Deeanne Gist - www.deeannegist.com - Inspirational Romance Author

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Friday, April 28, 2006

Well, Goooooolly

Remember back in January when we discussed different awards books could receive? Well, Bride was nominated for a Christy Award in the "Best Romance" category. I got the call yesterday from my editor. I'm super, super excited and have an inbox full of congratulatory emails (even one from Beverly Lewis--how cool is that?). I haven't been able to respond to any of them, though, because the scrapbook has to be done by today!

I saved the hardest letter for last. A is for Artwork. I'm going to need to construct somekind of booklet for the pages of art. That's why it will take so long. Then I need to make a title page for the scrapbook (This Is [insert son's name] Book of ABC's In Honor of His High School Graduation). Then I need to make the closing page. I want to put a Bible verse on it. I have this great picture of him looking up at the sky with his hand in the air. I want to find a verse that says something along the lines of: If you feel lost, look up. God is right there within reach. So, I will need to hit the concordance and pray and see what Scripture God reveals to me. I'm open to suggestions if someone has one that comes to mind right away.

Then tomorrow is the crawfish boil with all the family and we will give our boy his scrapbook during that event. Then Sunday is clean up. Then I will get to rejoice over the Christy nomination and answer all my emails. The award will be announced at a ceremony in Denver this July during the International Christian Retail Show. I will be there with lots of people from Bethany House, lots of authors and all the other Christian publishers.

Have a great weekend and I will take pictures of the crawfish boil and share them with you Monday.

posted by Deeanne at 1:36 PM 5 comments

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Computer Problems

Ohmygosh. My internet's been down all day. I just spent an hour on the phone with technical support (an hour I don't have). Guess what it was? The internet cable that plugs into the wall came loose. All I had to do was plug it in to the wall. Argh!!!

See you tomorrow. I have some exciting news to tell you.

Dee
P.S. Scrapbook update: I only have one letter left! Then the title and end pages, then picking up the reprints/enlargements I had made and putting them in the spots I had "saved." Then wrapping it all up with a pretty little ribbon!

posted by Deeanne at 5:22 PM 6 comments

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

This Month's Feature

This month the Blog Alliance is featuring Brandilyn Collins' fourth and final book of the Hidden Faces series. "Web of Lies brings together Brandilyn's two suspense series into one chilling and climactic story."

I haven't read this one yet, but I have read the first book in the series, Eyes of Elisha, and enjoyed it very much. It was my first Christian suspense novel. I now have a copy of Web in my hot little hands. Can't wait!

posted by Deeanne at 11:43 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

E-Cards

I love this free service that Hallmark provides. It is perfect for people like me who are very forgetful and who never manage to make it to the Hallmark store in time for birthdays, graduations, Mother's/Father's Day, etc. I send everything but my Christmas cards via eCards now.

Anybody else out there have favorite eCard sites they use?

posted by Deeanne at 12:53 PM 1 comments

Monday, April 24, 2006

To Be Or Not To Be

This photo is now the wallpaper on my desktop. My husband and I went to the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains this weekend to look at properties we might be interested in retiring on. This photo was a taken on the piece of property that I loved the most. It's on the water, faces north and has a mountain view. That's the good part. The catch is the property's a bit narrow and slants down, way down. Would make getting to and from the water a very challenging climb.

This is the view from Greg's favorite lot. No view of the mountains (the property faces due east), but a beautiful view nonetheless. The lot is more roomy than the one I liked and has a gentler slope (though it's no piece of cake to traverse, either).

This is another lot we looked at. Beautiful view, but I wouldn't feel comfortable running around the house in my jammies when who knows who could be right outside my window on hole number five. But would you look at that fairway? Looks like a putting green. The whole course was like that. Absolutely gorgeous.

And thus ends our first foray into looking for places to retire. No decisions are being made yet. We do, after all, have ten years before passing "Go."

posted by Deeanne at 12:40 PM 6 comments

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Retirement? Already?

Retirement is hurtling toward Greg at a surprising pace. (I plan to keep writing for a long while.) When looking for a place to spend our golden years, we wanted some place with temperate climate year round, a lake, a little golf and a mountain view. (We don't ask for much, eh?)

