The Reason I’ve Been Covered in Chocolate All Week

Hello friends,

I’ve loved having more time to write my books since ending my big contract at the first of June, but all this treat-making reminded me why I used to love to bake and decorate cakes, so I’ll be popping up here and there local to sell my sourdough treats and occasional dipped treats like I worked on this week.

I got a quote for $3.50 per cake pop for the event. 50 people times $3.50 times several treats each, is a lot of money. I used to bake wedding cakes, so I knew I could decorate them and they’d be just as nice. I’m also a skilled cook, so I knew the taste would be on point. I did a variety of dipped treats.

Here are some of the chocolate-dipped goodies we noshed on today.

As much as I love sharing snippets of my life with you, I know many are here to learn about the books. My new release, Gunpowder and Promises, came out on the 11th. Well, I should say it was SUPPOSED to. I uploaded it in plenty of time, it was showing at 11 p.m. when I went to bed on the 10th. I woke up at 6:30 to a message from our wonderful group organizer that she couldn’t find it and an email from Caroline at Faithful Reads that she couldn’t find it.

The book was showing on my KDP dashboard as live. I could preview the book. It was not on the front end of the store. I had multiple promotions and people with scheduled posts. I also was in a group of other authors counting on me. I spent all morning on the phone with KDP Support only to be told it had to go to tech support and could be three to five days.

I started praying and asked the group of authors working on the Mail-Order Brides Undercover series to pray. My good friend, JoAnn, was praying. I went about my day, tried to contact Amazon again, only to be told there was already a support ticket open and I’d have to… you guessed it—wait.

God kept giving me Romans 8:28 and I knew He’d work it to good for His purposes in some way. I went to bed resigned it could be up to five days. I woke up to it showing back up on the Amazon store and preorders delivered.

Grab Your Copy of Gunpowder and Promises

I learned so much about my fellow authors in the group. They are kind. They are understanding. They pray for you when you need it. What a blessing to be part of something like that. Had the book published without a hitch, I would have known they were fellow Christian writers, but I would not have felt the depth of how they rally around one another in a crisis.

I also have always enjoyed sharing my books in Faithful Reads newsletter but how kind Caroline was to me was telling about why her newsletter is so successful. She reassured me everything would work out and she would run my ad when it was ready. She went above and beyond in every way to make the situation better for me when she didn’t have to.

I learned that things can go wrong, yet God will still make them go right. In HIS timing. It’s a hard lesson for a control freak like me, but a good reminder that He works all things for good for those who love him.

I wasn’t going to release this one in paperback. Several coworkers, friends and long-time readers mentioned they wanted a paper copy, so I made it happen. You can now grab a print copy of Gunpowder and Promises.

Grab Your Print Copy

I’m hard at work editing my next release, The Ranger’s Redemption, part of the Our House series. My hero is Lionel, and I’m loving this grumpy hermit. Stay tuned for a sneak peek soon!

To wrap up this week’s newsletter, I thought I’d share a little story I made up while driving my grandgirl to school one morning. She loves to hear my stories, and poems and silly things. I sort of liked this one because it’s about life’s ebb and flow, told through the lens of clouds. She was feeling sad because some of her friends from last year left the school and new ones arrived. Everything feels different. And I told her that it’s okay to grieve what was and to cry a little, but then to remember that the sun always rises, and when it does, something beautiful happens as it hits the raindrops.

Clouds are soft and fluffy, floating high above the world. But even clouds get sad sometimes.

Each morning, they wake with the sun and wonder what kind of day it will be.

Some mornings, they feel light and happy. They stretch across the bright blue sky and let the sunshine tumble through them, sending warm golden beams all the way to the ground.

But other mornings, the clouds wake with heavy hearts.

On those days, they don’t try to hold their sadness inside. They let their tears fall softly to the earth, drop by silvery drop.

And something wonderful happens.

The sun finds those falling tears.

Its light slips through every tiny raindrop and fills the sky with color. Red and orange. Yellow and green. Blue, indigo, and violet.

A rainbow.

Maybe that’s the clouds’ way of reminding us that it’s okay to be sad sometimes.

Because even on the days when your heart feels a little heavy and the tears need to fall, there is still light nearby.

And sometimes, when tears and light find each other, they create something that could never have existed without both the heaviness and the light.

May your week be filled with rainbows. Until next time.