Meet Jane

Posted on May 13, 2013 by jphilo

Meet Jane.
Not quite this Jane.
But not quite not this Jane.
Meet this Jane, all grown up.

Jane’s the protagonist of the mystery novel I’ve been writing at the end of each day when my other serious writing is done. Her name is a deliberate harkening back to the Jane of Dick and Jane fame. Because in addition to being the solver of the mystery, Jane is an elementary school teacher.

But not just an ordinary elementary teacher.
She teaches in a country school.
In northwest South Dakota.
Kinda like I did way back when.

Except Jane isn’t exactly like me. For one thing, she’s single when she moves from Iowa to cowboy country in 1978. Which means she’s much more interested in getting to know cowboys up close and personal than I ever was.

Also, she has curly hair.
And freckles.
Plus she’s quite independent for a 21-year-old, fresh out of college.
And she doesn’t mind getting her clothes dirty.

She speaks her mind, too, more than I did way back then. She says all the things I wanted to say but didn’t ’cause nice young ladies didn’t say that kind of thing in 1978. Especially nice young ladies who want to keep teaching school in a very small community where everyone knows what everyone else is doing.

Jane’s not always a nice young lady.
She pokes her nose into places she shouldn’t.
She window peeks.
She sneaks around in pastures populated by bulls.

Even so, Jane’s a fun friend. Sometimes, I pull her out of the messes she gets into. When we’re together, it’s like going out west again. The wide, empty horizon opens before up. We smell the fresh, short-grass prairie air. But without a 15 hour drive to get there. Or 55 miles of gravel on the last stretch of road. Or any need for me to get dirty. Because Jane takes care of those kinds of things. That’s part of what makes her so fun to be with.

Go, Jane.
Go out west, Jane.
Out west is fun, Jane.
Go, Jane. Go have fun!

Top 10 Reasons to Join Different Dream’s Online Book Study

Posted on January 8, 2013 by jphilo

This week’s top ten list may appear to have escaped from DifferentDream.com or be lost on our little gravel road. In truth, I’m so excited about the upcoming online study of my first book, A Different Dream for My Child, that my enthusiasm is bigger than what one blog can contain. So, bear with these top ten reasons to join the study. And if you aren’t part of a special needs family, pass the information onto someone who is and who needs encouragement on the journey. Thanks!

10. Discovery House Publishers (DHP) is offering a 30% discount. Go to www.dhp.org (USA) and www.dhponline.ca (Canada) and enter the promotional code DDJP. (Psst–the 30% discount is also good on my second book, Different Dream Parenting. But only at DHP. Not at Amazon.)

9. It’s fun to see the book’s Amazon rank rise…thanks to diehard Amazon ordering fans who pass up DHP’s discount.

8. The study results in more sales which keeps this author from starving for her art.

7. The study is an excellent winter pick-me-up. Think of it as a drug-free means of stamping out post-holiday depression.

6. The study is an excellent way to wile away your time until daylight hours increase enough to be noticeable.

5. A Different Dream for My Child chapters are very short, so you’ll have plenty of time to read them and still tune into Downton Abbey, Season 3.

4. The study begins during January, which is EA/TEF Awareness Month. A Different Dream for My Child will make readers more aware of this life-threatening birth anomaly because it tells the story of our son’s struggle with EA/TEF. And the stories of 15 other families whose kids had/have a variety of special needs.

3. www.MommiesofMiracles.com is generously hosting the study. Without them and their technological expertise, this would not be happening.

2. You can participate the study any time of day or night. In your jammies. Without needing to hire a babysitter.

1. Parenting kids with special needs can be a very isolating experience. This online book story is a way to end the isolation for you and for other parents who need encouragement and a sense of community.

How Was Your Week?

Posted on October 17, 2011 by jphilo

We called the kids this weekend, like we do every weekend. Sometimes, they’re excited to share the adventures of the week. Sometimes, they’re frustrated and need to vent. Sometimes, they’re unsure and want advice.

But sometimes, they don’t have much to say. (If you know our kids, you know this doesn’t happen very often.) However, this week was apparently a slow one. For both of them. And their spouses. So instead of telling about their lives, they asked, “How was your week?”

“Well,” I quipped, “since Thursday your dad’s back went out, my camera died, and the check engine light came on in my car.”

Long pause with both kids. I could hear the gears shifting in their brains. “Mom’s supposed to give us good news. Tell us funny stories. Not dump on us.”

What they said was, “That’s too bad.” Another long pause. “Did anything good happen?”

I thought back to earlier in the week. “Well, yeah. Discovery House Publishers is doing a second printing of A Different Dream for My Child. And they’ve hired a freelance publicist to promote Different Dream Parenting for the first four months after its release. They told me it’s not because I’m a pest, either. It’s because they want to help parents of kids with special needs tap into the resources and support the book offers.”

