In a recent newsletter, I shared photos of some of the odd and unusual things I have discovered on my travels.
Here are some of what I shared.
ROUND BARN. I saw this beautiful barn from a distance. I don’t remember where it was. Somewhere in Montana or the Dakotas? Anyone know?
WHEEL MUSEUM. I don’t remember where this was. If anyone can tell me, I’d appreciate it. Lots of BIG wheels on display. Again in Montana or the Dakotas.
BONE GRINDER. Used to grind buffalo bones. The powder was used as fertilizer. I saw this at the Kootenay Brown museum at Pincher Creek, Alberta. A great museum to visit.
There were more in my newsletter. If you don’t get it, you can sign up by clicking the button at the top left of this page. You also get a free book offer when you sign up. In my newsletter, I send out information about new releases and share some fun and interesting tidbits about me and my life.
New Releases
It isn’t often that it happens but I had two books come out on May 1.
Josie is one of the Kinsley’s adopted daughters. She was twelve when she was adopted so came with her own history. One she doesn’t want anyone to know.
I have 10 adopted children. I’m sure many people believe that love is all that is needed to help and heal these children but unfortunately, it is not. Yes, love is important but children who are older when their homes are shattered, as Josie is, need tools to deal with their past. Even Walker, though he has not lost his family, has traumatic things in his past to confront. I have tried to portray this realistically without dwelling on the angst. If I can summarize it succinctly I would use the words of one of the characters in the story, a Mr. Jonathan Bates: Sometimes we hold things back from God’s power. Things like unforgiveness and bitterness. Like blame and shame. Like an uncertain future, failing health, the pain of loss. We either want to cling to them or we don’t think God can fix them. Folks, I’m here to tell you, there isn’t anything God can’t help you with if you let Him.
I’m not trying to say it’s easy to forgive or it’s over and done with if a person chooses to, but one needs to let go of some of the things of the past in order to move forward. You can’t write a new chapter while still reading the old one so the saying goes.
This is the last story in the Glory, Montana: The Preacher’s Daughters series. But it isn’t the end of the Kinsley family. A new series–Glory, Montana: The Cowboys will be coming soon.
You can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NTYVSKN
The other book is a novella collection with three other authors–very talented ones. This series is about four mail-order brides for whom things go very badly wrong. I think you will enjoy this collection.
My contribution is Romancing the Rancher. It takes place in Broken Arrow, Montana in 1886.
Zach has his hands full with threats to his ranch, a rebellious younger sister and a father who wanders away and can’t remember how to get home. The last thing he needs is a young woman showing up with a toddler niece on her hip informing him that he has agreed to marry her. First he heard of it.
Amelia was counting on the mail-order marriage to give herself and little Daisy a home. Zach isn’t the least bit welcoming, saying he has no idea who she is. But he agrees to let her run his home until she can find another man willing to marry her. He soon finds himself counting on her help.
But who has written the letters pretending to be him? Will another man come along wanting to marry Amelia? Will these two people see what’s right in front of them, that they belong together?
This was a fun story to write. I hope it is a fun story to read. You can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Mail-Order-Mishaps-Brides-Adapt-Marriage-ebook/dp/B07HYLXXKF
I hope you enjoy both these books. Please feel free to leave a review on Amazon.
For Love Of Books
I have loved books all my life. I remember going to the old-fashioned library in our small town…oiled floors, big pot-bellied stove, musty-dusty smell. I loved roaming the rows and rows of books. Just seeing them filled me with excitement.
I haven’t changed much except now I visit modern, clean libraries. I laugh when I am traveling with a certain good friend. She knows where all the best women’s-wear shops are in all the towns around us. I know where the library is.
Blogs and pictures about books about books are equally fascinating. A still life with books is so much better than a still life with fruit (in my opinion). If I had room I would have still lifes with books all over my house.
Visiting Shakespeare and Co. in Paris was an overload to my book senses.