This weekend my husband and I are going to look at property at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Whether we find anything is very much up in air. But it will be fun to spend the weekend together and dream alittle.

We leave first thing tomorrow morning, so I'll see you on Monday.

posted by Deeanne at 12:41 PM 5 comments

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

And So It Starts

Things are starting to happen with The Measure of a Lady. I received this email from my editor yesterday:

"Guess what? I'm holding something in my hands. It's rectangular. 5 1/2 x 8 3/8. Elegant cover. Yep. Your book. In paperback and hardcover. I think it looks really good."

And from our online manager:

"I thought you'd like to see the following reviews for your book, The Measure of a Lady:

Once Upon A Romance and Romance Designs"

It will still be June 16th before Lady should be available "everywhere," but it may start showing up at CBD or independent bookstores mid-May. Pretty exciting!

posted by Deeanne at 12:05 PM 6 comments

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The Heat Is On

It was 92 degrees yesterday and is supposed to top that today. I can't believe it is so hot already. I remember when the kids used to do swim team and jumping in that pool at the end of May was soooo cold. I have 4 teens in my pool right now. Unbelievable.

Remember when I tried to upgrade Dad's computer last week? Well, I tried again today and: misson accomplished. I am just now getting home. I'd forgotten how involved setting up a whole new computer is. Now, if I can talk him into trading his dial-up for cable he'd be in seventh heaven.

I only completed two letters yesterday:

M is for Medical Records
N is for NDcomiX (A faux company my son and his best friend created for all the comic books they were going to publish. I still had some they drew and pasted together from when they were 9. So precious. He'll get a real kick out of them.)

Remember when I gave my husband a pedicure for his birthday last winter? Well, the gift certificate is due to run out this month. So, he had me make an appointment, but only if I got one with him. He's too chicken to go without me. So, I'm thinkin' maybe I oughta give him a pedicure every year ... if you see where I'm going with this. ;-)

posted by Deeanne at 2:56 PM 3 comments

Monday, April 17, 2006

Progress ... Sort of

I made some progress on my scrapbook this weekend ... sort of. I glued down letters B - L. Then I needed to have some reprints and enlargements made. The problem was, I had almost twenty years of negatives stuffed into two huge envelopes and a couple of shoeboxes. I had no idea where the ones I needed were.

So, I dumped them out on the breakfast table and roll-by-roll put them into some archival sleeves I had purchased. Then I labeled them with the subject and date. It took me all weekend long. I had over 100 pages of these things. I now have everything from 1978 to 1993 archived. 1994 & 1995 I can't find. 1996 through the present are in well-marked photo packets with their photos. I haven't yet made scrapbooks for those years. (I'm a little behind.) Anyhoo, maybe I will have the kids store those negatives since they are already labeled by subject and year.

Well, I'm off to do: M is for Medical Records. (My kids are into breaking bones. This one broke his first bone (leg) at the ripe ol' age of 9 months. The babysitter had on socks. Slipped when she came down the stairs. She was all right. The baby broke his leg. He just told us yesterday that for a graduation gift he'd like to jump out of an airplane. Yep. He was serious.)

posted by Deeanne at 10:55 AM 3 comments

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Happy Easter

My father-in-law sent this to me. I thought I would share it with you:

A lady opened her refrigerator and saw a rabbit sitting on one of the shelves. "What are you doing in there?" she asked.

"This is a Westinghouse, isn't it?" the rabbit replied.

"Yes, it is."

"Well," the rabbit said, "I'm westing!"

Y'all have a wonderful and blessed Easter weekend. Praise be to God! The Lord is risen!!!

P.S. For those of you praying for me, I am halfway through the alphabet! Ohmygosh. Do we have an awesome God or what? Never in my whole entire life have I finished that many pages in one week.

None of those pages are glued down, yet. And a few of them are incomplete. I need to cull through old negatives so I can make some enlargements of old photos. I need to take a picture of my boy at work--he'll be thrilled, I'm sure. And stuff like that, but, for the most part, all the design and cutting out and lettering are done. I just need to plug in the photos.