Their responses this time were immediate.
Effusive.
Congratulatory.
Obviously, somebody taught them good manners growing up.

This morning, I got more good news.

The Toyota fix it man advised tightening the gas cap before bringing the car in. Lo and behold, the gas cap was loose.

The camera repair would cost half the price of a new camera…and I’ve been coveting a new, lighter camera which will also qualify as a business expense…and I still have unspent birthday money.

Hiram’s back didn’t get worse over the weekend, but metaphorically speaking, his check engine light is still on. So this morning he’s getting tuned up by the chiropractor who is much cheaper than the Toyota fix-it man.

Now I can give expected response to, “How was your week?”

“Good, kids. Thanks for asking. Good and getting better by the minute.”

Welcome to the World, Baby Book!

Posted on October 7, 2011 by jphilo

I am proud to announce the arrival of Different Dream Parenting: A Practical Guide to Raising a Child with Special Needs. The cutie arrived this morning with very little warning. I barely had time to answer the door before the UPS man delivered the bouncing, baby book, swaddled in a bubble wrap envelope.

The man in brown left in a hurry, so I had to remove the protective covering alone. One rip and one pull, and the new baby was in my hands. After a few glorious minutes checking to see if all 24 chapters and 6 appendices were present and accounted for, I snuggled this little charmer next to the cherished family teddy bear and started taking pictures.

Different Dream Parenting (nicknamed DDP) is heftier than older sibling, A Different Dream for My Child (known as Different Dream). The new arrival weighs in at 336 pages compared to 272 pages for Different Dream. But one look at both of them, and there’s no doubt they’re from the same family.

If you want to see DDP this month, you’ll have to stop by the house for a visit. If you want your own copy before November 1, you can visit the Discovery House Publishers website and purchase your own beauty. (List price is $12.95, but the website price is $11.65.)

After November first, DDP will be available at books stores, Amazon, Christian Book Distributors. From that day on, DDP will be running around FaceBook, Twitter, the blogosphere, and who knows where else. So keep your eyes open for this busy member of the Philo clan.

If you see DDP when you’re out and about, help the new arrival get around. Give my baby legs and wings. Buy the sweet thing. Take DDP home to read. Or give the book to someone who needs the encouragement inside its covers. Help DDP find the special needs families it was born to touch.

Welcome to the world, Baby Book!

Thank You, Discovery House

Posted on September 25, 2011 by jphilo

Whew! Just one week ago, the index for Different Dream Parenting winged its way to the inbox of my editor at Discovery House Publishers. I barely had time to dust off my hands before our road trip to Ohio, where we helped the kids move into their apartment. Once they were settled in, more or less, we headed back to Iowa via Michigan.

Turns out, the detour was a blessing and not because we avoided the nasty toll road across northern Indiana and Ohio. The blessing came in the form of a dandy visit to Discovery House Publishers (DHP), the book publishing division of Radio Bible Class (RBC), located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. DHP and RBC are not as big into initials as this post makes you think. No, the organization is into ministry and compassion and people and sharing the gospel through radio broadcasts, DVDs, Daily Bread devotionals, and a wide variety of books and Bible studies.

I know this because Hiram and I were given the deluxe RBC tour by Ed Rock (and believe me, Ed rocks), and he filled us in on all the details. He showed us the cubicles where all the writers, editors, and marketing people do their ministry magic. He took us through the traditional printing and packing area, and we got a peak at the new digital printing room where Different Dream Parenting will go to press in a couple weeks. He even walked us by the audio/video editing booths and into the sound stage.

We were thoroughly impressed before the entire DHP publishing team treated us to lunch, and I got to sit next to my editor, Miranda Gardner. We’ve been email pen pals for months now, and meeting her was the highlight of my day. Turns out, the whole team is a comfortable, welcoming bunch. I know this because they got my crowd-shy husband to talking a blue streak about the life-changing effects of our son’s birth. (Notice, he talked a blue streak, not cursed a blue streak.)

He impressed them so much that after lunch, when it was time to record some video for the Different Dream Parenting book trailer, publicist Katy Pent asked Hiram to be in the video, too. What could he do but say yes? After all, they bought us lunch. So my normally shy hubby joined me in front of the video camera, and we talked away.

Of course, you’ll have to take my word about all of this, at least until Katy releases the book trailer because I forgot to take my camera. So there are no pictures of our RBC tour, no pictures of us posing with the DHP staff, no pictures of us schmoozing at lunch. No proof whatsoever. I blame my lack of forethought on the whirlwind of the past few weeks of meeting deadlines and moving kids across the country.

But, I credit the sense of well-being that enveloped Hiram and me on our drive home to the warm reception and prayers of the dedicated professionals at Discovery House. Thanks to all of you for believing in my book ideas and making them a tangible reality. You are a blessing to many!

