Books I'm Grateful I Read Giveaway Hop 2015

Books have been an important part of my life so it is difficult to pick a few and say these are the books I'm grateful I read. Instead, let me list some of my favorite authors along with links to their Amazon page.

James Michener

Jan Karon

Dee Henderson

If your name is selected, my gift to you will be your choice of one book (paperback or Kindle edition) written by one of these three authors.

Three winners will be selected randomly by Rafflecopter. You may enter the drawing more than once. See the following for details.

Ra Rafflecopter giveaway R

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Making Dreams Come True – Part 1

On a recent Sunday morning, my pastor talked about the gap between where we are and where we want to be in our spiritual journey, and how we usually know what needs to be done to close the gap. However, more often than not, we fail to take the required action. Since this sermon followed a sermon on giving, I suspect the pastor was sneaking in another stewardship talk to get us to give more. That is, close the gap between what we think we should give and what we actually give. But, I'm just guessing. He didn't mention giving at all. In fact I'm not sure what he said next because I couldn't get my mind off the idea of taking action to close the gap. I realized this idea could apply to most life situations, such as jobs, marriage, parenting, and all aspects of life. This reminded me of a time in my life when I was nudged by another sermon to take action and do what I'd always dreamed of doing.

My dream was to write a novel.

I did more than dream.  I started two novels back in the 1960's. One about my experience in the Marines Corps and the other about a bookmobile librarian who traveled around town helping people. I wrote five or six chapters of the first one and a chapter or two of the second one. At the time, however, I was too busy raising kids and working to take do much more.

Many times over the years I'd get the writing bug and try again. I did get a short story published as well as a non-fiction computer book along with a bunch of non-fiction articles. But the novel idea eluded me to the point where I decided to wait until I retired to accomplish that dream.

Still too busy.

That didn't work. After retiring from my full time job with the Austin Fire Department in 2001, I continued to work there part time for a couple of years. I also taught part time at the Austin Community College, sang in the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus, and volunteered too much at church and other non-profit organizations.

About this time, I had read most of the Christian fiction by Jan Karon and could see how my bookmobile novel idea could work. Jan Karon's Mitford Series books were about a sixty year-old Episcopal priest in a small town, while my story was about a sixty-five year-old librarian in a small bookmobile. Also, I saw an increased interest in Christian fiction. Readers were looking for good, clean novels.

It was too late.

Even so, I did nothing about it. I even started telling myself it was too late. I had waited too long. I was too old.

Then, one Sunday morning my pastor, said something like this, "Trust God with your dreams and he will help you achieve them."

I felt strange, as if God was talking to me about the bookmobile novel. I had this life-time dream and I had given up on it and now it was so clear to me that I could do it, with God's help.

I believe what my pastor said came from Psalm 37: 4. "Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart." I'd heard this before, but it had never been clear to me that it could mean achieving dreams.

I didn't have to do it alone.

The only thing that had changed was that I now knew I wasn't alone. I had God on my side to help me achieve my dream. To remind myself of that, I wrote a prayer which I printed and taped to my computer monitor.

Dear Lord, be my source of inspiration. Give me the words you want the world to hear. Help me create the story and the characters to convey your message in such a way as to be desirable to the business world of publishers. Guide my hands and stay in my mind and my heart while I write and while I edit.

Well, it wasn't as easy as that. In the next post, I'll tell you what happened next.

Mitford on Wheels

While reading Jan Karon's books, I fell in love with Mitford, a fictitious small town in North Carolina with a large number of interesting characters. I created a database of the characters while reading the second book in the series and tried to keep it up to date as I read one book after another. I finally gave up when the number of characters got into the hundreds, primarily because stopping to make notes was taking away from the enjoyment of reading. If you look on Jan Karon's website you'll find someone has made a list of characters in several of the books.

Where Love Once Lived is set in Austin, Texas with a 2008 population of more than 750,000 people, while Holly Springs, North Carolina, the city some say Mitford is based on, had fewer than 10,000 citizens at the time Jan Karon was creating Mitford. The Austin from my memories had a population around 150,000 which is still much larger than Mitford.