Here are the ones I did since my last report:

G is for Graduation (photos yet to come)
H is for Halloween
I is for It's Party Time (2 childhood birthday parties with invited guests)
J is for Jobs
K is for Kool Stuff I Did In School (special artwork and school projects I think he'll get a chuckle out of )
L is for Let's Play Ball (this ended up being three double-pages because I had so many photos. So, we had a Let's Play Baseball, Let's Play Basketball and Let's Play Football.)

So, keep those prayers coming. I'll be working on this throughout the holiday weekend and all next week. Blessings!

posted by Deeanne at 1:57 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Crazy Day!

I won't have a chance to post anything new tomorrow because I have a meeting from 9 to 2, then another one from 3:30 to 5:00, then our freshman's high school basketball banquet at 6:30. So ... no blogging, no working and no scrapbooking tomorrow!!

See ya Thursday!

P.S. Don't forget to enter our new contest. I'll be announcing last month's winner on Friday.

posted by Deeanne at 8:33 PM 1 comments

Dinosaur

My father-in-law has a dinosaur for a computer. I went up to his place this morning to give him one of our "old" ones (which compared to his, would be super-sonic). I also took an external hard drive to save all his files onto.

I plugged in the external when I arrived. But his operating system was too old to recognize my hard drive without a driver. So, we went and bought some CDs to store his files on, only to find out when we arrived home that his computer doesn't burn CDs, only reads them.

So then I went to the website of the manufacturer that makes my external hard drive (to see if I could download the driver). My external has been discontinued. So, I called their tech support. They emailed Dad the driver.

I tried to open it, but Dad doesn't have WinZip on his computer, so the file wouldn't unzip. I went to three different places to download WinZip for free. All asked for my credit card.

So ... I told Dad I would come back next week with a different external hard drive that I had at home. One that I have a driver for.

Why is it that something that is supposed to be so simple always turns out to be so complicated?

posted by Deeanne at 1:01 PM 1 comments

Monday, April 10, 2006

5 Down, 21 To Go

Well, I can certainly feel your prayers. [[Those of you who missed out on the comments this weekend: The scrapbook for my graduating senior is an A-B-C scrapbook (A is for Artwork, B is for Birthday, etc) and is due in 3 weeks.]] I did *FIVE* letters this weekend. I have *NEVER* done so many in such a short time. Praise the Lord!

I skipped A (is for Artwork) because that's gonna take me a while to do. But I did complete:

B is for Birthdays
C is for Christmas
D is for Dogs
E is for Education (these are his K-12 school pics)
F is for Family

I am just amazed at God's grace. Here is the process I go through for each letter:

Think of a design (which usually takes me forever, but with your prayers is coming quickly and easily)
Find the photos necessary to complete the page (no small task)
Choose background and decorative paper to use (no small task)
Cut it out so that it replicates (to the best of my ability) the design in my head (no small task)
Choose lettering (this is fairly easy)
Cut out lettering (this is fairly easy)
Paste everything down (this takes forever)

The ladies in my Bible study have offered to help me paste everything down since that takes sooooo much time. Therefore, I am doing the first 6 steps, then stacking the pages one on top of the other. When I'm all finished, they will come over and we'll have a big "gluing and pasting" party. Isn't that so sweet of them?

Meanwhile, I have decided that if I really mean that my priorities are God, Family, Everything Else, then I need to put that into action. So, I am not writing at all until the scrapbook is finished. (Hopefully my editor has too much to do today to read my blog. If not, I imagine he'll join in with prayers, because the quicker I finish, the quicker I go back to writing!)

Okay ... now I'm off to do G is for Graduation!

P.S. The little "Christmas Booklet" on the above page is a Christmas project my son did in 3rd grade. I folded it in half and fastened it closed at the top. When he moves the fastener (that's shaped like a Chrismtas lightbulb), then the booklet will open up and he will be able to read what his thoughts of Christmas were when he was 8 years old.

posted by Deeanne at 12:25 PM 6 comments

Friday, April 07, 2006

Go, Fight, Win!

Our baby made the front page of the Sports section. Her high school varisty team has made it through the Regional quarter-finals. This afternoon we play our first semi-final game in a town about 3 hours away.

If we win, we play again tomorrow. If we win that, we've won regionals and we'll be going to the state competition!

