available as a paperback on Amazon UK for £8.67 (www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1775293823/) and on Amazon US for $9.95 (www.amazon.com/dp/1775293823/).
 
You can purchase an autographed copy direct from Janet Stobie through info@janetstobie.com or her website www.janetstobie.com/.
​

Life Lessons
 
When I was a young teenager, it was easy to compare myself to others and find myself lacking. Whether it was body shape, popularity, beauty, or just stuff, it seemed that others had so much more than I did. They were prettier, more athletic, won prizes. Boys flocked to them, not me. They had nicer clothes – whatever I looked at, I had less. I lived a life of scarcity.
 
At the church I received affirmation from our youth group leaders. Over and over, they told us we were God’s precious kids. That started me on the road to abundance. They treated each of us as if we were special. They had time to listen, even to me. They talked about and lived Jesus teaching that each one of us was special, God’s creation. I remember a poster in the church hall that said, “God made you and God doesn’t make junk.” This experience and my parents’ love gradually led me to understand that who I was, God’s precious child, was more than enough. The scarcity in my heart shrank as abundance slowly crept in.
 
Motherhood took me another step towards living an abundant life. My children loved and needed me. I thrived as a mother, recognized and took pride in what I did. My teaching career and my church volunteer work with young people showed me I was actually very capable. I finally realized that I lived an abundant life. There was no scarcity in who I was as a person. Others still had more, seemed better, stronger, smarter, but the comparison no longer mattered. I had stepped into a world of abundance just because I was me. Sharing became easy. Of course, I wanted to reach out to others. My life overflowed with goodness.
 
Now at age seventy-eight, I am again tempted to compare myself to others. With each new body ache, each new loss of ability to function that comes with age, the path to a life of scarcity opens wider. I am grateful for my lifetime of discovering the abundance that surrounds me every day. Though others possess lots of things, that does not detract from my abundant life. I know the goodness that abounds in my family’s love, Tom’s love. I know the value of being able to write and publish books. Choosing to see and welcome the goodness that still surrounds me is a most valuable life lesson.
 
It's never too late to choose abundance, to focus on what you have in things, talents, love, friends and be grateful.
 
Today, I suggest you choose life’s abundance. Count your blessings. The by-products are peace, generosity, satisfaction. – LIFE. What could be better?

Thank you, Fred, for inviting me to your blog site today to talk about my new book, JAGGED FEATHERS! I appreciate your generosity.
 
Two years ago, I fell inside my apartment and fractured some ribs. I cannot describe the pain. Unless you’ve ever experienced it, there is no way to say it where you can understand. It’s impossible to take a deep breath, to move using any of the upper body muscles and God forbid that you have to cough. It was from that experience I was able to write that injury into my book. Nakina was wearing a bulletproof vest when she met the henchmen from the drug cartel. And while the vest would stop a bullet from penetrating, she was left with deep bruising and cracked ribs.
 

​EXCERPT #1:
 
An eternity passed before the double doors opened and a doctor called, “Nakina Bird’s family.”

“That’s me.” Vann reached the doctor in three strides. “How is she?”

“You can be very glad she was wearing a bulletproof vest. She was hit by a high-caliber bullet. The vest was all that saved her. In time, she should fully recover, however, preliminary x-rays show cracked ribs, and bruising from the impact goes deep into her back. Besides that, she has severe lacerations to her face. We’ve given her something for the pain.”

Vann searched the doctor’s face. “Is she conscious?”

“Yes. She’s alert.”

“Will you please tell her I’m here?”

The doctor nodded.


EXCERPT #2:

As hard as she fought it, Nakina let out a groan each time she tried to move even a fraction of an inch. If only she could take a deep breath, but it hurt too badly. The doctor had assured her that broken ribs and deep bruising would cause that kind of excruciating pain. If it were physically possible, she would have jumped for joy when the attending physician informed her that the vest had prevented a bullet from penetrating her back. That had been her biggest fear considering the pain level. 

