A world without books … would be like living in black and white.

Here is the second installment from my Orangeberry book tour adventures...

How many of you remember black and white televisions? Okay, you’re probably not as old as I am. So, how many of you have watched a vintage film, such as that Christmas classic: It’s a Wonderful Life? It’s an amazing film, and the grimy black and white film perfectly captures the harrowing desperation of the Depression Era. Can you imagine what it would look like in color?

How about another classic film: The Wizard of Oz. The majority of the film is presented in black and white, until we reach that climatic moment when the they are in the City of Oz and the film bursts into vibrant color and the entire film seems to explode with vitality.

In my mind, that is the perfect before and after of a world with and without books.

In fact, reading the original series of books that comprised The Wizard of Oz, is one of my favorite childhood memories. It was the first time in my life that I experienced the sensation of becoming so immersed in a book that when I came up for air I physically felt as if I’d been transported back from the land of Oz. It was truly a magical experience.

I had a similar experience when I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and experienced the magical realism for the first time. Through his incredible storytelling, I experienced a South American worldview in a way that even a trip to South America could not capture.

Imagine a world without books? Impossible.

Books not only convey information, they are a great a great socio-economic equalizer. Decades before I stood before an original Degas in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, I read a book about Degas and looked at pictures of his famous ballerina paintings as a child, from my modest home in Florida.

Though I never studied Philosophy in university, I enjoyed a survey course of the world’s great philosophers, while enjoying the incredible story of a young girl doing the same, in Sophie’s World.

Books enrich my religious beliefs, lift me up when I’m feeling blue, and offer a delightful escape when I need a vacation but can’t afford to leave the house. They enrich my life by introducing me to people and places that I might never experience. And best of all, they convey ideas that enrich my view of the world around me.

What are  your favorite book-ish memories?

4 Ingredient - Super Easy Chicken Pot Pie

I love chicken pot pie. Unfortunately, the frozen, store-bought variety can be heavy on calories, sodium, and enough dough to  leave you feeling like you've eaten a cardboard box.

I've come up with an incredibly quick, and relatively light, alternative that requires only FOUR ingredients, making it perfect for an easy week-night dinner.

Ingredients:

2 cups of chopped or shredded chicken meat from a rotisserie chicken

2 cups mixed frozen vegetables (microwaved for 1 minute on high to thaw)

1 package crescent roll pastry dough

1 can cream of chicken soup -or- better yet, prepare your own  quick (and easy) béchamel sauce (butter, flour, and milk)


Assembly:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

I used individual oven-proof soup bowls. However, you could also use one larger (2-quart) casserole dish.

1. Layer chicken and vegetables in the bottom of the individual soup bowl or casserole dish

2. Heat cream soup or béchamel sauce, pour over chicken and vegetables.

3. Gently stir soup and chicken and vegetables to evenly distribute.

4. Drape crescent roll pastry over bowl/casserole.

5. Bake for 15 - 18 minutes until pastry is golden.

The result is the perfect comfort food...not too heavy, and  wonderfully delicious. Try this recipe once and it will become one of your family's favorites.

Enjoy!

A Commonplace Book - Weekend Edition

It is so hard for me to remember to pray daily. As a writer, you have such an unstructured life, or at least mine is, so sometimes I stay up all night working, or I get up early and forget. But when I pray, I always try to say, "Please let me do good work in your name." That's the most important thing. If my work is going to be self-serving, I really don't want to do it. The other thing I pray for is that God would reveal Himself to me.

Mark Richard
quoted in:
Inspired: The Breath of God
by Joanna Laufer and Kenneth S. Lewis

If you could change your current story in any one way, what would you do and why?

For the next eight weeks I will share the guest posts on writing that were part of my Orangeberry book tour. Pandora Poikilos, who runs the tour, creates very interesting topics.

MRS. TUESDAY’S DEPARTURE, my first novel, is set during the tragic, turbulent years of World War Two. Worse still, it’s set in Budapest, Hungary, one of the countries directly effected by Nazi Occupation and the Holocaust. For that reason, it was difficult to write a traditional happy ending that is so satisfying to most readers, myself included.

How many times have I finished a book and felt disappointed that the loose story ends weren’t neatly tied up? How could any author allow their main character to suffer and not receive the happiness she so clearly earned through her many trials? As an avid reader, one who seeks out happy endings, rather than the tragic Oprah-style dark novel, I understood completely when readers of MRS. TUESDAY, gave mixed reviews to the story’s ending.

Since the book is self-published, it would be completely within my powers to change the ending. I’ve even considered it! How nice it would be to kill off certain characters or perhaps provided a convenient escape hatch that would have allowed the good guys to live happily ever after and the bad guys to meet their just reward post haste. For good measure, I could have thrown in a romance so we might even enjoy a wedding.

