Waiting

Boys climb over the couch fort,
bedtime t-shirts from dad sliding off shoulders and
parachuting around skinny legs
"Get dressed. School starts. Get dressed."
They hide in the shirts like turtles and pretend not to hear.
I wait.

My inbox is still empty.
No news from the publishers, no response to my query,
empty but for the daily schedule Google sends each morning.
I delete it with out looking.

More waiting.
For the laundry, for school to get out, for kids to get in the car and buckle. . .
Two weeks until everything changes again.
A new home, a new place we haven't found yet.
We search for answers, but nothing is right.
and there's nothing to do but wait.

The waiting is like the sun; too hot the last few days.
It makes me sleepy. It makes me cranky.
But I keep finding myself sitting out in it.

While I wait for bedtime prayers, the boys,
wearing the huge t-shirts again,
lay themselves flat on the sidewalk,
bare legs and toes in the air, faces inches from the ground.
They pick at bugs; ants, rolly-polies.
I realize I could watch forever.
Orange sunset pours through the cul-de-sac houses.
They run the front yard and race down the sidewalk.
Some memories are worth waiting for.

The first time I feel movement inside me
I'm waiting.
At the doctor's, static from the heart monitor gives way.
Thump, thump, thump.
The sound is beautiful.
I'm waiting.

A Circle of Sisters is on Goodreads!

I'm so happy to share this awesome news! A Circle of Sisters is now on Goodreads and Walnut Springs will be giving away three free copies of the book. Check out the link above to enter! And share the news!

Look into the lives of ordinary Relief Society sisters as they share 50 stories of love and service. Whether it is facing a new calling or dealing with the sickness or loss of a loved one, these stories testify of the very real power of women devoted to God and His work. In trial and doubt, in faith and in joy, sometimes all it takes is a circle of sisters to change a life for the better.

WIP-I am making progress . . . I think

First of all, for those who don't know, WIP stands for Work in Progress. It's a term I learned in the writer world that refers to the authors current books' progress. So this is an update, for all the people wondering what happened to the writing side of my life. (Yes, all of my last posts have been about children. They tend to take over everything, in a good way.)

So first of all-A Circle of Sisters. It's still moving toward publication. I wrote my very first back cover copy for the book last week and I've heard rumors of a cover. Don't fear. It's making steady progress.

As for other works . . .

Oh, wait, did you know I had other works? Like the YA contemporary novel I begged many of you to read months ago? Yeah. It's sitting in a pile with other hopeful novels waiting to be read. But it's been sent out into the big bad world of publishers, so that's progress, even if it's silent for months. We'll let it sit. That's the best place for it.

Do you want to know more?

Should I admit to my current mess of a draft?

Yes, it's fantasy. I had to try my hand at it. It's hard. It takes a lot of time to create worlds, characters, histories, climates, traditions. I've researched everything from old fashioned clothing, seal skin coats made by Eskimos, and tribal paint, to animal and plant life, war, ruins on Islands, and chambered cairns (stone graves.)

... An ancient warrior the English Mastiff ...
All this research got me to thinking about authors and the weird things they unexpectedly end up learning about for their novels. So all my author friends, what are the strangest things you've done or researched in the name of writing? For me so far, its got to be the detailed instructions on how to sew a sealskin coat that I pulled up and examined. Though my research on war dogs was also unexpected. Can you believe these guys were breed for war?