Every little nook and cranny was crowded with books from floor to ceiling.
But there can’t be too many books.
Yes, people are now reading them on all sorts of hand-held devises but that will never replace the sheer impact and pleasure of shelved books.
“A 
house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.” Horace Mann
So go enjoy your books. Read them, shelf them, surround yourself with them.
New Titles
I have some new books out.
Renewing Love is the third The Preacher’s Daughters story. Cole Carter had loved Eve, but knew she wouldn’t choose him over her family. When she arrives to help with his mother and aunt, he is forced to accept her help temporarily. Only she is even more beautiful and desirable then she was two years ago and brings light and joy to his home. Eve spends much time tending the garden on the ranch where she had gone to work. From her place in the garden, she sees something mysterious. What is it? You can find out by reading her story. Available now.
A Love to Have and Hold, the fourth story in The Preacher’s Daughters series releases May 1. Josie Kinsley was adopted when she was twelve. There are things in her past she doesn’t want anyone to know, things that drive her to seek security. She only wants to be a self-sufficient, independent young woman. She refuses the interest of the many cowboys who enter the home.
Walker Jones’s family was broken up when he was a kid. He has no use for secrets. He ends up at the Kinsley home when he is robbed and pistol whipped. He overhears Josie telling someone that if she ever married, it would not be a homeless, penniless cowboy. Which is exactly what he is. And the very reason a former love interest refused him.
Both Josie and Walker know the other person is not what they need. Walker senses Josie harbors a secret. And yet, as they spend time together, he is attracted to her strong spirit and her loyalty to her adopted family. Josie sees in him a man who is hard working, kind, and fun to be with. But he is a wanderer and she wants a permanent home.
Will the truth destroy their growing affection or will they learn that it is not the past that matters but what the future promises? Available for preorder now.
This is the last of The Preacher’s Daughters but not the last of stories in the Glory, Montana series. Watched for more titles in the coming months.
Last but not least, I have a novella in the collection Mail-Order Mishaps. A real book. lol.
Here is a review by an early reader:
Great book about using the situations God puts you in for good 🙂
The fisrt story in this book is about a bride who steps off the trail and finds her soon to be husband in jail. Definitely a mishap. I loved how the lead character wasn’t afraid to help and go out of her comfort zone.
The second book is one of my favorite book in the series. Its about a young couple set upon by a matchmaker. A wonderful about healing families.
The third book is about a bride who was tricked and had to make her way again, a great story.
Finally the forth book, what a lovely way to end a series!!! A fiery Irish red head who needs to escape her situation and uses the opportunity God gave her to escape. When she gets there she meets a Swedish man …. so cool.
I would highly recommend reading this book 🙂
This book releases May 1 but is available for preorder. https://tinyurl.com/y2995p2t
Will It Never End?
I was going to complain about all the things crowding my life. But I hate to complain. Wait. That isn’t true. I enjoy complaining but I have been trying for years–okay decades. And if I was to live as long as Methuselah, I would say centuries, to learn to count my blessings. Because I believe we daily face the choice whether to dwell on the negative or accent the positive. Truly, dwelling on the negative makes us unhappy inside and the kind of people others don’t enjoy being around. Focusing on the positive fills our lives with joy.
So here are a few of the things that are good in my life. I have not posted pictures of family, grandchildren or friends because I do not have their permission, but they are at the top of my list.
This is only a few of the many things that bless my life. I’d rather enjoy them then dwell on the things that I don’t enjoy.
This song helps me remember what I need to focus on.
When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
Refrain:
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God has done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
*Count your many blessings, see what God has done.
It’s Hard Work
My arms hurt. My shoulder complains every time I move it. My neck is sore. I could go on and on about my aches and pains. And no, it’s not from gardening. I’ve been putting in long days at the computer writing.
I am spewing out a first draft which means long hours of writing, writing, writing. Making notes of things I have to add or change. Hoping the story works in the end. Fearing it won’t. About 90% of the time it seems to. The other ten percent? That’s getting to the end and saying, oh, that’s what’s it’s about. Now to go back to the start and make the story about that.