I’ve even composed the changes in my mind. In part because one of the more consistent comments I’ve received about MRS. TUESDAY, is that readers felt the book was too short. They wanted to see the story go on, the characters to live the story more fully. And if there were anything I would change, lengthening the story would be the greatest temptation. But the ending?

 As I did my research for the novel and read about those war-ravaged years, I found that difficult decisions were made every day, and while they demonstrated great love and loyalty, they didn’t always save the hero. Sometimes, terrible sacrifices were made in the name of love. And sometimes those sacrifices led to unhappy endings. What about the argument that since this is fiction, I had the choice to create the ending I wanted, even a happy ending? True. Though as the author, I also had to create the ending that came about as my characters moved through the story. And which answered the questions that first inspired the story.

Which is not to say that I dislike the ending of MRS. TUESDAY. Ultimately, I believe the ending is very satisfying because it provides a message of hope. And most importantly, it conveys the message of God’s love and the ultimate sacrifice that He made through his Son, Jesus Christ. I hope readers will come away from the novel receiving that message and understanding that even when we go through difficult times, God is always with us.

A Commonplace Book - Weekend Edition

A man I know once said to another man, "you talk about God as if you know him, as if you could tell me the color of his eyes. Why do people keep creating something to worship? I make it a point not to believe in anything athat always has the upper hand."
"Then how do you explain the world?" the other man said. "How come you're here?"
"Because it happened. Things just happen."
"Well, maybe 'things just happen' is another name for God."

Along these lines, we might say that "things just happen" is another name for inspiration. We often don't know what to call the stirrings inside us that guid and empower us to create, and those stirrings cannot be adequately conveyed or described to others in the way that they are felt and reflected in the work. Yet, if we believe that there is something beyond our human capacities of imagination and sight, then we can call creative inspiration a result of our being in the presence of the divine."

From:
Inspired: The Breath of God
Conversations with Gifted People about Their Faith and Inspiration
by Joanna Laufer and Kenneth S. Lewis

Mrs. Tuesday's New Look - How to Trust Your Intuition

A couple weeks ago I was making some edits to Mrs. Tuesday's Departure, after a friend kindly handed me a short list editorial corrections that I had missed when I proofed the manuscript.

Lesson learned: make sure you have a fresh pair of editorial eyes read through your manuscript before going to publication. Truly. Your own eyes will not catch the words that you left out, but which your author's voice will insist are still there.

But that's for another post.

When I finished editing the manuscript, I made another editorial decision, as you can see above, I decided to change the cover.

Those of you who went through the agonizing two (or was it four?) weeks of endless back and forth about which of a dozen cover variations I would choose, may recognize the above cover as one of those early choices.

Choosing the first cover entailed endless polling of readers and emails to friends. I won't even confess how many 'covers' I printed out and lined up on the dining room table, so I could more easily visualize what they would look like on the paperback version.

And yet.

As much as I thought the cover 'we' chose was beautiful and more practical for the thumbnail view on Amazon.com, I didn't have that 'yes' feeling.

When I decided to change the cover this time, it took me all of five minutes to choose this cover. I consulted no one. Yet I felt absolutely at peace as soon as the decision was made.

Yes, this was my original choice, way back when, which was voted down for various reasons.

And yes, I take perverse satisfaction in going back and finding that I've chosen it all over again. Without reservation or second guessing or consulting another soul.

That is when I really know I've made the right choice. When I feel that wonderful sense of 'yes'.

Which is why this post is really about something much deeper than Mrs. Tuesday's new look.

It's about learning to trust your gut or intuition or simply to trust yourself without a care to what others will say. That's when you will know that you are truly on the right track.

It's an important reminder for me. In the past, I've made decisions where I failed to trust my intuition, failed to act when I heard that internal 'yes'. I let fear, disguised as 'being practical' stop me. 

Now I want to reclaim that place.

Pandora Poikilos - Peace from Pieces: Let's Set the World on Fire

I don't often go so far as to share an entire post from someones blog, but in this case, I think it bears sharing....please take a moment to read what it really takes to be a writer, self-published or otherwise.

Pandora Poikilos - Peace from Pieces: Let's Set the World on Fire: What and who are the true measures of Indie publishing success? By Pandora Poikilos  Deep within each of us, there is a burning de...

A Commonplace Book - Weekend

Many things that artists create are blocked by people or circumstances, not by God. For two and a half years I screamed at God because nobody wanted my book A Wrinkle in Time. It almost never got published. I kept saying, "It's a good book, a good book, I wrote it for You. Why all these rejection slips?" But we have to trust God's timing. A Wrinkle in Time came out at exactly the right moment, by publishers who did not expect it to be a success.

