by jphilo | Oct 7, 2011 | Book Updates
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!
by jphilo | Feb 8, 2011 | Book Updates
One look at this post from February 12, 2011, and I knew it had to be this week’s recycled post. Why? Because last week the editor at Discovery House Publishers said Different Dream Parenting will be released on October 1.
And what did I do upon hearing the news? I panicked, of course.
Apparently, I haven’t progressed much in the two years. It might be a good idea to reread this post daily for about a month. Maybe even memorize it. Certainly keep it in mind for when I get twitchy and owly about what needs to happen before October 1.
Give it a read and see what you think. If you have some advice about how to practice what’s been preaching, leave a comment. Until then, I’ll be breathing deep.
September is Only Six Months Away – Recycled
Yesterday my editor said A Different Dream for My Child will be released sometime in September. Instead of being pleased to have a specific date for scheduling speaking engagements around the release date, for contacting magazine editors willing to run articles related to the book, and to share with my family and friends, I immediately panicked.
September? But it’s only six months away, give or take two weeks. So much needs to be done. There are query letters to magazines, articles to write, a website to build, medical and parent support groups to contact. How can I possibly get it all done while getting Mom’s house ready to sell and helping with her finances, working on the mystery novel with Ginger, writing for Facets and Health Connect, preparing two months worth of kids’ devotions for a new Tyndale House publication, and not neglect my husband, son and daughter? Suddenly, my life seemed as convoluted as some of my sentences, and my undies were definitely in a bunch.
Then I thought of my early days of teaching, when I spent much of the month before school began getting my a hot, stuffy classroom “ready.” August after August, I worked myself into a frenzy trying to prepare nine months worth of material by the first day of school. After about twenty years (call me a slow learner), I realized that on the first day of school I only needed to be ready for the first day of school, or at the most, for the first week.
Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from my teaching career. I don’t need to be ready for September in February. I need to be ready for today, for this week at the most. So this afternoon, I’ll look at what needs to be done by September, break everything into doable bits and choose one small thing to tackle tomorrow. My learning curve for the next six months will be high, it’s true, but that’s a whole lot better than twenty years!
by jphilo | Sep 23, 2010 | Family
I am such a sap. If my parents had been given any inkling of the weepy woman they were raising, they would have taken out Kleenex stock and made a bundle of money. Who knows why, but I cry at senior dance recitals, weddings, funerals, graduations, parent/teacher conferences, and reunions – not just those involving my family but those of friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers. I also get teary-eyed at the sight of wheelchairs, healthy babies, sick babies, hospitals, nursing homes, old couples holding hands, parents holding their kids’ hands, the American flag, soldiers, and I’d better stop there or the list will never end.
So I should have said no last fall when the producer of Words to Live By, an international radio program produced by RBC Ministries, invited me to share our family’s story for a future broadcast. (Don’t let the invitation impress you. RBC is the parent company that also owns, Discovery House Publishers (DHP). And DHP released A Different Dream for My Child last year and will also publish Different Dream Parenting.)
Instead I said yes. Of course, I cried through much of the interview. So hard, in fact, that they had to turn off the tape and give me time to blow my nose. More than once.
Well, last week word came that the segment featuring our family’s story will air this coming weekend, September 25 and 26. At first I didn’t tell anybody, because who would want to listen to a weepy woman blubber into a microphone? But yesterday, the nice people at RBC sent a CD of the program. I listened to this morning and was pleasantly surprised. Somehow, the miracle workers at Words to Live By edited out my snuff-snuffs and nose drips so the broadcast is not a blatant marketing ploy for tissue barons.
If you want to listen to the show, go to www.words.net and use the station finder to locate your closest station and air time. You can also listen to the broadcast at www.words.net from September 24 – 30. And from the looks of things, a free downloadable podcast will be available at the iTunes store a week or two after the show first airs.
So have a listen and see what you think. To be on the safe side, have some Kleenex handy. Just don’t pull them out of the box before you need them. No sense making the tissue kings any richer than necessary.
by jphilo | Jun 22, 2010 | Book Updates
It’s official. The contract for Different Dream Parenting: Raising a Child with Special Needs is signed, sealed and delivered. Whew and yahoo!
Not that I thought Discovery House Publishers (DHP) would pull out of the deal. The people there have great integrity. Still, for this former teacher who loves to dot ever “i” and cross every “t” (not to mention put check marks in the little boxes on her to do lists), receiving the final, signed contract was an “ahh” moment.
The biggest “ahh” is the deadline date for the manuscript. Between the daughter’s upcoming wedding and the research intensive nature of the book, I fretted a little, wondering if enough time would be allowed to do the subject justice. I shouldn’t have worried. DHP’s manuscript deadline of April 1, 2011 is extremely generous. Ahh.
I am looking for both families of children with special needs and experts to interview as part of the book research. You can read the details at www.DifferentDream.com. If you have expertise in any of the areas or know someone who does, please send an email. I won’t be scheduling interviews until several weeks after the wedding (July 11), but am compiling a list in the meantime.
Thanks for your continued encouragement and prayers. You are a great source of strength to me. To quote a dead guy named Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” to which I add my own two cents, “but not much else.”
by jphilo | Apr 22, 2009 | Book Updates
The weather this morning was full of promise – warm, still, and cloudless, the sky intense and blue. The magnolia buds sensed the warmth and sent forth pink feelers to test the day. They may bloom tomorrow or the day after that, but the promise is there. They will bloom.
I should have been joyful to see the petals peek through their fuzzy grey blankets, but my thoughts were with a family who recently lost their son to neuroblastoma. Little Braeden was just shy of his fourth birthday when he died early Saturday morning.
I haven’t met Braeden or his family, but my book is being published, partly because of them. When the Discovery House Publishers selection committee was considering my proposal, they asked one of their co-workers, Braeden’s dad, to read it. The editors asked him if a book like it would have been beneficial to them. Yes, he said, it would have been helpful.
The book will be released in September, but Braeden’s life was nipped in the bud. My future holds promise, sweet as magnolias in the spring, while Braeden’s family grieves though the promise of heaven is their sure hope. While their loss remains raw and wrenching, I am praying that God’s promises will be real to them, revealed to them as hope in their grief. And one day, I hope to share letters with them, letters from parents encouraged by the stories in a little book that came into being, in no small part because little Braeden lived.
