NaNoWriMo Begins!

I won't be doing my writing until this afternoon or this evening, as it turns out.  But the adventure begins today!  Frightening, exciting.  Hard work and long hours ahead.  Here we go!

(Short post, I know.  But I couldn't leave an ingredient list up on a day like this, could I?)

Better than $5 a serving

Today I made chicken, vegetables, and noodles with sauce for supper.  

Chicken - $1.50
Noodles- 50 cents
carrots and zucchini - 75 cents
Seasonings - 10 cent
Onions from our Grandparents' garden - free
Herbs from our garden - free


Meal for about eight (only four of us here now, so we had lots leftover) - not quite $3, if my estimations were right.  Nice.  :-) 

Rainy Days - Perfect Cooking Weather!

(image from the BBC production of Little Dorrit)

It's been rainy here today - I love it!  While I was driving Whit to school, we listened to Andrew Peterson's Clear to Venus album and kept hearing rain mentioned in songs.  I thought that was cool. :-)

Today I have done the following:

-Smashed my finger in the suburban door.  Ahaha, that was painful.   But what could I do but laugh?  I only smashed it because ... well, not quite sure how it happened. It had something to do with the umbrella...

- Made chocolate cheesecake, with raspberries and whipped cream as topping, for my brother Whit's birthday.  Hurray!  He's 16, and quite a fine young man.  I am a blessed sister in each of my brothers. :-)

- Baked chicken from the freezer, since the oven was hot... I guess we'll have chicken again...  Hey, in pita bread! Mmmm...

- Ground some wheat...

- ...And mixed up some dough for pitas, which is rising at the moment

- Washed dishes 

- Listening to musicals and Frank Sinatra

- Spent too much time on Facebook...

- And now am finally sitting down to do some editing/writing.  With mint tea and a sprinkle-decked donut.  Aren't I so disciplined?  (no answer needed, thank you)

 ~~~

Little Elba, how’s the rain in South America?
Does it fall upon the rooftops of the sick?
Do they thank the Lord for coming up with such a great idea
and dream about a place beyond all this? 

~from Andrew Peterson's song, Land of the Free~

Would you like to read my NaNoWriMo novel? Old and/or New?

Life has been busy lately!  Just yesterday I was blessed to be able to show a mother from my church how to make bread.  She has a daughter with so many food allergies it's a challenge every day coming up with anything for her to eat.  Most bread has either some form of corn, soy, or a grain which she can't eat, so the brave mother is learning to make bread which she can eat.  We had lots of fun all morning, and she went home with a couple of kinds of bread for her family to try.  I'm so glad I do not have a full-time constricting job to keep me from doing random ministries like that!   Food allergies are more scary than I used to think, too.  After talking with the mother of a daughter with a frightening amount of them, I can now be more sympathetic when I meet people (and their families) who have them.      

*drumroll*

Now for the news.  Are you ready?  I would like to give more people a chance to read last year's NaNoWriMo novel, Brecken's Quest (or The Un-monstering) Unfortunately I am still slightly paranoid that some stranger might find my few brilliant paragraphs, and steal them, which would be tragic if I ever re-wrote it enough to try to publish it.  But if I know you in real life, or have shown yourself to me to be a genuine person, then I will share my story with you.  

So, if you want to read, or re-read, a wild adventure of a brother and sister searching for the lost King, encountering monsters of all shapes and sizes, friends winged and friends many-toothed, secret passages and magic gifts, loads of corniness and wonderful moments,  and a young, rediculous, happy, encouraging bard named Melod - then please let me know!  My email is rael.henson[at]gmail.com, only insert @ where it goes... there, do you think that will confuse the Dread Monsters of Spam?  I'll risk it for the sake of my readers. ;-)  Or if I already have your email, just comment! 

Or if, perhaps, you don't care to re-read my old tale, but would like to follow my new one as I write it (beginning in 16 days!), let me know that, too!  It's energizing to write for a live audience, and (if you don't want to steal my marvelous *cough* tale) I would love to have you aboard.  

This year, it is going to be a wild ride. (I'm also much busier - it will be challenging to write/edit four hours for work while I have about 1600 words of a novel to pound out afterward every day!  Should be interesting.  Can I do it?)  This tale will involve some old characters (Melod will be back, of course), outlaws, a lost and unlikely treasure, a cook whose ingredients are never right, a servant girl who sees more than people suspect, a young man who's eyes are being open but must pretend to still be blind, and an enslaved nation of people desperately in need of hope and light and truth.  Surprises await reader and writer both!  Would you like to join me?    

Meeting Andrew Peterson

A few years ago, my older brother Sam and I were driving for five hours across Texan and New Mexican desert to visit old friends.  Sam is a computer engineer, a wise and quiet man of thought, so he brought excellent listening material for the trip - talks from the Truth Project, John Piper speaking on God's glory, and a CD by some guy named Andrew Peterson who he thought I would like. 


Far Country - Listen! 


I did.  Oh, how I did!  Those moments of listening to Peterson's stories and poetry filled me with new longing for Home.  I was lifted above everyday life to get a glimpse of the bigger picture, wider and freer than even the vast plains and endless desert sky.  More homelike than the welcome of candles and music and laughter at our little trip's end.
 
I hope you like it, too.



(By the way, if you know me apart from online, I don't have this, this, or this album yet.  Oh, and my birthday's coming up... *cough, cough*)

Little Pretties

 I thought I'd pop in at my blog for a few minutes.  Greetings from my desk on a beautiful Saturday afternoon!  Doesn't this cup of garden flora look delicious?  It smells like a whole field of wildflowers and honey.  Mmm....

And don't candles make you feel studious and excited?  I love how they brighten up any little corner.  They're almost like cats on the hearth, a dog at your feet, or the perfect background music.  Why in the world does a little fire enchant us so? 

 

Here's Little Dorrit the Desk, and the lower edge of a hat quilt that was handmade by my great grandmother.  

Alright, as you can see, my desk is so pretty and cozy that I must get back to work at it. Goodbye for now! 

Am I too comfortable?

Disturb us, Lord, when 

We are too well pleased with ourselves, 
 

When our dreams have come true 

Because we have dreamed too little, 
 

When we arrive safely 

Because we sailed too close to the shore. 


Disturb us, Lord, when 

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst for the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life, 

We have ceased to dream of eternity
,

And in our efforts to build a new earth, 
 

We have allowed our vision 

Of the new Heaven to dim. 


Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, 

To venture on wider seas 


Where storms will show your mastery; 


Where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. 


 

We ask You to push back 

The horizon of our hopes; 

And to push us into the future 

in strength, courage, hope, and love. 


 

This we ask in the name of our Captain, who is Jesus Christ. 

 

Sir Francis Drake, 1577 

 

 

*"The Hostage" was painted by Edmund Blair Leighton.

A Morning in the Life

With all my bookish posts lately, I feel the need to write something more personal and everyday.  I enjoy getting glimpses of people's habits and schedules, so howsabout a "what does your morning look like"  post? Mine's often a little like this:

