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I’m Looking for a Book Launch Team, would you like to join in the fun?

I’ve never put together a book launch team before. I’ve never really done a book launch, though I’ve published four books thus far. With my previous novels, I just put them on Amazon and hoped for the best. But I’m working with an author coach now, the amazing Alice. She’s kind of like a football coach (but a lot more gentle and prettier too), and instead of learning football plays, I’m learning how to be a real author. If you’d like to be on my book launch team, I will send you a free ebook soon of Farming Grace. There […]

By Paula July 9, 2019

Where I write books…

My first attempt at a novel, I wrote on a little Smith Corona typewriter. It was a very noisy contraption and drove Scott crazy our first year of marriage. He was in flight school trying to study while I pounded on that typewriter well into the night in our studio apartment. Scott wore earplugs and did his best to ignore my late night writing adventures. My first novel, Follow the West Wind, was a western romance Harlequin considered publishing when I was twenty-two years old. “But your outlaw hero is too mean,” said the editor who wrote me an encouraging […]

By Paula June 29, 2019

Would you like to read the first chapter of Farming Grace?

I’m excited to tell you that Farming Grace is now with the typesetter. Meaning soon I will finally be able to put a book in your hands. It’s been a long five years. I began writing this memoir in July 2014. A number of you have been on this journey with me if you’ve been reading my blog since then. In 2010, my literary agent told me I needed to start a blog. In those days I didn’t even know what a blog was and I wanted to write fiction. I had no idea what to write about in real […]

By Paula June 11, 2019

On Raising Gorillas…Happy Mother’s Day to Me

For years, I wondered if my mother’s work was in vain. My boys were animals. Every time I sat down on the toilet seat, my tush got wet. Our sons thought the toilet was just an object you urinate on. Like a tree. I constantly wiped up the bathroom, sometimes wiping up my tears too. It was just so frustrating, pee all over the place, even on the windowsill. Our loo reminded me of the zoo in Munich, Germany where the big cats lived. The smell was overwhelming no matter how much I cleaned or how many candles I burned. […]

By Paula May 7, 2019

When Suffering Makes Life Sweeter

Every book I’ve written has come with a battle. When I’m trying to finish a novel, weird things happen. I don’t want to say I’m getting used to it, but I’m getting used to it. I’m just glad it was me and not one of the boys this time. On my last book, John shot himself in the foot in a hunting accident and ended up in the ER. That was traumatic. I’m down to the wire on Farming Grace and trying to wrap up a final round of edits. Two weeks ago, I took a break from my computer […]

By Paula April 23, 2019

Letting go of the fears that bind us…

A number of years ago, while working in the yard, I found myself trying to pull my short sleeves down to cover my upper arms. Until that moment, I’d avoided allowing the sun to touch this part of my body. That day it hit me, why do I protect my upper arms and not the rest of my arms from sunburn? The four-inch scar on my mom’s upper arm came to mind. My mom has a huge chunk of flesh missing just below her shoulder because she had melanoma when I was a kid. I was so young that I […]

By Paula April 11, 2019

Do the Hard Thing

I want to share something with you that changed my life years ago… do the hard thing. Raising kids is hard. I thought having them was hard. Seven pregnancies all with complications, a few life-threatening, and then the babies. And lack of sleep. Becoming a mom messed with me. It messed up every plan I had. I was too tired to write. Too tired to fix my hair. Too tired to keep up with my friends. I became a megamom because that’s all I did. I momed it into the ground. Putting your spouse first is hard. Once the babies […]

By Paula April 6, 2019