The Queen of the Planner’s in Crisis

Posted on August 29, 2011 by jphilo

For years and years, I have been queen of the planner. But lately, I’ve sorta dropped the scepter. I blame the problem on this summer’s series of tight book deadlines, speaking engagements, and family life changes.

After all, a planner isn’t all that necessary when the week’s task is COMPLETE THE FIRST PROOFS BY FRIDAY or PREPARE TO SPEAK AND SCHMOOZ IN KENTUCKY or HELP YOUR DAUGHTER AND SON-IN-LAW MOVE TO OHIO or WRITE AN INDEX BY AUGUST 17 or ACTIVATE MOM’S IN-HOME HEALTH CARE POLICY. With things like that on the top of the to do list this summer, all I had to do was start running with them every Monday and hope to to reach the finish line by Friday.

But now the deadlines are met, the daughter and son-in-law are moved, and Mom’s in-home health care should activate soon. Which means life includes some breathing room, at least for a few weeks. Which means all I want to do is sit on the couch and breathe while watching DVDs of all the family unfriendly TV series we couldn’t watch with kids in the house. Which means I need to start making to do lists again, or I will get absolutely nothing done until there’s another deadline breathing down my neck. But there will never be another deadline breathing down my neck because I’ve done absolutely nothing to create one.

So it’s time to polish up my queen-of-the-planner tiara and start sparkling again. Except that I’m way out of practice when it comes to picking and choosing a few items from the long list of what needs to get done this week and transferring them a daily to do list. Tell me, which ones would you choose from this list for your Monday morning?

Update blogs
PTSD research for book proposal

Get started on items in book marketing folder
Get ready for company on Labor Day weekend
Send stuff to Wanda for new ones sheet
Send updated bio and interview questions to publicist at Discovery House
Contact university and community college about available interns for tech projects
Update speaking topics on website
Grocery shop
Finish influencer list for publicist at Discovery House
Email people about participating in the blog tour for my new book
Call people about being part of the special needs ministry planning team at church
Call Steve
Transfer Mom’s car title
Write two Sunday school skits
Run stuff for Monday evening board meeting

Sure, the last item on the list is a given since Monday evening is almost here. But other than that, where would you start? Seriously, could you add “make a comment on Jolene’s blog” to your to do list and then send some advice really soon. Because until somebody provides some direction, this former queen of the planner will be sitting on the sofa watching DVDs while polishing her tiara or looking under the sofa for the scepter she dropped back in June.

So sad, don’t you think?

Lamaze for Writers

Posted on August 15, 2011 by jphilo

Writers often compare the process of writing and publishing a book to pregnancy and delivery. At least female writers who have given birth do.

Want to know why they do it?

Because, as this past week and a half have demonstrated, it’s the closest thing around to a perfect analogy. That lightbulb switched on for me two years ago, during the writing of A Different Dream for My Child. But as it turns out, my first labor and delivery was a piece of cake.

How do I know that?

Because the labor and delivery of Different Dream Parenting, which is happening even as I type, has been a little trickier than the first time around. The problem with this problem child is paginating the index. Turns out, hunting for random words in a manuscript and recording the page numbers accurately is painstaking work, with emphasis on the pain.

How do I know that?

Because the past few days of index work have been painful. So painful that I’ve developed lamaze technique for writers. The emphasis is more on relaxation and distraction than breathing, since birthing a book doesn’t require the massive intake of oxygen necessary for birthing a baby, and I’m big on hyperventilation. Here’s how I do it:

Stage One Labor:
Work on index until head begins to ache. This is the indication of stage one labor. Put on happy, distracting, soothing music and keep working until your head feels like it will explode. This indicates the beginning of stage two labor.

Stage Two Labor:
Take a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly. Turn off the music and walk down the road to the mailbox and back, breathing naturally. Then answer some emails, check FaceBook and Twitter. Or do some light housework – laundry, dishes, food preparation – until your head clears. Go back to indexing until your head feels ready to explode again. When deep cleansing breaths, walks to the mailbox, social networking, and light housework fail to clear your head, you are moving into stage three labor.

Stage Three Labor:
Take two deep, cleansing breaths and exhale slowly. Put in a Monk DVD and watch an episode. Absorb Monk’s persona – the love of order, columns, straight lines, and all things neat and tidy – until you love the thought of spending hours at a detail-oriented job like indexing. Return to indexing, refreshed and motivated.

Warning:
DO NOT give into the urge to push until you reach the letter z. Then have at it and birth your bouncing baby book!