The characters in Where Love Once Lived get outside the confines of the mobile library frequently, but when needed, I use the bookmobile to limit the size of the locale. Friends meet on the bookmobile, and many of the most serious conversations take place there. It's used to chauffer the mayor in one scene. Children find the support of caring adults there. Adults get their dreams fulfilled. One of the highlights is when a young couple gets married on the bookmobile while parked at the base of Mount Bonnell. There's a chase scene involving the bulky vehicle which is more humorous than exciting, especially when it flies over Austin's traffic calmers. Books fall from the shelves, helping solve a crime. I call my book Mitford on wheels.

Once you've read the book, tell me what you think about this approach of using the bookmobile to make the surroundings smaller.

BOOK REVIEW: In the Company of Others by Jan Karon

I have to tell you up front Jan Karon is my favorite author. I've read all her books and loved all but one. That said, I'll try to give as honest a review as possible.

In the Company of Others is the second book in the Father Tim series, the first being Home to Holly Springs. These two books vary from Karon's nine books in the Mitford Books series only in location and supporting characters. Father Tim is the main character in both series, but the Father Tim books are set outside of Mitford.

This book takes place in the town of Sligo, Ireland where Father Tim takes his wife Cynthia to show her where he had visited ten years earlier with his cousin Walter and Walter's wife Katherine, before Tim and Cynthia were married. Throughout the book, there are references and communication with family and friends back home and Mitford fans will feel comfortable with that.

What struck me throughout was how easily Father Tim slipped into the hearts of the Sligo people. Just as he did in Mitford, he spotted problems and found ways to solve them. Cynthia's foot is injured and she is unable to get around easily, leaving Father Tim to help the family members of the bed and breakfast where they are staying as well as others. Of course, Cynthia assists in handing out love and care from the bed and breakfast.

The author uses a book-within-a-book approach here that I found quite effective. Father Tim and Cynthia find a handwritten journal written by a doctor who had lived in 1860's and read them since Cynthia is limited in what she could do. What amazed me was the research that must have gone into writing the 1860's story to make it historical correct.

This book will hold your interest from beginning to end, and when it does end, you'll want to know when the next book in the series will be ready. I highly recommend it.

Read What You Write

6/29/11 -- I gave a talk last month and was asked to tell about writing my first novel, Where Love Once Lived. My college degrees are in mathematics and computer science, so all I could do was tell them about my experience. I must admit I went through a long learning curve for this book, taking more than six years to go from a serious first draft to a completed book.

Before I dissuade you from writing a novel yourself, let me add that I finished my second book in less than a year. The Vengeance Squad is not for sale yet, but all that's left are a few mechanical steps.

I prepared a two-page handout for the talk I gave last month and I'll send you a copy if you email me a request (sidfrost@suddenlink.net). However, two pages only allows for the highlights. What I want to do today and in future articles is to fill in the list with more details. Today, we'll begin with step one:

Read the type of novel you want to write.

I confess this is simplistic, but it helped me when I started and it may help you. Especially if your formal training is not in creative writing. This simple statement says to study the competition. Read books similar to what you want to write and analyze their construction. I bet you are already reading such books anyway. If not, perhaps you need to consider writing a different book.

This doesn't mean you can't enjoy reading other types of books. I read a lot of different books. However, it was Jan Karon's Mitford series that made me think Where Love Once Lived could be a book. All I had at the time was a germ of an idea. I didn't know how to get started writing a novel, but I read all the books in the series, and examined several in detail noting the length of each book. I looked at Amazon.com to find books in the same category as the Mitford books.

At Home in Mitford, for example, is in two categories:

Books > Literature & Fiction

Books > Religion & Spirituality > Fiction

From the Amazon.com page, clicking on Fiction in the second item above will take you to a list of all books in that category. When I did so while preparing this article, this particular list contained 21,669 books. To make the list valuable to you. Change the order from bestselling to publication date by using the pull-down menu on the top right, then review a page of two of the what's being published now in your category. You'll see what's popular, who's publishing what, as well as what's coming soon.

I used one of Jan Karon's books for this example. To do this for any book, go to the book's Amazon page and scroll down near the bottom of the page and look for this header: Look for Similar Items by Category.

As I mentioned in another blog article, picking the right categories can sell books.  See: http://christianbookmobile.blogspot.com/2011/06/where-love-once-lived-kindle-top-rated.html.