~~~

Alarm!!!!!! Promptly shut off and ignored - bad habit!  Finally... ok. Get up.  Up.  Up....  Stumble into the kitchen and turn on the coffee pot (if I set it up the night before... otherwise there might be a pot to wash and beans to grind first) and commence to wake up.  Here would be the part I get dressed for the day... if I had picked out my clothes the night before, which I usually don't.  Another bad habit. 

Now Coffee and Bible and sometimes Journal! :-)  This makes me happy, especially when I'm up early enough to spend time pouring out thoughts and prayers onto the page.  Journaling does not make one more spiritual,  and the words of Scripture are far more priceless than any feeble prayer or thought I could scribble.   But for me it's an amazingly rich and rewarding discipline. When I get beyond mechanically reading to actually "seeing," the real excitement and wonder begins.  And the best way I've found to do that is to write to the Author, to ask Him about it and try to say it back to see if I understand, and to record my life in little marks as a way to tangibly offer myself back to Him.  Sometimes the morning is rushing, and distractions fill my head, and nothing makes it onto the page.  And that's alright, because there are no commands about journaling or Quiet Time At Six A.M. Or Thou Art Not A Christian.  God doesn't show up in the morning between 5 and 7 and then disappear for the rest of the day.

About 6:30, time to make lunches for the Bob and the Mother!   Usually sandwiches, fruit, sometimes yogurt and cookies...  Pumpkin cookies today, which I actually made last night!  Haven't cooked enough lately, so I was excited (as were a few other folks around here, I think!)   They stay at school for a huge part of the day, so they need lots of sustanence!  The Mother stays busy teaching Latin and preparing and grading, and Bob sits discussing in classes like Greek and Logic and Great Books and Algebra and Bible and History.  Bob also studies up at school and later runs with the cross country team, which practice ends around 5-5:30, so he needs a LOT of food.  He's a bit like a Hobbit who has drank gallons of Ent water, who also runs all the time and is decidedly not rounded.  Just imagine.  

Breakfast! Today it was eggs and pumpkin banana bread.  Sometimes this is our quiet little family time at the kitchen table, when we eat together and talk, but today it didn't really happen.  I wonder why? We all seemed a bit distracted and rushed...  Oh, and  uh...I was probably too distracted on my laptop at the kitchen table to invite sitting and talking.    Oops.   

