Author: Reese Johansen

Yet Another Blog on the Passage of Time

Time is on my side. Yes it is. Yes it is…

Wait! What?

Obviously, I’m not a Rolling Stone. Time is most assuredly not on my side.

It’s not that I don’t want it to be; -If I could ask for one thing for Christmas, time would be it! No, I’m not dying. Correction; I am dying, but not of anything immediate that I know of. No recent diagnosis I’m revealing here, just the simple, honest admission that time slips through my fingers faster than hot jell-o.

I’m in the final editing stages for ‘Beauty for Ashes’ and good gravy, it’s taking forever. I’d hoped to get this book out last summer. When summer turned to fall, the ‘Coming Soon’ banner on my website was updated, but I’ve only got 19 days left to meet the deadline. Ain’t gonna happen. My release date now reads ‘Coming in 2017’…

I’m disappointed in myself.

I mean, I started working on my next release within a week of publishing ‘These Things You Pass On’ back in May. I had a variety of completed first drafts from which to choose. My ‘Transitions’ Series has five manuscripts, just sitting there begging to be published, but need editing. I started with ‘Collision Course’ -first in the series. I soon became bogged down, because as much as I love the story of my first fictional characters, Mike and Carrie, it’s my first attempt at fiction. Suffice to say, it’s got a long way to go before it’s as good as I know it can be. After working on it for two months, I picked up some of my other work and re-read it. When revisiting the ‘Wounded Hearts’ series, I couldn’t help but notice how much more polished the rough drafts were. It was my second series; I’d written six books previous, and had obviously picked up some tricks of the trade along the way.

Even more polished, was ‘Beauty for Ashes’, my only completed stand alone. See, I’m quite long-winded, and have to scale my first drafts down by at least half. By ‘Beauty for Ashes’ I’d developed more skill being concise, and a better eye for what read well. So, after much consternation, I changed horses mid-stream, thinking I could meet a summer release date faster and get a head start on the following release if I went with the book needing the least editing.

I was wrong.

You see, around that time, I attended my first meeting as a new member of American Christian Fiction Writers, (ACFW). I loved that meeting, because a truly valuable teaching was given on point of view (POV). I also hated that meeting, because a truly valuable teaching was given on POV, and I knew I needed to look at my manuscript through a new lens with fresh eyes, incorporating what I’d learned. I’m glad I did. I believe my book will be better for it, but there was much to do, and I worked tirelessly to get it done. When I completed a once-through using this new perspective, I sent it off for review to my front line editor, but upon rereading it personally, I wasn’t happy with the result. It seemed a job halfway done, utilizing the knowledge I’d gleaned only sporadically. It was mushy and lukewarm, crossing back and forth between the old perspective and the new; not my best effort.

I will never publish a work I know can be better.

Of course, work can always be better… I’ve already got a list of revisions building for the second edition of ‘These Things You Pass On’. Arguably, the biggest advantage of being an indie author is I have control over my final product. ‘Beauty for Ashes’ was still officially a work in progress, and it’s potential was greater than it’s actual state, so I went back to the drawing board and, …we moved!

Moved!

Suddenly!

Unexpectedly!

Immediately!

My husband had it up to the proverbial ‘here’ with his job and retired.

Oh, we talked about it; I knew it was stewing, but much like our move to Houston, actually doing it came as a surprise! Evidence that I do indeed, live in la la land.(No, not L.A.; I’m a northern California girl…)

We listed the house, and it sold its first day on the market, hallelujah, -but the buyer wanted to take ownership in two weeks. …TWO WEEKS!!!

A whirlwind month later, I found myself again living in California; -out of boxes this time; seeing friends and relatives I missed more than can be expressed, and renovating a house we’d been intending to renovate for twenty years. Suffice to say, ‘Beauty for Ashes’ sat trapped in my computer. I couldn’t just leave it there. I ached to complete it, get it published, nudge it out of the nest and watch it fly.

I clocked out of my job of getting us settled, dusted my laptop off, and started editing again. I’ve been working on it though still unpacking; bidding my faithful dog of thirteen years farewell; refurbishing our junk room into a beautiful new guest room; tearing out our old kitchen and putting in a new; hosting Thanksgiving for twenty; and dealing with my wonderful husband’s constant interruptions, -a problem I always knew would arise upon his retirement. We’re figuring it out, -another work in progress.

At the moment, I’m a little passed the halfway mark. Editing is by far, the hardest part of writing. I have to say good-bye to passages I love, but don’t enhance the overall story. It’s hard. I love Dani, Travis, and the whole motley cast of characters. Stripping away moments that reveal lovable quirks hurt, but it’s necessary. My original goal was 350 pages; now I’m hoping to cull it down to around 400. My readers will definitely get their money’s worth. …Someday.

