I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for reading my work. It’s been a good thing to share my writing with you and others . Otherwise it would be stuck in notebooks. And since publishing The River Caught Sunlight, I have found a new confidence. Sometimes dreams do live, better, grittier than we imagined. Sometimes those dreams staying small, not exploding into bestsellerdom, is good. Though I’m very pleased to be writing biweekly perspectives for WNIJ, our local public radio station. (There’s a new one up today.) I take much comfort in the idea that the Kingdom of God is about hidden, small work–the grain of mustard that grows into a big plant.
I’ve set this up so my blogs will come to your email and I may also write the occasional newsletter to catch you up on my life. I am trying to post once a week, which will include the WNIJ perspectives. I write about the horses and our other animals, our ground, the sky, my walk with Bruce, and I muse about spirituality.
Since I am working out my salvation with fear and trembling, maybe also with joy and laughter, you may find some of my musings push the envelope. I’ve come to understand there’s something to Matthew Fox’s idea of original blessing that is healing the damage “original sin” has inflicted since I was a toddler. I will try to limit myself to half a grand in words but I tend to settle in and write essays that run to a grand. I know you are busy, but I hope you find my words wise and useful.
If you’d like to continue to read my work on a regular basis you don’t need to do anything. If you don’t, feel free to unsubscribe–no hard feelings. (The unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this letter). If you’re reading this through Facebook or Twitter, you’ll need to fill out the box that will appear in the lower right hand corner. I’d love to have you read my work and join my community.
And, and, if you haven’t bought my novel, I hope you consider buying and reading it. It’s available in both print and ebook editions. And I’ve got several sequels in manuscript and a couple prequels. Since I’ve retired, I hope to get to working on those when I settle in.
Here’s a little of The River Caught Sunlight‘s story:
About a year ago, The River Caught Sunlight was officially published. I started work on it in the early 80’s as I traveled with Francis, Edith and Frank Schaeffer. This may sound inflated, but I thought some kind of history was being made. Add to that, the trauma of my father dying while I was in Lynchburg with Francis and Edith, my mom dying five months earlier, well, those stories compelled me to work them out.
I was ambivalent about the opportunity to publish the book. While Koehler Books was very enthusiastic , they asked me to bear half the the cost of publishing it. All my writing life, I’d heard that writers should not pay to publish their work, but times have changed. Even scholars pay to publish their work. Several writer friends advised me to try sending it out again. But I was tired and I’d given up the writing dream because the publishing industry fell apart during the decade it took to revise the book.
Those years of listening to my character’s voices, characters based on my imagined perception of my parents, my brother, and Frank Schaeffer, helped me realize how loved I was; though that’s not what you’ll read. I also dumped into the peace only good therapy can bring. But this is not vomit on the page. I worked hard to craft this story into a fast, well written read.
I decided to publish the novel as an excuse to find my audience even though the marketing gurus say that’s a backwards approach. (They were right.) I’d been writing for forty years without readers until Facebook taught me the pleasures of being read. The readers in writer’s workshops gave nothing but painful, discouraging readings, so much so, I was afraid of my audience. Writing Facebook statuses helped ease that fear and showed me the pleasures of being read.
When the book released, I froze as far as publicizing it goes. But I’ve worked through setting up my website, setting up my author pages on Twitter and Facebook. I’ve worked through my fear and freeze and have become fascinated with the new model of publishing that brings us right close to our readers. Unlike traditional publishers, Koehler books has given me the time to develop my publicity and they are flexible enough to drop the price if I am accepted by an ebook discount place. They have not abandoned the project even though I’ve sold less than 500 copies.
I hate to put you to work, but if you read The River Caught Sunlight, please review it on Amazon because that will help with the ebook discount places and visibility.
Thank you again.
Blessings and all good things,
Katie