Disappointed that the doctor had admitted her to the hospital, she tried to be patient.

***
​

​Have you ever suffered broken or fractured ribs? Tell me what happened. It is certainly an experience I never want to have to repeat in life! But it gave me insight into how to write the injury for my character.
 

Vann Noble did his duty. He served his country and returned a shell of a man, wounded inside and out. With a missing limb and battling PTSD, he seeks healing in an isolated cabin outside a small Texas town with a stray dog that sees beyond his master's scars. If only the white rune's magic can bring a happily ever after to a man as broken as Vann.  
 
On the run from hired killers and struggling to make sense of her unexplained deadly mission, Nakina Bird seeks refuge in Vann's cabin. She has secrets. Secrets that can get them all killed.
 
A ticking clock and long odds of living or dying, create jarring risks.
Will these two not only survive, but find an unexpected love along the way? Or, will evil forces win and destroy them both?
 
UNIVERSAL PURCHASE LINK:  https://linktr.ee/Rijanjks
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​#RomanticSuspense #Romance #Military #psychic #PTSD #amputee #DrugCartel #psychic #suspensenovel #DEA #woundedsoldier #natureart #feathers #Dallas #RemoteViewing 

In 1962 I turned ten. For my birthday, Joanie, the girl next door, gave me a copy of R is for Rocket, a book by an author named Ray Bradbury. Like everyone in those days, Joanie knew that rockets were the future, where people would blast off into the black velvet of space and have unbelievable adventures. She also knew I loved rockets. To her it was a given that I would grow up to be an astronaut. Joanie knew all my dreams: we had been friends nearly our whole lives.

I had learned to read at an early age, and my mother partly credited the clunky mahogany box of our TV for this. Long before I started kindergarten I could recognize phrases such as “New and Improved,” “Better Tasting,” “Longer Lasting,” and the names of most of the major cigarette brands.

My favourite books were from Winston Science Fiction (no relation to the cigarette), a 1950s series for teenagers that featured novels by well-known writers and colourful cover art that looked realistic and fantastical at the same time. Although I was several years younger than Winston’s target audience, I read some of these books a dozen times, memorizing their plots and dreaming of the days when I too would fly through outer space.

I began reading my brand-new R is for Rocket book as soon as I got it home. It opened with the introduction of a young man, named Chris like me, who was about to leave home to go off to rocket school. I could hardly wait to see what was going to happen to Chris as he made his way into the space corps.

The second chapter shifted settings. There was no mention of Chris, only a conversation between two people whose son is taking off on a spaceship that evening. I was confused. Chris didn’t have two parents in the first chapter, just a mother. The third chapter was set in a lighthouse, a story told by the young lighthouse keeper’s assistant as they are attacked by a sea monster. Well, I thought, the young man must be Chris, but what was he doing in a lighthouse? What had happened to his rocket career? Maybe he was stranded on some watery planet, like Venus.

As I moved through the fourth chapter, a light was beginning to glow. I wasn’t reading just one story: each chapter was actually a totally different one. I would never find out what had happened to Chris. It felt like Mr. Bradbury had been playing some kind of trick on me. What kind of author would make me have to learn about new characters and situations just when I was getting to know the old ones?

By the time I finished a time-travel tale called “A Sound of Thunder,” I understood: each story was like a whole book, but with the extra stuff taken out. It was as if the author had removed the vastness of space between the stars, leaving only the densely packed points of light.

Short stories are a view from a train window as you race by – no backstory or future; only what you see. They can end with an answer or a question. Or they can just end. The settings from the previous stories stay in your mind but are never again as immediate or insistent as the new ones that are taking their place.

I read as many of Ray Bradbury’s books as I could find, although I was not ready for much of what he wrote. After I figured out that the plots in the R is for Rocket stories were all separate, I encountered a group of stories that were linked together in The Martian Chronicles. The book is not quite a novel, but not quite a short-story collection. Reading this as a teenager I found it hard to understand the structure. I would have to be much older before that was possible.

Before I realized that it was also the structure of a life.

