Hello Women of Joy – New Myrtle Beach Friends

I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend at Women of Joy in Myrtle Beach!! I LOVED meeting and talking with all you who stopped by the Redemption Press booth!

I was in my element as I love encouraging and teaching women! AND, I love sharing about how FAITHFUL God was to me on my UNEXPECTED journey to motherhood. I hope you read the book.

Even though the book is a non fiction memoir, I wrote it as a fictional story, complete with characters, dialogue, and suspense. The book takes place over a ten year period which starts in 1992 on the night my husband and I met. I purposely did NOT put titles on the chapters as I w

anted the reader to experience an unknown future much like I experienced. With each chapter, there is a new detour that required faith to keep persevering.

I crafted the promotion of the book to keep the reader guessing how I became a mother. Spoiler alert In the end, I do become a mother but you’ll need to read the book in order find out how.

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If you asked me 5 years ago if I would ever write a book, my answer would be NO. I was a business major, not an English major. This story churned in my heart for 13 years before God asked me to share it on a blog post.

Long story short…I went to a Speak Up conference to get better at public speaking. At the conference I was encouraged to start a blog in order to gain an audience. The discipline of writing blog posts and having a friend read through my posts, strengthened my writing. After sharing a synopsis of my unexpected journey in a blog post in December 2014, readers wanted more of the story, so I started sharing pieces of it.

In the March 2015, I was at Bible Study Fellowship when I heard God tell me to trust Him and be obedient to Him and write a book. I signed up for my first writer’s conference, Write To Publish, for the first week in June and started writing the first three chapters of my story for literary review. The chapters needed to be mailed by May 15.

Meanwhile, my husband mentioned to me about the possibility of changing his work base from Chicago to Miami which meant moving to South Florida. Of course, I knew of this possibility for over a year but South Florida wasn’t for our family. We were well rooted in the Midwest. But with the three chapters completed and sent for review, I agreed to visit South Florida, again, even though I knew the move wouldn’t be a reality.

After three days in Parkland, Florida, including a meeting with a school and looking at houses, I couldn’t deny God wanted us to move to South Florida. All the details worked out! Remember how God asked me to trust Him and obey Him? Well, it meant more than just writing a book.

Details fell into place quickly. We had a contract on our Illinois house four days after being on the market. We closed on the new Florida house the following week. And by July 31, we packed up all our worldly possessions and headed to Florida.

The move was difficult on all three of us emotionally. Everything was different from the Midwest – food, people, landscape, climate, languages, and bugs! I put the book writing on INDEFINITE hold!

After a while, people started asking about the book, encouraging me to get back to writing! I spoke with my husband about the possibility of publishing but first, he wanted me to get the whole manuscript out of my head and on to paper. I started in February 2016 and started gathering old journals, calendars, and my computer. I put together a timeline of events and started writing. Every where I went, I carried my computer and typed out the story. I was totally engrossed in documenting the story. The guys were supportive and learned to love Stouffer’s frozen dinners!

After six months of writing, I finally had the story out of my head and I mentioned the possibility of publishing to my husband. To my surprise, he didn’t share my vision. I told him God asked me to obey Him and asked him to pray about publishing the story. Later that day, he looked at me and said, “I talked with God and He confirmed to me that He wants you to publish the book.”

I investigated the different ways to publish and I found the card of a publisher that I kept running into at the Write To Publish conference. We decided to give Athena at Redemption Press a call. She asked me to send her my manuscript, via email, so she could review it and see what it needed. We talked about getting a writing coach, which I wanted, and set up which services I would need. Again, we prayed and we signed a publishing contract with Redemption Press. Being new to the publishing world, I figured my book would be in print within two months.

You can imagine my shock when I heard back from my writing coach and read all her notes and her rewrite the first three chapters of my manuscript. It was quite the eye opening experience and I could never write like she showed and expected me to write. I put the manuscript away.

After much encouragement, I bravely got the manuscript back out, read all the coaching notes, and started the rewrites of the manuscript. I started in September and emailed the rewritten manuscript back to my writing coach just before Christmas. Within two days, I heard back from my coach. She congratulated me for my perseverance doing the rewrites and complimented the new manuscript. But, there were still items to fix.

Mentally exhausted, I hired another editor to help me with the final editing push. We worked together cutting out unnecessary story tangents, clarifying the story, and simplifying the story line. By March 1, my editor informed me, the manuscript was finished and ready for typeset. Otherwise, I would still be editing it!!

May 7, 2017, Faithful: An Unexpected Journey to Motherhood was officially released
by Redemption Press.

The past year has been wonderful, scary, and exciting as God takes me and the book on a new journey. One that would lead to being at the Women of Joy conference in Myrtle Beach!

I’m am beyond grateful, humbled and honored to share my story with my readers. Just think, what would have happened if I had not obeyed? I’m still amazed what God has done in my life because I said yes.

Is God asking you to share your story?

When we walk with the Lord
In the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way;
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.

Trust and obey,
For there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus,
But to trust and obey.