In my case, I studied several Christian novels to learn to write. As I learned more about the craft from taking classes, I had to stop reading the Jan Karon books because the point of view was different from what I was doing. I'll tell you more about taking classes in a future step. The next step in my a two-page handout is:

Study genres and subgenres. Determine which one best suits the story you have in mind.

Join me for that discussion next.

My Book Is In the Largest Bookstore in Texas

Where Love Once Lived is now on the shelves of BookPeople, the largest bookstore in Texas.

BookPeople opened in Austin in 1970, and was named Best Bookstore in the United States in 2005 by Publishers Weekly. Many famous authors include BookPeople in their book-signing tours. Laura Bush was there recently and Jimmy Carter will be signing his latest book at BookPeople on October 29, 2010. They’re selling tickets to the Carter event for crowd control.

Even with their national fame, BookPeople has a special place on its shelves for local authors. Just inside the front door, on the way to the coffee shop, there is a shelf on the left with a sign that says Texas Authors. There are some famous names there, including one of my favorites, Susan Wittig Albert. Five of my books are in the same shelf. Well, hopefully, there are fewer now. My friend Rollo Newsom has written a community comment card for this shelf.

You’ll find five more copies of Where Love Once Lived on the second floor in the inspiration section right along with Jan Karon’s books. I picked that shelf because of Karon, and added a community comment card with quotes from Sandy Althaus’ review.

So what, you’re thinking. Bookstores sell books. They stock books. That’s what they do.

Well, most don’t stock print-on-demand (POD) books like mine. The big chain bookstores won’t stock Where Love Once Lived. They’ll sell it to you and get one for you, but only if you pay in advance and wait a week.

BookPeople in Austin and Hill Country Bookstore in Georgetown both stock my book because on their consignment programs. I furnish the books and they sell them. I end up making a little less than books sold on Amazon.com, but not by much. Also, I’m responsible for costs due to theft or damage.

Is this a reason to avoid publishing POD books? I don’t know yet. With a new book almost ready to pitch, I wish I knew. I’ll be looking at the pros and cons of self publishing and traditional publishing and reporting my findings to you in a future post. If you have knowledge about it, please comment here.

Book Press Releases -- Does Anyone Read Them?

The next step in the marketing of Where Love Once Lived is to prepare and distribute press releases announcing the book. I filled out an online questionnaire from CreateSpace that asked for information needed for the press releases. I won't give my answers here since that would be too lengthy, but here are the questions. I have added some comments however.

Are you using a name other than your own for publication? If so, please provide.

What is the full title of your work?*

E-mail Address* (This is the e-mail address that will be used in the press release as a method of contact for the media.)

Phone Number (This will be used in the press release as an alternate method of contact for the media.)

Website (If you have a website, please provide us with it and we will make sure to include this in the release)

Your city and state

Note: Although I live in Georgetown, Texas now, I decided to use Austin, Texas on the press releases. This is because more people know Austin than Georgetown and because the book is set in Austin.

Biography* (The biography provides information to help establish your credibility or further connect you with your audience. Please provide us with some biographical information, such as education and career information, family status, awards you have won, and/or any qualifications that could establish expert status. NOTE: Responsible journalists may choose to verify all members' facts before publishing biographical information).

Who is your target audience?

This is what I said: This book is about Christians living, making mistakes, and growing from those mistakes. I tried not to make it preachy, and didn't align it with a particular denomination. I suspect it would appeal to a more mature audience because the protagonists are in their fifties. However, several younger friends have read the manuscript and said they enjoyed it. I aimed for the same people who read Jan Karon's Mitford series.

Please provide a brief synopsis of your work.

What is your theme and primary message?

Here is what I answered: With God's help, it's never too late to find happiness.

Tell us about the inspiration for your work.

Note: Surprisingly, there was a lot to be said about the inspiration for Where Love Once Lived starting with the idea for a bookmobile story that came to me while driving one back in 1960's to a sermon I heard in 2004 from my pastor, Jeanie Stanley.

Why do you think your work is newsworthy?* (Can you relate your work to any current events? What makes your work different than others on the market)?

Note: Here I told about the interracial aspects of the novel.

Provide any additional information you want us to consider for your press release (i.e. reviews, awards, etc.). (NOTE: Responsible journalists may choose to verify all facts before publishing this information).