Do we really wish for a single plotline to last all our lives? Is it only children who believe in such continuity, or do we carry this longing through to adulthood? Surely things like happiness, adventure and heartbreak do not flow together in an unbroken stream but can flash by in disparate instances that exist for a moment and are gone. Love itself would have a hard time making a case for absolute constancy. What if life is a succession of scenes, to be absorbed by us, each one in its own time? Maybe at some point we will find a key to link them into a coherent plot. Maybe not.

Shortly after Joanie gave me the R Is for Rocket, my parents told me that we were moving away. I was devastated. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else or going to any other school or having any other friends. I had been raised, taught, and protected by the community that surrounded me, and everything I knew and valued came from inside it. I did not want to leave.

But leave I did, and although in later years Joanie and I nodded at each other occasionally in the halls at high school, our childhood friendship did not survive. My adolescence was ragged and disappointing, and it took me down paths that led away from anything I could have imagined. Unlike the fictional Chris, I never got to rocket school.

And my friendship with Joanie became a strand of narrative woven somewhere into my collection. Those stories would not play out as a novel with one narrative arc, but as a cat’s cradle of plotlines and settings, each with new settings and characters to learn. Not a short story collection, not a novel, but something in between. 
​

My publishing dream came true! After many years of hard work.
 
Once I sent off the version to my publisher for final edits, though, I felt a bit lost. This surprised me. Shouldn’t I be grateful for the break? Shouldn’t I focus on my art? Teaching? Landscape design business? But no, there was something missing in my daily routine. While I continued to create guest blog posts about writing, publishing, and book promotion challenges, I still missed writing and crafting an actual book. Could I write another book? If I did, what would it be about? The big question. I decided to dig out my journals again, not the journals that were inspirations for my memoir, Summers of Fire, but the ones I wrote prior to that career. Maybe there was something in them…
 
I started reading and found I couldn’t stop. I pored through four years. That done, I thought: Are these worthy of another book? If so, where do I start? There’s so much here to write about.
 
I decided to start where it all began: The life-changing cross-country move to Arizona.
 
First things first, though. I wanted to be more organized this time. With my first book, I didn’t pay close attention to chronology, thinking it wouldn’t matter much. Boy, was I wrong! As that book progressed, frustrating loop holes and discrepancies appeared. What a pain to fix. Determined to get it right with this second book, I first transcribed all of my journal entries that seemed pivotal or important. Notes at hand, I began to write.
 
I read at one point that the best way to write a first draft is to not edit along the way. That was my plan…but of course I strayed. Often. However, I did stick with it. I had the ending written early (one of those late night revelations), and I wrote to meet that end.
 
I thought for sure that I wouldn’t need to edit that much…after all, I’d done the right things. I’m not naïve by any means; I know that writing is not easy. In fact, if done correctly, reaching a publishing goal can feel impossible. I edited. And edited. Several times. That was plenty, wasn’t it? Silly me. My first round with beta readers let me know book two was going to be much more complicated and difficult than I’d planned. But hey, challenge met and accepted.
 
Now that my publisher has released my second book, I’m working on a third. I have all of my expectations in check. This will not be easier, require fewer revisions, nor will it get done quicker. It will, just like any work of art, and a book IS a work of art, take as long as it takes.
 
I respect those authors who churn out multiple books during their writing career. I have also come to realize that almost anyone can write lots of books, but few can write lots of good books. My goal is not to write lots of good books. I’m content to write three.
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Blog address: https://summersoffirebook.blogspot.com/
 
Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/LindaStraderauthor
 
Amazon US: Summers of Fire: A Memoir of Adventure, Love, and Courage
                        Uprooted: A New Life in the Arizona Sun
Amazon UK: Summers of Fire: A Memoir of Adventure, Love, and Courage
                        Uprooted: A New Life in the Arizona Sun
Barnes and Noble: Summers of Fire: A Memoir of Adventure, Love, and Courage
                        Uprooted: A New Life in the Arizona Sun
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