Go team!!

posted by Deeanne at 9:24 AM 4 comments

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Prayer Request

Do y'all remember how I said I was way into scrapbooking? Well, I do a scrapbook for each kid when they graduate from high school. I've got one graduating the first of next month and I haven't even started on his book. Would y'all please put me on your prayer list and ask that God intervene in a supernatural way so that I can complete this project within the next three weeks??

I know this sounds kind of superficial when there are so many "big" things that people are going through. But the Bible says that God cares about *every detail* in our lives. And trying to finish this project in three weeks will truely take a miracle.

So, I'm boldly asking for one. Will you commit to pray for me every day for the next three weeks? I would really, really appreciate it.

Blessings, Dee

posted by Deeanne at 12:25 PM 4 comments

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Check This Out

My friend, Michael Snyder, posted this recently on his blog. Now, you need to watch the whole thing to truly appreciate it (it's about 4 minutes long).

Is that the most amazing thing? I am a mother who gave my daughter a bloody nose while playing catch in the backyard because I'm such a pathetic athlete. She cried; I cried; I called my husband at work and told him I would never, ever play catch with the children again and not to expect it.

His response? "You're supposed to use a tennis ball, Dee, not a hard ball!"

Well ... how was I supposed to know that?

Poor kid. She's 16 years old and she still talks about the time her mom gave her a bloody nose. It's so embarrassing.

Anyhoo, when I saw that video I was blown away.

posted by Deeanne at 11:00 AM 4 comments

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Winners and Resolutions

Well, I'm a bit behind on announcing our contest winners. So, I will take care of that now. First, meet our January/February winner: Mary Ann from Merrick, New York. Congrats, Mary Ann! Our March winner has been notified. When I hear back from her, I will post that info. Meanwhile, the Question of the Month for Jan/Feb was:

Which New Year's Resolution did Deeanne Gist achieve in 2005?

Finished and turned in Measure of a Lady one month before it was due to the publisher
Completed last year's family scrapbook (for 2004)
Changed the oil in her car every 5,000 miles
Resisted purchasing anything from mail order catalogs
Hand painted a border in her study and half-bath

Here's how you voted:

37% voted Dee finished Lady one month early
34% voted Dee finished her 2004 scrapbook
24% voted Dee painted a border
5% voted Dee resisted mail order catalogs
0% voted Dee changed the oil in her car

So, what's up with the oil thing? I take care of my car. But, alas, you were right. I don't change the oil as often as I should. And, I'm on 1996 as far as my scrapbooking goes. I turned in Lady one day early (not one month). Mail order catalogs are my weakness--well, that and brownies. I really love brownies. So, the correct answer is ...[insert drumroll] ...

Dee hand painted a border in her study and half bath.

Wanna see it? Here it is:

This is the view from the door of my study:

This is the view from the door of my half-bath:

This is the corner behind the study door:

This is the half-bath:

Close-up of the bee hive:

Behind the door of the half-bath:

Birdies coming to visit the birdhouse:

Birdies inside the study:

So ... there you have it. My big project for 2005.

Congratulations to our winner MARY ANN. She chose "completed last year's scrapbook" as her answer and I appreciate her confidence in me, but I must confess it isn't so. I am way into scrapbooking, though, so maybe I'll scan a few pages from one of my albums and show them to you. Anyhoo, Mary Ann received a free, autographed copy of Bride.

This month's contest is up and running. Click here to enter (there is also a link up on the top right-hand side of this page).

posted by Deeanne at 12:06 PM 5 comments

Monday, April 03, 2006

Ask and You Shall Receive

After I posted the ad that Bethany House will run for The Measure of a Lady, y'all had some questions. So, I contacted our head advertising exec over at BHP--Tim Peterson--and he agreed to do an interview for us.

I am to send him your questions and he will answer them to the best of his ability and then I will post his responses.

Here are the questions you have so far:

Do any of these ads go out to secular publications?
How is that determined?
How is it determined which venues the retail book ends up in?

Now, he might not be able to answer question #3 because he specializes more in the advertising end of things, not sales. At least, I think he does. Maybe that can be one of our questions: What is it you do exactly, Tim??

Any others?

posted by Deeanne at 12:06 PM 2 comments

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