Note: Here, I listed the awards won by Where Love Once Lived in manuscript contests plus some other things about me. CreateSpace called and said they would have to verify the contest wins. They wanted me to send them a photo of the certificates. However, I already had them on my website, so they viewed them as we talked on the phone. Here they are if you want to see them: http://sidneywfrost.com/news.htm.

I started this posting by asking does anyone even read press releases anymore. I don't know, but CreateSpace guarantees the information will be sent to more than a thousand outlets. That's to happen in 3 to 4 weeks. I guess we'll see what happens.

The Bookmobile Series

Many years ago, while a student at the University of Texas, my friend Rollo Newsom helped me get a job as a bookmobile driver at the Austin Public Library. Although I was assigned to work with several librarians, one of my favorites was a lot like Liz in Where Love Once Lived. She was constantly doing more for the patrons than a librarian was expected to do. I started writing a book about my experiences that was something like Suds in Your Eye by Mary Lasswell. I never finished that book which was more of a series of episodes rather than a novel.

When I started writing Where Love Once Lived, I thought of Jan Karon's Mitford and decided to use a bookmobile to make the locale in my book smaller and more manageable than all of Austin, Texas. As it turned out, one third of the scenes take place on the bookmobile. So, I learned to love that vehicle and have included it in my next book and I have a plan for a third and fourth book that includes the bookmobile. Although there are some crossover of characters, the books are all independent.

I told you some about my next book, Vengeance is Mine, in previous posts, but I haven't mentioned it includes a bookmobile. Liz is the crossover character and she is now the head librarian. The city has now bought its own bookmobile, so, when Chris and Tex's van is damaged by gunfire received when they visit El Paso, Liz offers them the use of Brian's bookmobile for the trip to Galveston. It is wheelchair ready and has a Internet connection. When Liz travels to Galveston to bail them out of jail, she jumps in the bookmobile for the ride back to Austin. Before they leave Galveston, they learn the killers are in Houston. Chris encourages Liz to fly home, but she insists on going with them. So the bookmobile is back in action, with Liz aboard.

Let me know what you think about this use of a bookmobile. Many of my friends don't understand it, but I like it.

Older Characters as Leads

I used to think the lead character in a novel had to be no older than thirty-five. At least that is the way it seemed based on the books I read. I often wondered how those kids got to be so wise. Then, when Jan Karon came out with the Mitford series novels, her main character, Fr. Timothy Kavanaugh, an Episcopal priest was sixty and single. Eventually, he falls in love and gets married in a future book. In the last book I read, Fr. Tim was seventy. There is another Fr. Tim book coming soon and I'm anxious to see how old he is now. Jan Karon's book sales have not been shabby so I suspect there are a lot of readers who like stories about older people.

In Where Love Once Lived, sixty-five year old Liz is bugging Brian about why he quit going to church. Here's what happens as he tries to change the subject:

“I’m going to tell you about that one day, but, right now, I need to concentrate on getting us to Hill Country on time. Why don’t you tell me why you have a picture of Big Ben on the bulletin board back there?” That would perk her up and keep her from asking him questions for a while longer.

Liz nodded back to where the bulletin board was and smiled. “Didn’t I tell you about that? That’s my goal trip.”

“Goal trip?”

“Sure. If you set a goal and visualize yourself achieving that goal, then you will.”

“It’s that simple, huh?”

Brian had a goal. He wanted to hold Karen in his arms for the rest of his life. That goal was easy to visualize.

Liz’s voice boomed back to normal. “It works. There’s scientific proof. I read about it down at the library. I’ll find that story and show you, if you want.”

“Okay, I believe you.” he said. “Why Big Ben?”

“At my age and with my meager income, I’ll probably only make one big trip in my life. So I picked England. That photo of Big Ben is a reminder of where I’m going someday. It’s massive and strong-looking, and it’s a symbol of England.”

“Great idea. I’m sure you’ll make that trip someday.”

What would Karen think if she saw her picture on the bookmobile bulletin board right up next to Big Ben? Brian’s goal. She’d probably think he was crazy. Liz would understand.

“I know,” she said. “I already have my passport. Although, I must say, I cried when I saw the photo of that old lady on it. I’d hoped to travel as a younger person, but it wasn’t to be.” She grinned so big her cheeks pushed up to her eyes, but he could see the regret in her face.

