ASHBERRY LANE

(Make sure to mention if you were referred by a friend...)
 

Welcome to our fifth newsletter! Come away with us to a magical land, a place where we are not starving authors, nor poor and unpublished. We'd like you stop by the real Ashberry Lane anytime you have a real hankering to mow some acreage or walk an overweight dog, but until then, enjoy this virtual Ashberry Lane.

If this is your first newsletter, you can view the archives on this page of our website.

1) Membership Update

It's been a whirlwind of subscribers over the last few months. 199 people since the last newsletter, to be exact. Accordingly, we have a glut of winners to announce!

First, the winner of the Ashberry Lane's Huge Book Giveaway--

Sharlene MacLaren!

Shar is a wonderful author we met on Shoutlife and in real life at the ACFW Conference. One of the biggest blessing on this long road to publication is how gracious the already-published writers are to us underlings. Considering how fruitful and busy Shar's writing career has been thus far, we're sure she has nothing better to do than sign up for infrequent, humorous newsletters. But she did. And it was her actual subscription entry that was drawn from this huge bowl of names.

Here's a little bit more about her: Born and raised in west Michigan, Sharlene MacLaren attended Spring Arbor University. Upon graduating with an education degree way back in 1971, she traveled internationally for a year with a small singing ensemble, then came home and married one of her childhood friends. Together they raised two lovely daughters, both of which are happily married. Retired after teaching elementary school for 31 years, ‘Shar’ enjoys reading, writing, singing in the church choir and worship teams, traveling, and spending time with her family, which now includes her very wonderful, adorable, precious grandson, and in March and June of 2008 -- two additional grandchildren!

A Christian for over forty years, and a lover of the English language, Shar has always enjoyed dabbling in writing—poetry, fiction, various essays, and freelancing for periodicals and newspapers. Her favored genre, however, has always been romance. She remembers well the short stories she wrote in high school and watching them circulate from girl to girl during government and civics classes. “Psst,” someone would whisper from two rows over, and always with the teacher’s back to the class, “Pass me the next page.”


Shar has several published works of fiction, Through Every Storm, a contemporary stand-alone (Dec. '06) and a historical three-book series set in Little Hickman Creek, Kentucky ('07 and '08), Loving Liza Jane, Sarah, My Beloved, and Courting Emma. Shar's next stand-alone contemporary hits shelves September 1, '08 and is titled Long Journey Home. Around the corner from that is her next three-book series releasing in '09 (The Daughters of Jacob Kane), beginning in January.

Shar is a an occasional speaker for her local MOPS organization, is involved in KIDS’ HOPE USA, a mentoring program for at-risk children, counsels young women in the Apples of Gold program, and is active in two weekly Bible studies. She and her husband, Cecil, live in Spring Lake, Michigan with their lovable collie, Dakota, and Mocha, their lazy, fat cat.

Second, the winner of Ashberry Lane's Easiest Contest ever is ...

(generated by a random number generator because we didn't want any more paper cuts)

Amy Goettsch! She's won a copy of Camy Tang's Sushi for One? Perfect timing, since we'll be interviewing Camy on our blogs later this month because Only Uni, the next book in the Sushi Series, is now available!

Shar and Amy are both winners in our book, but who are the biggest winners of all?

We are. We spent over an hour cutting up the little strips of paper with all your names on them. Soon the bowl filled with entries. Before us sat a physical representation of all your support for two little unpublished authors. Thank you!

~35 other blogs posted about our Giveaway, including Novel Journey (Never thought we'd get on there until we were published!)
~at least 225 forwarded emails for the Easiest Contest Ever

Because the scale of the HUGE bowl of entries wasn't readily apparent in the first picture, we took another one with us in the frame. Doesn't that give you a better perspective?
That's Sherrie on the left and Christina on the right. In case you were wondering.

Special thanks to James Scott Bell, Robin Jones Gunn, Robin Lee Hatcher, Roxanne Henke, Tosca Lee, Bette Nordberg, Lauraine Snelling, and Camy Tang for donating books for the Ashberry Lane Giveaway! If you weren't the fortunate winner, go out and buy the books for yourself.

2) Sherrie's Shakedown

Since our last newsletter, I’ve been through helping Christina for weeks after her knee surgery, Christmas, being at the bedside of my mother-in-law as she was dying, flying down to Arizona for her funeral, working on my talks for a women’s retreat the end of February dealing with the subject of taming our emotions, receiving rejections in my writing life, and just life in general.