Every week that passes brings my own severe mental condemnation it’s still not done, and won’t be until after the holidays. That’s hard.

And therein lies my current battle with time. I’ve had tons of confrontations over the years, though writing is the first endeavor I’ve failed to meet a major deadline, and it’s happened more than once.

The older I get, the faster time speeds by, and with my newfound passion for writing I have much I want to accomplish. Skirmishes with the clock grow more and more frustrating. Our family celebrated the twins and my birthdays last night, maybe that’s why the face of the clock seems to be sticking its tongue out at me. I turned fifty-seven. Fifty-seven! How can that be? As I ponder my dilemma, I can’t help but walk away disoriented, but thankful.

I never dreamt I’d find myself writing at this point in my life. Each day I wake eager to get to it. My husband is happily tackling projects he’s wanted to tackle for years, and come spring, we’ll be taking short jaunts in the RV; exploring the beauty of the coast, the mountains, the desert; all with my trusty laptop in tow. I’ll continue to do both the drudge work and the fun, creative tasks to get my books out while on the road. When it comes right down to it, I’m mighty blessed, and truly appreciative.

I just wish I had time to savor it all…

Homegrown tomatoes. It doesn’t get better than that.

During our three years living in Houston, I couldn’t find a decent tomato to save my life. Nothing against the Lone Star state, -I can’t find decent tomatoes in California stores, either, -though they tend to hit closer to the mark.

Growing up, I was spoiled with homegrown tomatoes from Dad’s garden and in later years, my garden. I didn’t plant one in Houston. To be honest, I’m a wienie when it comes to insects. They say everything is bigger in Texas and that’s certainly true when it comes to pests. You can saddle and ride the bugs there. I didn’t want any more encounters with them than absolutely necessary, so I pretty much sequestered myself indoors and wrote.

It was time well spent when I published my first book.

While driving the two-thousand mile journey in our stuffed UHaul truck back to California, my husband and I discussed the things we missed most while living out of state. Among my items were tomatoes, avocados, and sweet white corn; -most produce in general. Dad used to tell me the fertile San Joaquin Valley could feed not only the entire country, but the better part of the world. Living in its epicenter as a child (Fresno, CA), I was blessed to have easy access to the ultimate harvest and though I recognized that fact to some extent, I didn’t fully realize it’s blessing until my access to the world’s finest produce was cut off.

Upon our arrival home, I was like a little kid on Christmas morning when my daughter showed up with a bag of home grown tomatoes fresh from her garden. I did a happy dance anticipating the many tomato sandwiches and BLT’s I’d soon be consuming, but in the larger scheme of things, those tomatoes reminded me of the message held in the book I’d been sent to Houston to write.

We pass things on from generation to generation consciously or not; -green thumbs, an unnatural love for garden fresh tomatoes, matters of faith, attitude, character, …important concepts as well as menial. Life is in the details; tons and tons of them strung together minute after minute, month after month, decade after decade.

Don’t miss them.  

It’s the little things that often hold the greatest joy.

Bon appetite!

Did you know October 5^th is Do Something Nice Day? (Not to be confused with Random Acts of Kindness Day, which falls on February 17^th).

There seem to be an average of five or six various ‘holiday’s’ celebrated every single day of the year on nationaldaycalendar.com, not to mention National Weeks and/or Months recognizing people, places, or things.

Upon discovering most days are not only a National Day of something-or-other, but a National Day of many-something-or-others, I was admittedly disappointed. I mean, how do special days stand out as special if every day is recognized as a National observance of something? It’s as though once people realized days could be officially doled out and delineated celebrating people or causes, they scampered to register every group, movement, object, and thought process for their twenty-four hours of fame. Seriously, I think there may be only five or six possibilities left which don’t have a National Day recognizing them.

I, however, had an actual attitude adjustment when I saw Do Something Nice Day listed on the calendar. I mean, who can take issue with doing something nice? As a matter of fact, it brought to mind a social experiment a Pastor asked our congregation to do many years ago; -pay the tab for the car behind you in the Starbucks drive-thru. It was such a good feeling, simply surprising someone with an unexpected freebie, a rudimentary reminder that the human species has a heart; -that we’re not all jerks with the sole goal of cutting each other off in traffic. I don’t do it every time, and I don’t go through drive-thru’s as often as I did when juggling a job, ministry, and two young children, but I’ve been known to pick up the tab for those behind me at not only Starbucks, but other drive-thru establishments as well.

Warms the cockles of your heart, doesn’t it?

It does mine anyway, and it will warm your cockles too. But of course, you already know that from those times you’ve done nice things in the past.

This quote, “Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find out” ~Frank A. Clark, was posted online with the calendar listing. I had no idea who Frank was until I Googled him, but he makes a good point. We’ve become a society of anonymous people who rarely remember to greet each other with as much as a smile or even nod, let alone a friendly ‘hello’. Drowning in deadlines and busy-ness, we as a people (speaking for myself at least), could use the occasional reminder to be human.

