Is where we introduce listeners to people who have found their way out of the dark shadows of life and back to light and those who lead others on their journey from darkness to light.
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DREAMS UNIMAGINED by Shannon Taylor Vannatter 7/7/2020 10:05:00 PM BY Patti Shene
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR SHANNON VANNATTER TO THE OVER 50 WRITER. SHANNON SHARES AN EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT AND TALKS ABOUT LIFE GOALS SHE ACHIEVED THAT SHE NEVER IMAGINED, EVEN IN HER DREAMS.
SHANNON IS OFFERING A GIVEAWAY! SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS.
DREAMS UNIMAGINED
by
Shannon Taylor Vannatter
In my twenties, I never dreamed I’d be a published author. Writing or anything to do with it wasn’t on my radar screen. It wasn’t until I was thirty-three that I realized the story I’d had in my head since my teens, the one I thought was a movie, could be a book. I spent the next nine and a half years trying to get published. By the time I got a contract, I was forty-two.
In my thirties, I never imagined I’d be an editor. I was too busy trying to get published. But once I did, I wanted to share what I’d learned with other writers. To pass along tips and knowledge gained along with warnings about things I’d done wrong along the way. I taught classes at writer’s groups and conferences. Even though I’m an introvert, when it comes to writing, I love standing in front of people and talking about it. The hope of teaching some other hopeful something they didn’t know, something that might get them published calms my nerves.
After a few years of teaching, I got the opportunity to do paid critiques at conferences. Hopeful writers e-mailed me their three chapters, I’d critique them, and then meet with them in person at the conference to give feedback. I loved working one on one with pre-published authors, seeing their eyes light up when I showed them what they’d done right, dim with disappointment on what they’d done wrong, and then the joy return when I explained how easy it was to fix their mistakes.
I had the thought that it would be fun to be an editor. To help writers make their dreams come true and improve their skills along the way. Even though I’d practically gone to college by working with at least a dozen different editors in the process of eighteen published books, it pretty much takes a degree to be an editor. And I’d rather write than go to school. So even in my forties, I never dreamed I’d be an editor.
Until I was in my fifties and my friend Linda Fulkerson called with an offer. We met back in 2007 or so at a writer’s group meeting. A few months later, she asked if I wanted to go to the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference in Minneapolis. At that fateful conference, I pitched to an editor and ended up getting my first contract. Since then, we’ve been travel buddies and roomies at dozens of conferences and retreats. We’ve taught classes, plotted books, and shared life experiences.
As different as day and night, Linda is an ex-marine, I’m an ex-hairdresser. I’m technology challenged, she’s a computer geek. I love to write, Linda loves to plot. She’s great with graphics and photography, I’m better with words. She knows her way around business and contracts, my eyes glaze over about such things. She’s an ex-newspaper editor and has written nonfiction, I’d rather make stuff up.
In May, she called to tell me that Kathy and Jerry Cretsinger, the owners of Mantle Rock Publishing, a small press, wanted to retire and sell their business. Linda wanted to buy it. But she needed a partner, someone with skills opposite of hers. I was the first person she thought of. Honored, I thought it sounded fun. After discussing it with my husband and God, I accepted. I’m currently taking an online editing course. I’ve completed half of the course and once I finish, I’ll be a certified content editor.
In May, we traveled to the Cretsinger’s home, signed the papers, and spent three days learning the ropes. I spent the rest of May and most of June taking my class and wrapping up my writing commitments. It’s been great timing, since I just finished a contract with Love Inspired for a three-book series. I had time to send my agent a new proposal and by the time I hear back about that, if it sells, I’ll have finished my class and gotten caught up on my editing commitments.
Scrivenings Press officially launched July 1st. We bought most of Mantle Rock’s back list along with several already contracted books, but we’re open for submissions. I’m currently editing the first manuscript on my schedule. I’ll serve as acquisitions/content editor and author development while Linda will take care of copy editing, book covers, contracts, and the business stuff I consider un-fun. Our skill sets complement each other and we make a great team.
So in my fifties, fifty-four to be exact, I’ve achieved another dream I never saw coming. God is good.
Is there a dream you’ve achieved or hope to achieve? If you could do anything you wanted to, what would it be?