- Madeleine L'Engle

from Inspired: The Breath of God

I Am A Reader, Not A Writer: Happy Mother's Day Kindle Fire Giveaway!

I Am A Reader, Not A Writer: Happy Mother's Day Kindle Fire Giveaway!: Orangeberry Book Tours Happy Mother's Day Kindle Fire Giveaway May 10th to 17th A swirl of recipes from around the world, a love...

Orangeberry Book Tour for Mrs. Tuesday's Departure

For the next six weeks I will be on a blog tour for Mrs. Tuesday's Departure, hosted by Pandora Poikilos of Orangeberry Virtual Book Tours. Pandora is an absolute profession and a pleasure to work with, so I know this month will be exciting. We kicked it off this past weekend with two days of KDP Freebies and had a terrific response.

Now we're going to slow things down a bit and take a tour of some friendly blogs and give away a lot of books. If you'd like to join us, please take a look at the schedule below, click on a link, and visit one of our new friends.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Connect with Suzanne Anderson on
Twitter & Facebook & Pinterest

Check out where this author will be talking about her latest release!

8th May - She's being featured at Peace from Pieces
(Book Feature)
9th May - She's having a Twitter Blast with Pandora Poikilos

10th May - She's being featured at Writers & Authors 
(A World Without Books)
11th May - She's having a Twitter View with Pandora Poikilos

12th May - She's being featured at Rachel Cotterill Book Reviews
(Book Review)
13th May - She's being featured at Mommy Adventures
(Guest Post)


14th May  - She's having a Twitter Blast with Pandora Poikilos
15th May- She's having a Twitter View with Pandora Poikilos

16th May - She's being featured at Another Author
(Guest Post & Author Interview)
17th May - She's being featured at Book Lovers Paradise
(Guest Post)

18th May - She's being featured at Mommy Adventures
(Book Review)
19th May  - She's having a Twitter Blast with Pandora Poikilos

20th May - She's being featured at Books Are Magic
(Guest Post & Book Feature & Author Interview)
21st May - She's being featured at We Fancy Books 
(Book Feature)

22nd May - She's having a Twitter Blast with Pandora Poikilos
23rd May - She's having a Twitter View with Pandora Poikilos

24th May - She's being featured at Mommy's Reading Too
(Guest Post, Author Interview & Book Review)
25th May - She's being featured at John Zunski's blog
(Guest Post)

26th May - She's being featured at Book Spark
(Guest Post)
27th May - She's being featured at Cora Parks' blog
(Guest Post)

28th May - She's being featured at Smartypants Teacher
(Author Interview)
29th May - She's being featured at Libby's Book Blog
(Book Review)

30th May- She's being featured at Dee's White
(Guest Post)
31st May - She's having a Twitter View with Pandora Poikilos

1st June - She's being featured at Super Single Mom & Her Kids
(Guest Post, Author Interview & Book Review)
2nd June - She's having a Twitter Blast with We Fancy Books

3rd June - She's being featured at Gimme the Scoop Reviews
(Guest Post & Book Feature)
4th June - She's being featured at Heather Huffman's blog
(Guest Post)

5th June- She's having a Twitter View with Pandora Poikilos
6th June - She's being featured at Pandora Poikilos' site

Five Minute Super Simple Chocolate Walnut Fudge

You will love how easy this recipe is to assemble and 'cook'. The most difficult part will be waiting two hours while it cools and sets in the refrigerator.

Line a glass square dish with wax paper, leaving generous overhang on all sides, so that fudge is easily removed from pan.

In a medium pan, melt together two cups of chocolate chips and one can of sweetened condensed milk. Stir constantly to keep the mixture from burning. Once the chocolate has melted and has reached a smooth consistency, add the vanilla. Stir to incorporate. Fold in one cup of chopped walnuts. 

Quickly transfer contents of pan to the glass square. Top with remaining half cup of chopped walnuts. Sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt.

Cool in the refrigerator for two hours.

Cut into small squares and enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk (fat free)

2 teaspoons espresso powder

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

pinch sea salt

Pans and Paper:

8 X 8 square pan

wax paper

A Commonplace Book - Weekend

I worked in the physics of elementary particles. And I actually lived through a very interesting phase in that subject, when one saw, for the first time, a new pattern of structure in the world that was very beautiful, and concise, and that could be expressed in mathematics. All of us who were a part of this enterprise were left with a sene of wonder at the beautiful structure of the world. It seemed to me that it was the mind of God that was being discerned.

- John Polkinghorne
in Inspired: The Breath of God
by Joanna Lauger and Kenneth S. Lewis