On that note, I’m heading off to Starbucks for a tall White Chocolate Mocha, and to pay a strangers tab. What will you do to celebrate Do Something Nice Day? Post your ideas in the comments; -it never hurts to have something nice to do at the ready.

An Average American

I’ve laid low, -stepped back from voicing my opinion on the social media outlets over the past few days, because I didn’t want to speak in anger or frustration. I didn’t want to add fuel to the flames of outrage, hate, and destruction which have been all too plentiful of late. But the long-past words of a movie from my day which became a catchphrase pretty much sums it up, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

How on earth did we get here?

As a child growing up in the sixties, I thought we’d done this already and emerged better, stronger, improved, triumphant, and healed. Yet here we are again, at the verge of destroying our nation and destroying each other with vicious, unforgiving words, erupting into murderous violence. Your average white American no more condones police brutality than your average black American condones slaughtering police for payback. Your average American, -regardless of skin color, is a decent, honest, hard-working person. It’s hard to believe that, because we don’t know each other anymore. We’re all Americans, yet we don’t talk to each other because we’ve become so polarized, one pitted against the other for the ‘causes’ we’ve adopted.

This week’s flare up was black vs. white, next week it’ll be gay vs. straight, the week after that progressive vs. conservative. Pick one; -any one. Pick your side so you can be a part of the destruction of the greatest nation the world has ever seen because in fact, it isn’t perfect.

We have never been, nor will we ever be perfect; but we’ve gotten closer than anybody else. America is the greatest nation because we, more than any other country on this planet, have worked together for the greater good despite our differences. We’ve stood up for the downtrodden. We’ve given a home to the homeless; a voice to the voiceless, and a hand to the helpless. Have we always been successful? No, but we’ve always been willing to try. We’re much better reaching out as individuals and independent communities like churches; we have more success when we do it personally, with our own two hands. It gets messed up when the government decides to do it for us; when Washington insiders bargain behind closed doors to give millions of dollars to countries who’d like nothing more than to see us cease to exist, and make welfare a permanent paycheck as opposed to a helping hand to get those down on their luck back on their feet.

In years past, people took pride in a job well done, no matter what that job might be. Now, you’re not worthy of admiration unless you’re a celebrity, athlete, carry the right designer bag, or wear the right tennis shoes. No wonder human life has no worth when a person’s value is determined by their following on Twitter instead of their character.

We are not a people who want to allow systems of wealth and privilege to stamp out the citizenry born into less advantageous circumstances. Though you rarely find them in media outlets, there are millions of people who’ve pulled themselves out of poverty by working hard; -the American dream. They’ve made a good life for themselves and most likely helped others with a hand up along the way. They accomplished their dream not because some government program did it for them, they accomplished it because the government got out of their way.

Those people are however, dying off; slowly but surely. Not as many people are succeeding because the fact of the matter is, we’re no longer a nation that encourages the best in people. It pains me to admit, we tend to encourage the worst. We’ve made it unfashionable to worship God, and instead idolize crass celebrities who demean women, or can’t get their own demons of substance abuse, infidelity, and inflated ego off their backs. Our kids long to be just like them, willing to do whatever it takes for their fifteen minutes of fame, no matter how dehumanizing, posted on YouTube for the world to see.

Many average, decent people have given up. Entrepreneurs who could be providing jobs in their community no longer have the fight it takes to keep their business afloat, and people who used to extend a helping hand quit because they’ve been taken advantage of too often. There’s not much left to give to charity or put in the church offering, because politicians have commandeered more and more of our hard-earned money for purposes that serve no one except themselves. My heart breaks for the generations that follow me; my children and grandchildren. –Your children and grandchildren. I pray they get to witness for themselves the country I did growing up.

I’m worried though, that may not come to pass.

We’ve become followers, not leaders. We rose to greatness when we allowed average people to choose for themselves how they want to live their lives; when a member of the community served on the City Council or Senate floor for a couple of years to speak for his friends and neighbors. When we didn’t have an entire class of professional politicians who serve to collect whatever favors they can accrue from special interest groups when they’re not upping their own salaries and piling on more benefits than the people they are supposed to be working for enjoy. We believe what politician’s want us to believe, what celebrities tell us to believe. Media outlets no longer report the news without bias, they present what they want, how they want; -truth be damned.

This has happened because we’ve forgotten it’s not about them, America; it’s about us, -you and me, -average Americans.

We’re not celebrities. We’re not famous. We’re not professional athletes. We’re not academic elitists. We’re not people allowed access to thousand-dollar-a-plate political fundraisers, and we don’t have the President’s ear because we can sing, dance, or throw a ball. We’re your next door neighbor, the clerk at the store where you shop, your kid’s high school math teacher.