GIVEAWAY INFO: I’m giving away five copies of The Cowboy’s Missing Memory and five copies of my Western Collection two in one with Jill Lynn – Counting on the Cowboy andHer Texas Cowboy will be split among commenters. Winners will be revealed on Shannon’s Blogon July 15th.
Award winning author Shannon Taylor Vannatter writes contemporary Christian cowboy romance and has over a dozen published titles. A romance reader since her teens, she hopes to entertain Christian women and plant seeds in the non-believer’s heart as she demonstrates that love doesn’t conquer all—Jesus does.
She gleans fodder for her fiction in rural Arkansas where she spent her teenage summers working the concession stand with her rodeo announcing dad and married a Texan who morphed into a pastor. In her spare time, she loves hanging out with her husband and son, flea marketing, and doing craft projects.
Recently, Shannon joined Scrivenings Press as co-owner/acquisitions/content editor.
LEARNING ABOUT THE GREATEST GENERATION by Cleo Lampos 7/3/2020 11:45:00 PM BY Patti Shene
Featured Books:The Food That Held the World Together
World War II Christmas Scrapbook
Authors: Gail Kittleson and Cleo Lampos
Publisher: Wordcrafts Press
Genre: Historical non-fiction/two companion books
Target Audience: High school to adult seniors who love history
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR CLEO LAMPOS TO PATTI’S PORCH. CLEO INTRODUCES HER NEW HISTORICAL WWII BOOKS AND HOW THEY CAME ABOUT.
LEARNING ABOUT THE GREATEST GENERATION
by
Cleo Lampos
Retirement delivered many opportunities for speaking to senior groups and at extension classes of local colleges. Several historic fiction books hit the market, and life sailed along with my husband and cat in a Chicago suburb. Then, in November, 2019, I read Jennie Allen’s book, Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul.
I prayed that God would do anything in my life that would draw me closer to Him.
Gail Kittleson e-mailed me two days later.
An author of WWII historical fiction, Gail asked if I would want to co-write a book about the food that people ate during the war. After praying about this, I decided to jump full into the project. Research is one of my library skills honed over the years.
The range of material was vast. Trips to the library yielded books on WWII to read. The internet produced articles, memoirs, and PHD Dissertations on the topics of military chocolate bars, ration kits, sugarless baking, foxhole foraging, the Victory Gardens, the Land Girls, Donut Dollies, and how the Dutch ate tulips. The women of North Platte, Nebraska, who served food to over 6 million GI’s in four years astounded me. Recipes and photos for all for all these topics bubbled from friends cleaning out their attics, historical archives, and government sources. A coffee table album on the topic complete with quotes, articles, photos and recipes resulted.
Then Gail and I decided to bring the sacrifices and ingenuity of celebrating Christmas during the war to the album format. Again, conversations with elderly friends, relatives, and reading memoirs gleaned so many insights. Reading books like Soldiers of a Different Cloth brought the stories of chaplains at Christmas to light. Compilations of accounts of POWs and GIs in the field at the season of Christ’s birth allowed the emotions of the time to come into our writing. Photos from private parties made their way to this book.
So much happened to me emotionally as these projects were researched. My uncles enlisted during the war, but spoke little about their experiences. Uncle Melvin took us to the cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa, every time we visited him so we would remember the Sullivan Brothers and see all the white crosses. Now, I read the accounts of the sailors and soldiers in foxholes and on ships in hostile countries sharing their fears and hopes.
My appreciation for the Greatest Generation increased as I read the letters of mothers and wives who put up a brave front even as they scrounged every day to make ends meet. The words of President Roosevelt, the volunteering of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the inspiring quotes of Eisenhower, Nimitz and McArthur stirred a piece inside of me that had long lay dormant. The folks who lived through WWII represented the best of our nation. They are in a class by themselves.
It is with humility and pride that Gail Kittleson and I present the companion books that give the present generation a glimpse into the valor and courage of our parents and grandparents. The Greatest Generation.
Gail Kittleson creates women’s historical fiction from her northern Iowa home where she lives with her husband, a retired Army chaplain. She is a frequent speaker and workshop presenter at libraries and other venues.