My Personal Bastille Day

Posted on August 8, 2011 by jphilo

Sorry about the brevity of this post, but the guillotine dangling over my head is making it hard to think of something to write about today. See, my editor sent the page proofs for Different Dream Parenting about a week ago, and they have to be completed – along with the index – by August 17.

So my mind is a litany of picky, precise corrections…

Is that the current, politically correct way of referring to that special need?
Yikes, another grammatical error!Hmmm…don’t like the placement of that side bar.
Or that one.
Or that one.
Has that been the style for labels throughout the book?
Does that sentence sound right?

…that continue non-stop for 327 pages, along with a series of indexing conundrums…

Oh, there’s a term that should be in the index.
No, it shouldn’t.
Yes, it should.
No, it shouldn’t.
Yes, it should.

…that continue for slightly fewer pages, only because the dedication, table of contents, and appendices don’t make good index fodder.

Come August 17, my personal Bastille Day, my horizons will expand beyond the world of punctuation, grammar, page design, and key words. Until then, forgive the brevity of this post…

Did I already say something like that?
Is that correct grammar?
Did that sentence sound right?
Should Bastille Day be in the index?
Yes.
No.
Yes.
No.
What about guillotine?

Hmmm…

Out of My Hands

Posted on June 27, 2011 by jphilo

The first proofs (the edits on the original manuscript sent in by an author) are out of my hands. On Friday I emailed my first proof edits back to the publisher. Now the editor assigned to Different Dream Parenting will spend the next month wrestling with my changes and overseeing the typesetting. Then she’ll send the final proofs this direction for final inspection before it’s off to the printer.

Suddenly, life is not in the thrall of one, all-consuming task master. Suddenly, I have choices to make. Time to fill. A multitude of ideas to pursue. And no more excuses to avoid unpleasant tasks like weeding the flowerbeds. Boy, did they need weeding.

So this morning in the aftermath of last night’s doozy of a thunderstorm, while the sky cleared for a few short hours, my hands were busy pulling weeds, deadheading blossoms, pruning the plants in hanging baskets, and treating my arms and legs to an unplanned, but highly effective mud bath.

By the end of an hour, the flowers had been granted a reprieve in their battle against the weeds for access to the sun. The gardens no longer looked wild and neglected. The spreading violas were tame once more, the daisies were cut down to size, the dead rose buds were gone, and everything remaining had the natural, shaggy beauty my daughter loves.

I could have done more, but indoor tasks were calling. Lists to make, blogs to write, marketing to be done, emails to send, workshop presentations to prepare, new book proposals to plan. More than can possibly be done before the final proofs arrive.

But for a few short weeks, I’ll bask in the freedom and the chaos, the chance to dream and shape something new. I’ll dive into the mishmash of new beginnings and see where they go. I’ll enjoy unexpected mud baths and life with the natural, shaggy beauty of my flowerbeds. My empty hands are itching to get dirty. It’s time to bring on the mess!

A Pair of Penetrating Eyes

Posted on June 13, 2011 by jphilo

For about a week now, I’ve been editing Different Dream Parenting. going through the suggestions sent by the editor at Discovery House and making changes. The process is slow, humbling, engrossing, and painful at times. My thoughts ranged from Did I really write that confusing sentence? to Why does the editor have to be so picky? to I don’t want to do this anymore!

But then something happened this weekend which improved my attitude about the entire process. I was listening to an audiobook by a best selling suspense/conspiracy theory author. He’s written many books and made boatloads of money. Still, I won’t reveal his name – not out of respect, but out of compassion.

I walking along, listening to a scene where the protagonist (male) was in the hospital after an accident and the person who is revealed in the end as the antagonist (female) comes to visit. When the woman enters the room (wearing a white skirt that accentuated her tan legs), the author said, “She placed a pair of penetrating eyes on the man in the hospital bed.”

An image of two eyeballs lying on the fresh, white sheet covering the hospitalized man came to mind, along with several rascally thoughts:

Wouldn’t the eyes roll off onto the floor?
Or would penetrating eyes sink through the sheets and burn into the protagonist’s chest?
Did the sight of penetrating eyes make him want to barf?
What color were they?
Were these the antagonist’s actual eyes?
If so, is she now blind?
Or if they were extra eyes, did she pull them from a pocket?
Wait, wouldn’t penetrating eyes burn right through her pocket?
So were they in a carrying case?

And finally:

Why in the world didn’t the author’s editor catch that?
Thank goodness my editor wouldn’t let that kind of sloppy writing slip past her.

Suddenly I was eager to return the slow, humbling, engrossing, and sometimes painful task of editing that is ruling my life right now. I was grateful for my editor’s eyes which had deftly penetrated the snafus in my manuscript. Every now and then, I wonder, Does she ever take out those penetrating eyes on some poor sucker’s hospital bed?

Down the Gravel Road www.jolenephilo.com

Category Archives: Book Updates