America was designed to work for us, -the boring, every day, average people; not the exclusive upper class, and not the government. We vote in our leaders, and we vote them out. It’s not only a right; it’s a privilege and a responsibility, but we don’t like looking at it that way, because it means we have to share in the guilt of what we’ve become; -what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.

I refuse to believe we are gullible enough to vote the way our favorite singer or actor tells us to because we’re too lazy or stupid to investigate and understand the issues ourselves. I refuse to believe an entire generation blindly and mindlessly believes whatever garbage some college professor spews without engaging their own mind to examine it for truth and/or bias. I refuse to believe we actually have become the mindless cattle Madison Avenue and our elected officials seem to think we are. Yet sadly, recent evidence reflects otherwise.

We average Americans have a voice, but we only use it at BBQ’s, in carpool lines at school, around the water cooler, and in our church foyers; -places we consider ‘safe’. We don’t speak up in the public forum, because we run the risk of being called bigots, racists, and small-minded if we do. It’s a telling commentary on your cause when you have to publically name call people into humiliated submission.

I am an average American. I am NOT a bigot, and I’m sick to death of the self-elected elitist regime telling me I am. Your average American is neither a bigot, thug, homophobe, cop-killer, racist, criminal, nor dirty cop; so why have we allowed a small group of elitists to label us as such? We come from a myriad of backgrounds, experiences, economic status and races. Average Americans are good people. That fact has been proven true time and time again when tragedy strikes in the form of natural disaster or man-made terror; -like when a police officer shields a Dallas protestor from gunfire with his own body, and when a Black Lives Matter activist lays flowers in front of the Dallas Police Department Headquarters to honor the fallen. Average American’s are decent people who look out for those they love; they’re people of faith, people with compassion for others.

The average American is not a journalist, celebrity, or ‘expert’; we are the voice of reason. We don’t have our finger on the pulse of the country; –we are its heartbeat.

Why then, are we letting our voice go unheard, America?

It’s time to show each other and the world who we truly are. Not through violence and hate, but through a shared commitment to recognize our shortcomings and fix them. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again. We can however, only do it TOGETHER; -refusing to be torn apart, alienated from our fellow American’s because we’ve limited ourselves to only those people we’ve labeled safe; -the ones like us. If we want to heal our land, we need to open an honest, meaningful dialogue that includes listening as well as talking to people who cross the lines of race, religion, and political affiliation. The majority of American citizens who profess to be Christian need to step up, -reaching out to people in love, emulating Christ as we are called to. We need to sit-down and talk reasonably with one another, committed to finding solutions instead of spewing sound bits for the six-o’clock news.

Where exactly should this diplomatic summit take place?

Your town, my town, our community; -our home.

We process what we learn together, gleaning solutions that work. We stop throwing money and effort at programs that aren’t effective. We keep hammering it out until our issues are resolved and call upon our elected officials to adhere to the will of the people because that’s how America works. If they don’t, we fire them, plain and simple. If you and I failed to perform our job to our boss’s satisfaction, we’d lose it. It’s time the arrogant elected officials whose fat, lazy behind’s occupy cushy leather chairs in Washington, State Capitols, and City Hall’s across the country meet the same requirement; -every last one of them. We can no longer be complacent in holding them accountable.

Who’s with me?

Photo via Visual hunt

Photo via <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/”>Visual hunt</a>

I published my first book, “These Things You Pass On”!

I still can’t believe I did it, and am even more surprised at how many sold, just in the first day. I knew my friends and family would support me of course, but wow! My book really is out there in Amazon-land, a vast, unchartered territory. Yikes!

I got caught with my pants down as far as having my website ready… It’s not referenced anywhere until the info pages at the end of the book, so I thought I could finish it up at a somewhat leisurely pace. I didn’t anticipate people googling my name when the listing showed up on Amazon.  …Oops!

The first of many oops to come as a new author, I’m sure. New author, …still kind of freaked out about that one!

If you were one of those people who pinged my not yet live website, Sorry!! I’ve been working like a banshee, trying to get it up and going. Hang in there, I will eventually catch on. In the past month I’ve had to learn five new software programs, and how to do a website from scratch. The learning curve is a bit overwhelming, but I’ll get a handle on it eventually.

I’d like to sit back and rest, but it’s not going to happen. The TONS of book ideas I had while writing my first book, are each in varying stages of completion. Some are still in outline form only, while others are complete and in the editing stage. Most fall somewhere in between the two extremes.

I’m anxious to get them out. As much hard work as this is, it’s also been fun! This whole experience has been quite the adventure. I hope you find my work worthy of your time, and stick with me as I find my footing.

Now, how exactly do I get this posted……?