Cleo Lampos is a retired school teacher who speaks to adult extension classes at local colleges, writes fiction, enjoys quilting, and helps her urban gardener husband on their Chicago suburban plot.
WHEN I FELL IN LOVE WITH WRITING AGAIN by Sherry Shindelar 6/30/2020 10:00:00 PM BY Patti Shene
IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME ONE OF MY CRITIQUE PARTNERS, SHERRY SHINDELAR TO THE OVER 50 WRITER. SHERRY SHARES HOW HER PASSION FOR WRITING WAS REIGNITED AND IS NOW BURNING STRONG.
WHEN I FELL IN LOVE WITH WRITING AGAIN
by
Sherry Shindelar
Last summer I fell in love with writing again. It had been years since I’d worked on my story. I’d started the story when my daughter was two. She was now twenty-four. Not that I had been working on it all of those years, I didn’t get serious about writing the story until my daughter was five, and I finished it when she was eight. Finished? Yea, right. Well, I thought I had finished it. I applied for and won a state grant to pay my way to a national writer’s conference.
Hundreds of writers all in the same place? I felt like I was in a little bit of heaven. The highlight of my week was pitching my novel to an editor of a major publishing house. My week? It was more like one of the highlights of my life, especially when the editor said I should send her a synopsis and the first three chapters. Months later, that led to her requesting the entire book. Then, the waiting.
By the time I heard back, it’d been almost a whole year since the conference. She rejected my story. Her letter was kind, and she pointed out strengths, along with weaknesses, but in my mind, it was like a big red “X’ across all three hundred pages.
A year later I returned to college. I wanted a place where I could see evidence of progress, where I could receive recognition for my work (A’s), and where hopefully, I could earn a decent income. I didn’t intend to turn my back on writing. I was even a creative writing major, but I shoved my story in a box under my dresser.
A year of undergrad work to finish my bachelors, and then I moved onto graduate school, earning first my Masters in English, and then my PhD, losing myself in literature and academic writing. I wondered if I’d ever return to my story. I contemplated starting a new story, maybe something dystopian or young adult. I even consider the possibility that I had lost that part of me, the part of me that could build characters and lives across decades and centuries.
Then, last summer, I pulled the box out from under the dresser, and I unburied the past. I began to read. And I fell in love with Daniel and Jenny and the Shenandoah Valley all over again. How could I forsake them? Their lives in my head had begun before my daughter was even born. I jumped into their heads, and the story began to unfold, again. Except better, deeper, richer than I’d ever imagined.
I wrote 10,000 words last June, 50,000 in July, and 40,000 in August, and I have been writing ever since. The words poured out onto the page. And as I read them, I knew. God had been gracious in not allowing me to publish my story all those years before. Daniel and Jenny’s story had not been what it could be. It had been a rough shell in need of chipping, molding, and shaping.
And God had done so much in my life in those years in between, both joys and pains, I’d never dreamed of. He’d been chipping, molding, and shaping me. It is with a heart that is wizened, scarred, and strengthened that I return to writing, with eyes that see what the twenty or thirty-year old me could have never seen.
Originally from Tennessee and the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia, Sherry Shindelar loves to take her readers into the past. She is an avid student of the American Civil War, and her current novel in progress, Shenandoah Reclaimed, is set in the Shenandoah Valley during 1863 – 1864. When she is not busy writing, Sherry is a college English professor working to pass on her love of writing and literature to the next generation. Sherry is part of ACFW, RWA, and the SSAWW. She currently resides in Minnesota with her husband.
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IT IS MY PLEASURE TO WELCOME AUTHOR SHANNON VANNATTER TO THE OVER 50 WRITER. SHANNON SHARES AN EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT AND TALKS ABOUT LIFE GOALS SHE ACHIEVED THAT SHE NEVER IMAGINED, EVEN IN HER DREAMS.
SHANNON IS OFFERING A GIVEAWAY! SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS.
DREAMS UNIMAGINED
by
Shannon Taylor Vannatter
In my twenties, I never dreamed I’d be a published author. Writing or anything to do with it wasn’t on my radar screen. It wasn’t until I was thirty-three that I realized the story I’d had in my head since my teens, the one I thought was a movie, could be a book. I spent the next nine and a half years trying to get published. By the time I got a contract, I was forty-two.
