Book Cover, Writing, and Life

If you subscribe to my newsletter, you were the first to see the cover to Daughter of Eden, Eve’s Story! Social Media followers and friends saw it next. And I’m finally finding time to post it here. I’ve been sitting on this for at least a month, and am so excited to share it with you! The cover is stunning–all because Revell’s art director does such a marvelous job! I am a visual person, but I’m not a visual artist. I’m not even very good at drawing a stick figure! So I appreciate the talent represented in every one of my covers. Thank you, Revell!

My writing life has been a full one so far this year. The Prince and the Prodigal is still my current release, and if you haven’t read it yet, I hope you won’t miss this one. The story meant a lot to me as I wrote it, perhaps because I could relate to both main characters for different reasons. I hope you can too!

I turned in the manuscript for Daughter of Eden in March, and work on Noah’s wife (current work-in-progress) is coming. Well…it was coming along fairly well, but ten thousand words in and I found myself disliking the direction I’d taken. That doesn’t happen often, but it has happened in the past. So I cut and pasted the book to another file and began again. I’m three thousand words into this second first draft and I think this will work much better. Those early ten thousand words still helped me frame the characters’ journeys as they held quite a bit of backstory that will weave its way into the story in a different way.

My goal is to finish a first draft within a month or two. That will probably get interrupted with edits for Daughter of Eden though, so we’ll see how far I get. It is my intention to finish at least two drafts before November as we are expecting another grand baby then, and as I’ve said in the past, grandchildren are my kryptonite. I can’t wait to meet him!

In other writing news, I have a couple of things I’m hoping to share with you within the next month or so. Newsletter subscribers will be the first to know, but I will also post it here. Details to come!

In normal life…I’m not sure what that looks like these days or this past year. I’m very sure that I don’t want to repeat some of the trials we have been through. This coming week I am going for my first cancer screening since they discovered breast cancer last year. I would covet your prayers that all is well and remains well.

Randy and I have been really healthy for quite a few years–except for that cancer thing–which is a big deal. I know that. But it’s strange that I don’t catch colds but “caught” that. We thought we would continue to fend off illness, but for over a week now Randy has been fighting a sinus infection. For a few days we wondered if it was covid, but testing proved that it wasn’t. And the antibiotic is working, so we are grateful. I’ve been fine. Just taking care of what he couldn’t. Today he’s doing better.

In other good news, Tiger has gained half a pound! He’s not so bony and is acting quite like himself again. I think he’s finally used to our new house, and even helped me with a puzzle I decided to do. I bought the puzzle that my mom worked on before she died. Tiger wanted to help, but laying on the pieces while I was trying to work on it wasn’t helping. He didn’t quite understand why I felt that way.

We’ve begun to see bunnies in our yard (I love wildlife), and we are going to put up a bird feeder to hopefully get a better glimpse of the wide variety of birds that flit past our window.

The past few months since my mom died have held a lot of trials and struggles. I know life is like that, but my younger self could never have imagined the things I’ve seen and experienced of late. Sometimes circumstances still seem surreal. Sometimes life hits us so hard that we wonder if we are going to make it past that circumstance. And then we do. We survive. I’ve survived because God met me there. I’m in awe of how He works. One particularly difficult weekend, God told a friend to pray for me at a moment when I really needed it. He prompted another one to call me, also right when I needed her. I don’t doubt for a moment that God is in those details because if not for Him, where would I go? He holds the truth and the words of eternal life. He is hope. He gives life.

No matter where life takes us, no matter what we’ve done…and even if we think He wants nothing to do with us any more…that’s not true. God pursues us. He wants us to be His. Just as we are. And when life’s hard things hit us, He is right there in the trenches. He rescues us from drowning in our own foolishness.

So that’s where I’m at in work and in life right now. I’d love to hear how God is working in your life. Are you a reader? What are you reading? Are you a writer? How’s that going? Do you believe in Jesus? Let me know!

~Selah