Paperback of Annie's Trail

The paperback version of Annie's Trail is now available on Amazon's createSpace. you can either use this link http://www.amazon.com/Annies-Trail-Vardes-Chronicle-1/dp/147017362X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337048861&sr=1-1 or else you can go to the USA/Canada's Amazon and type in "Annie's Trail in createSpace" and it will appear. I hope that Annie's Trail paperbacks are also available in the other countries, but I haven't found it if it is :( I wish Annie's Trail could be cheaper, but Amazon says $18.63 American is the cheapest they will allow due to the large print (14 point) which makes it over 500 pages and heavy <3 Jennifer Don has written an amazing review of Annie which you can find on the Amazon page for it <3 thanks Jen :)

A Lilac’s Tale

My Mom had a green thumb, and I have no doubt she still has one on the other side of life. I say this because she had two large lilac clusters, a white one to the East of the house and just beyond the driveway. The other was to the West, a double cluster of purples which gave the color lilac its name. My Mom could see the purples from her bedroom windows and the whites from the front porch and dining room. In the springtime they filled the air with their sweet scent and most people filled their lungs with it in appreciation for the little joys God gives us. A few years after Mom passed back into spirit, I found a young lilac sprouting in a flowerbed in the front yard. It was a single stem and barely five inches high when I found it. It was so young there was no telling if it had come from the white or the purple adults. But I did know it was where I normally mowed so I dug it up and put it in a pot for its safety. I nurtured it through summer and winter to make sure it was doing well, but I knew it wasn’t for me. One of my sisters needed this touch from Mom and so I asked if she wanted it and at her delighted “yes” I asked where. She told me the perfect place for when it got older. I planted it outside her bathroom window so she could see and smell it in the spring, once the lilac grew old enough to bloom. That was in 1997 if I remember right, which I might not be since I’m truly terrible remembering numbers but for the intense dates. Anyway, the point I was coming around to is the beautiful lilac cluster that it is today. As for the color, well, all the flowers were lilac purple except for one cluster, which was white as snow.

Nice, Mom, very nice, and beautiful too. oh... I forgot to say my sister has since had several strokes and a heart attack. She is wheelchair bound and can't stand without help, while it takes her time to say what she wants to say with a blur to her words. There are also times when her mind is claimed by the past rather than the now, but that's all right. She is still herself, and when she is helped to stand in her bathroom, either for the tub or other, she can see that growing lilac tree out her window. In the spring she can smell the flowers and see them with her own eyes, even if she can't walk out to them. Love you, Sis, always.

Variations in Stories

Like the flowers of a Catalpa Tree, the stories that enter our minds can either set down seed or else rot away and never come to fruition. Some stories, like Annie's Trail, burst out into the world as the birth of a child, and then is shaped and nurtured by the parent/author until finally it graduates into book form. Other stories, like the For Love of Zilki story I'm working on, must be chewed and spit out and chewed again until they feel right and true. That's the fun thing about writing. You can plan and prepare but there are some stories that must be captured rather than plotted.