It’s hard work. In fact, gardening might be easier.
Or as I often say on weary days, the only thing worse than writing, is not writing.
Spring is Sprung
I’m sure we’ve all said the little ditty: Spring is sprung, the grass is riz. I wonder where the birdies is.
I’ve heard variations of the last line from: I wonder where the flowers is to Where last year’s reckless drivers is.
I always thought it was something carelessly spoken that became popular like the saying: Success is getting up one more time than you fall down.
Turns out it’s really a poem. Some credit Ogden Nash with penning the poem though a search in Google says it was written by a British-Irish comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor named Spike Milligan.
Here it is in all its glory.
Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
I wonder where the birdie is
They say the bird is on the wing
But that’s absurd
The wing is on the bird
We don’t have flowers yet but spring is here. Officially, according to the calendar. I prefer to check out my window or on my walk and see and hear the water running, the fields showing through the snow and the sound and sight of geese.
Happy Spring. Enjoy.
Odd and unusual finds while researching
Research had led me on some interesting trips and I have found unexpected, interesting and even, odd things. I thought I’d share a few with you.
THE OKOTOKS ERRATIC is a 16,500-tonne boulder that lies on the otherwise flat, relatively featureless, surface of the Canadian Prairies in Alberta. Left behind by the ice age. You probably can’t see it, but a young woman is sitting on the rock farthest to the left.
CAPS ON THE FENCE. I have no idea why. Just one of the many odd and unusual things I have seen. It went on for a long ways. I have also seen cowboy boots hanging on fence posts. Lots of boots. Gave a whole new meaning to Boot Hill.
EAGLES OF LIBBY MONTANA
There are something like 54 eagle statues in the town ranging in size from a 6 ft. wing span to several over 25 ft. wing tip to wing tip.
TOPSY TURVY DOLL. Turn the doll upside down to reveal a different doll. Rich girl/poor girl. That sort of thing. Two for the price of one. Double the pleasure, double the fun. A reader told me she had a topsy-turvy doll that was Red Riding Hood on one side, and the big bad wolf on the other. That sounds like fun.
ROSS CREEK CEDARS. Near Libby, Montana. Some 8′ in diameter and 175′ tall. Some have been here since before Columbus set sail for the new world. Look closely and you can see a man in a wheelchair in the middle of the photo.
A FUNNY RUMOR. It’s fun to find touches of humor in my travels. No offense meant to anyone. It’s just for fun.
I Like Winter???
I like winter. I really do. Mostly. I like cocooning at home, hunkering down in my office and writing. I like walking in the snow and cold (so long as it isn’t too cold and that’s relative. What was too cold a few months ago is not so bad today). I like not having a lot of gardening and yard work to do though I am at the place that I looking forward to it. I enjoy having time to catch up on visits with friends and good books.
This week we had a heavy snowfall. About 12″. Stunningly beautiful. But deep. I couldn’t walk on the road until a vehicle went by and broke a trail. It continues to look nice. But spring will be glorious with bright flowers and green grass.
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
? John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Winter! Wow!
It’s been a brutal Feb. and it continues into March. The weather people are saying it was the 4th coldest Feb. on record. What? Wait. You mean there were three colder Feb.? Brr. Many days it’s been too cold to go out for a walk. Even the cat, who loves being outdoors, barely sticks his nose out. He’s getting bored. So bored he’s making up games.
He’s found a paper clip in the box and fishes it out, drops in on the shelf, chases it around a bit them puts in back in the box and repeats it. Oh, and he sits in front of my office window watching the birds at the feeder and making eager sounds.
Speaking of birds, the most active in the cold weather is the tiny little chickadees.
Every time I see them out there, I am amazed. How do they survive such cold temperatures?
It’s less than three weeks until spring officially arrives. Would someone please notify winter?