In my thirties, I never imagined I’d be an editor. I was too busy trying to get published. But once I did, I wanted to share what I’d learned with other writers. To pass along tips and knowledge gained along with warnings about things I’d done wrong along the way. I taught classes at writer’s groups and conferences. Even though I’m an introvert, when it comes to writing, I love standing in front of people and talking about it. The hope of teaching some other hopeful something they didn’t know, something that might get them published calms my nerves.
After a few years of teaching, I got the opportunity to do paid critiques at conferences. Hopeful writers e-mailed me their three chapters, I’d critique them, and then meet with them in person at the conference to give feedback. I loved working one on one with pre-published authors, seeing their eyes light up when I showed them what they’d done right, dim with disappointment on what they’d done wrong, and then the joy return when I explained how easy it was to fix their mistakes.
I had the thought that it would be fun to be an editor. To help writers make their dreams come true and improve their skills along the way. Even though I’d practically gone to college by working with at least a dozen different editors in the process of eighteen published books, it pretty much takes a degree to be an editor. And I’d rather write than go to school. So even in my forties, I never dreamed I’d be an editor.
Until I was in my fifties and my friend Linda Fulkerson called with an offer. We met back in 2007 or so at a writer’s group meeting. A few months later, she asked if I wanted to go to the American Christian Fiction Writers Conference in Minneapolis. At that fateful conference, I pitched to an editor and ended up getting my first contract. Since then, we’ve been travel buddies and roomies at dozens of conferences and retreats. We’ve taught classes, plotted books, and shared life experiences.
As different as day and night, Linda is an ex-marine, I’m an ex-hairdresser. I’m technology challenged, she’s a computer geek. I love to write, Linda loves to plot. She’s great with graphics and photography, I’m better with words. She knows her way around business and contracts, my eyes glaze over about such things. She’s an ex-newspaper editor and has written nonfiction, I’d rather make stuff up.
In May, she called to tell me that Kathy and Jerry Cretsinger, the owners of Mantle Rock Publishing, a small press, wanted to retire and sell their business. Linda wanted to buy it. But she needed a partner, someone with skills opposite of hers. I was the first person she thought of. Honored, I thought it sounded fun. After discussing it with my husband and God, I accepted. I’m currently taking an online editing course. I’ve completed half of the course and once I finish, I’ll be a certified content editor.
In May, we traveled to the Cretsinger’s home, signed the papers, and spent three days learning the ropes. I spent the rest of May and most of June taking my class and wrapping up my writing commitments. It’s been great timing, since I just finished a contract with Love Inspired for a three-book series. I had time to send my agent a new proposal and by the time I hear back about that, if it sells, I’ll have finished my class and gotten caught up on my editing commitments.
Scrivenings Press officially launched July 1st. We bought most of Mantle Rock’s back list along with several already contracted books, but we’re open for submissions. I’m currently editing the first manuscript on my schedule. I’ll serve as acquisitions/content editor and author development while Linda will take care of copy editing, book covers, contracts, and the business stuff I consider un-fun. Our skill sets complement each other and we make a great team.
So in my fifties, fifty-four to be exact, I’ve achieved another dream I never saw coming. God is good.
Is there a dream you’ve achieved or hope to achieve? If you could do anything you wanted to, what would it be?
GIVEAWAY INFO: I’m giving away five copies of The Cowboy’s Missing Memory and five copies of my Western Collection two in one with Jill Lynn – Counting on the Cowboy and Her Texas Cowboy will be split among commenters. Winners will be revealed on Shannon’s Blog on July 15th.
Award winning author Shannon Taylor Vannatter writes contemporary Christian cowboy romance and has over a dozen published titles. A romance reader since her teens, she hopes to entertain Christian women and plant seeds in the non-believer’s heart as she demonstrates that love doesn’t conquer all—Jesus does.
She gleans fodder for her fiction in rural Arkansas where she spent her teenage summers working the concession stand with her rodeo announcing dad and married a Texan who morphed into a pastor. In her spare time, she loves hanging out with her husband and son, flea marketing, and doing craft projects.
Recently, Shannon joined Scrivenings Press as co-owner/acquisitions/content editor.
Connect with Shannon:
Shannon’s Website
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