In Elizabeth Berg's The Last Time I Saw You, one of the characters talked about her surprise when she looked in the mirror and realized she had aged. She had not thought of herself differently until it was time to go to her fortieth high school reunion. All the characters in the story were in their late fifties and it was good reading.

I'm sure you can think of many examples of older main characters in novels, and I'm sure there are many successful ones. However, the main character in my next book is thirty-one, just in case.

2010 Christy Awards -- Part 1

If you like Christian Fiction, you'll love the winners of the Christy Award. Actually, I think you'll like all the books nominated for the award.

The Christy Award is named after the Catherine Marshall novel Christy to recognize novels and novelists of Christian Fiction. Each year, publishers are invited to submit nominations in several genres of books they have published during the previous year which they feel should be honored. A panel of seven judges composed of librarians, reviewers, scholars, and critics, not associated with a publishing company, then evaluates each category of novels. See: http://www.christyawards.com/publishers.html for a list of participating publishers.

The first award was in 2000 and the winners were:

Contemporary: A New Song by Jan Karon (Viking Press)
Futuristic: By Dawn's Early Light by Grant R. Jeffrey and Angela Hunt (Word Publishing)
International Historical: Out of the Red Shadow by Anne de Graaf (Bethany House Publishers)
North American Historical: The Meeting Place by Janette Oke & T. Davis Bunn (Bethany House Publishers)
Romance: Whispers from Yesterday by Robin Lee Hatcher (WaterBrook Press)
Suspense: Final Witness by James Scott Bell (Broadman & Holman Publishers)

The nominees and winners for 2000 through 2009 can be found here: http://www.christyawards.com/.

Mitford on Wheels

While reading Jan Karon's books, I fell in love with Mitford, a fictitious small town in North Carolina with a large number of interesting characters. I created a database of the characters while reading the second book in the series and tried to keep it up to date as I read one book after another. I finally gave up when the number of characters got into the hundreds, primarily because stopping to make notes was taking away from the enjoyment of reading. If you look on Jan Karon's website you'll find someone has made a list of characters in several of the books.

Where Love Once Lived is set in Austin, Texas with a 2008 population of more than 750,000 people, while Holly Springs, North Carolina, the city some say Mitford is based on, had fewer than 10,000 citizens at the time Jan Karon was creating Mitford. The Austin from my memories had a population around 150,000 which is still much larger than Mitford.

The characters in Where Love Once Lived get outside the confines of the mobile library frequently, but when needed, I use the bookmobile to limit the size of the locale. Friends meet on the bookmobile, and many of the most serious conversations take place there. It's used to chauffer the mayor in one scene. Children find the support of caring adults there. Adults get their dreams fulfilled. One of the highlights is when a young couple gets married on the bookmobile while parked at the base of Mount Bonnell. There's a chase scene involving the bulky vehicle which is more humorous than exciting, especially when it flies over Austin's traffic calmers. Books fall from the shelves, helping solve a crime. I call my book Mitford on wheels.

Once you've read the book, tell me what you think about this approach of using the bookmobile to make the surroundings smaller.

Is Editing Ever Finished?

I received the edited manuscript of Where Love Once Lived from CreateSpace yesterday, and, after a quick review, am pleased with the results. However, several comments from the copyeditor alarmed me some. First, she said she had read little Christian fiction and had not read any of Jan Karon's books. She also referred to the point of view as omniscient when I worked hard to write in either Brian's or Karen's point of view.

Wouldn't you think CreateSpace would find an editor more familiar with your genre? Maybe it doesn't matter what the subject is when it comes to good grammar and consistency. So far, the corrections and comments look good. I'll let you know more later as I make the suggested changes. A real plus is that the copyeditor also pointed out places in the manuscript where she, as the reader, had problems with the flow of the story. Most of these continuity problems were introduced during previous edits and can easily be fixed. I just hope I don't create more grammatical errors with the changes I make. Yikes! Will I ever finish writing this book?

The copyeditor suggested including a scene I had cut based on a reading by White Rose Publishing. More on that later. Now I wonder if I should put the scene back in.

How about you? Have you spent months or years editing only to find there is more to do? Or you, dear reader, have you spotted grammatical errors and inconsistencies in published books?
I have.