And isn’t that the way life is? Most of it is just the daily in-and-out of living; a run-on paragraph of minutia broken up with semicolons of crisis, sorrow, and disappointment. There are times we wonder whether we want to keep reading to the end of the sentence. But God is the ultimate author, and He’s writing the story of our lives. Not only does He use semi-colons and question marks, but He generously scatters exclamation points in our lives. Those times when we are suddenly aware of how wonderful life is: the joy of seeing spring bulbs breaking through the ground, hearing a grandchild say, “I love you,” enjoying your spouse, having a publishing house ask to see the whole manuscript, time spent with extended family, etc.

Jesus said He came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Abundance is an exclamation point! It doesn’t mean we get everything we want, or that we’re sheltered from the rough passages of life, but that He allows us to experience the fullness of life, both the good and the bad. That makes life interesting and exciting!

3) Christina Cogitates

I can't do it all. Big surprise, duh. I'm so glad we scheduled our newsletter to be infrequent so it's one thing we're never behind on. Exciting things are happening in my writing life (see On the Book Front for details), which means my "normal" life is busier than ever.

I want to have the spotless house and the home-cooked meals that give me such joy. I want to be at every baseball or tap practice with my kids. I want to always have the time and kind words my husband deserves. I want a clean office. I want to finish our home remodel. I want to be a daily blogger. I want to be a serious writer, spending hours a day on a manuscript. I want to be a good AWANA leader who calls her group through out the week and never forgets a birthday. I want to be a prompt scheduler of agents and editors for the 2008 OCW Summer Conference, to make the conference team proud. I want to be a master marketer to please my agent and future publisher. I want to read my Bible through in a year. Most of all, I want to live my life as to please the Lord.

But it can't all be done in a twenty-four-hour day. So I pick the most important things and do them first and let the rest be blown away in the hurricane of my life. Whoosh!

Now isn't that better?

4) On the Book Front

On the Threshold wins the prize for longest rejection letter lapse! We'd like to thank the internet age for making this all possible.

Through no fault of our own, a rejection hovered in digital limbo for three months. When we finally saw it, it was a hard one to read because it originated from one of our favorite publishers. Even harder to get over was that the wonderful editor had given very specific advice and reasons for the rejection and we missed the opportunity to act on it for those three months. Ah, email; can't live with it, can't live without it.

However, we trust in God's timing and were able to apply the advice to our entry into a nationwide writing competition and to the full manuscript ANOTHER house asked to see. Also, the positive comments which accompanied the rejection gave us a confidence boost. If nothing else, we are persistent.

Funny thing, though. In the time between the editor sending the email and us receiving it, we sent chocolate and a silly letter stating when the best times for us to accept a publishing contract were. We pretty much stalked the poor man when he knew he'd been perfectly clear in his declination. No worries, though. We'll apologize as soon as the restraining order expires.

Christina's solo project Undiscovered underwent a 376-page line edit from freelance editor, Donna Fleisher. If you're in the market for a worth-more-than-she-charges editor, please, please check Donna out. As soon as the manscript reached it's potential, off it went to TWO houses who were waiting for the full book.

Exciting times, indeed!

5) Fun with Sherrie and Christina

Do you ever regret having an active imagination? Why is that most humor comes from bizarre and offensive thoughts? Like a card for an Alzeheimer's patient. The front says, "I'm sorry you have Alzeheimer's." Inside, it reads, "I'm sorry you have Alzeheimer's."

Or have you ever wondered how many owners of hybrid cars have ever tried to off themselves in a closed garage with the vehical running. Hours later, they're still breathing just fine.

Make us feel normal. Send us your funniest, most bizarre thought and we'll publish the winner in our next newsletter.

6) More About Us

Do you ever find yourself surfing the internet aimlessly? Then jump over to our blogs and spend a few minutes with us. You can find our online thoughts at The Mother Blog and Posting with Purpose.

Sherrie's been talking about being housebroken, a handsome soldier graduating from boot camp, and sticking it to her. If you haven't yet read it, please peruse this very moving tribute to her mother-in-law, an account of Majory Peterson's death.

Christina's chatted about breaking it down, coupons, not running, and fun videos.

7) Take Action

Remember our goal of getting 1,000 subscribers? Once we reach it, we'll be drawing for the grand prize giveaway.

The fastest way to get there is for you to forward this to all your friends and family, asking them to subscribe to the newsletter, because we don't have a lot of friends. We live in a town of 625 people. But YOU have lots of friends. Everybody likes YOU a lot. So share the love and send them to www.ashberrylane.net/subscribe.aspx

Could each of you get ONE other person to sign up so we can hold the drawing and be done already? Great!

8) Get Me Outta Here

If you don't want to be bothered with any other works of genius from Ashberry Lane, please click the "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of this email and, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, we will remove your name. Wait, that's what we did before we found the great service of Your Mailing List Provider . Now they do it immediately and then we gnash our teeth.