And then they're out the door, and the house is still.   Now, on to the stuff of the day!   I need to write for work for about five hours, water plants and do some cleaning, maybe make some pizza dough for tonight, and do a little brainstorming and work for something that's happening tomorrow...  It might not all get done.  That's the potentially frustrating beauty of this job - flexibility!   May I use it as a blessing today, and not a curse.   
 
So, that's just a bit of my flawed morning, lived by a flawed girl, but blessed and led by my Father in so many good ways which I don't deserve.  

I pray you have a blessed and exciting day, my readers!   Remember, the Lion is not safe.   But He is good.

~~~

P.S.  My brother Zach, who has been gone nearly 2 months, just returned from Peru!  He had the coolest beard, but is back at work today so I'm afraid it's gone now. Praise God for his safe return and all his adventures!  

Review of Sir Dalton and the Shadow Heart

I was given the opportunity to do another review for a free copy of a book, this time for the Sir Dalton and the Shadow Heart blog tour.   This is too much fun!  I feel like a real writer, doing all these reviews. ;-)

Four or five years ago, I borrowed and read the first three books of Chuck Black’s Kingdom series.  While the writing was not great, the storytelling swept me away, and the pictures of Biblical truths had me eagerly rereading Scripture to savor the source of the echoes.  Each book ended with the piano music to a haunting (but not too difficult) song, which I simply loved.   

Chuck Black has been off my radar for a few years, but recently I discovered he’s still writing books set in the world of Arrethtrae, and I suddenly found the third of his second series in my hands.  I usually refuse to start in the middle of a series, but I couldn’t find copies of the first two in time and had to just jump in.  And in The Knights of Arrethtrae series, each book focuses on different characters, making them more episodic than epic.  There’s an epic level, of course, but it’s explained in the first few pages.

Sir Dalton’s story was a decent kids' adventure, an allegory full of medieval motifs like swords and knights and battle.  The main character learned some important things about being a Knight of the King, and there were some great pictures of spiritual principles about doubt, faith, friendship, and freedom.  

Most of the time I felt it was a bit too heavy-handed on the allegory to get let readers fully immerse themselves in the story, but when I did get lost in it, it was wonderful.  While allegory is not my favorite form of story, I don’t think it's evil.  Sometimes formulas and direct correlations are helpful, sometimes they are just dry and distracting.  

For a fairly short, kid-friendly book, Sir Dalton and the Shadow Heart was a thoughtful look at doubt in the life of Christians and how to combat it by knowing Christ and His Word well.  For timeless, better-written (but more challenging) allegory, find Pilgrim’s Regress or The Faerie Queene.

Beware Talking Coffee Containers

I'm already enjoying my new shiny NaNoWriMo travel mug. It's a lovely satiny brown, with a cheery blue NaNoWriMo logo on the side and the word "AUTHOR" beneath proudly proclaiming my fondness and ability of madly writing a novel in a month.

But last night as I rubbed its smooth metallic interior, and listened to the pleasant swooshing sound made by thwopping the lid on and off, I practically heard it talk. It was sneakily suggesting it could be My Precious, and it would make me very happy, and no one else must touch my shiny new present, oh no they must not...

Rather creepy, let me tell you, to almost hear inanimate objects say things like that.

I think letting other people use it might be a good way to combat its scheme to possess me. Here's another way - I can tell on it (er, really on myself) to God:

Lord, loosen in me the hold of visible things;
Help me to walk by faith and not by sight;
I would, through thickest veils and coverings,
See into the chambers of the living light.
Lord, in the land of things that swell and seem,
Help me to walk by the other light supreme,
Which shows thy facts behind man's vaguely hinting dream.

~George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul ~

I have a feeling things are talking to me more often than I realize, and too often, I am obeying their commands like a witless slave.

But though we can't see beyond the Veil yet, we can choose to trust God that there just may be far superior coffee containers there. And perhaps (but this is too wild!), just perhaps our attention will be so captured by such amazing and delightful Beings (One in particular), that we won't be thinking of coffee at all.

So how can I use my travel mug for God's glory? How can I be a faithful steward of this temporary thing that is either my tool... or my master? These are questions I ask myself, when at the back of my mind I know the answer:

"Stop writing this weird blog post, Rael, and get after the work set before you today, before the coffee is old and molding in that nice new mug of yours!"

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." ~Matthew 6:19-21~

Smith of Wootton Major

Yet another book review! I know, I need to stop reading and do more writing of my own books. ;-)

Smith of Wootton Major (which I read last night for the second time) is one of J. R. R. Tolkien's lesser-known little stories. It's about several cooks, an apprentice named Alf, a blacksmith's son (who grows up to be the Smith of the title), Faery, a silver star, and the Great Cake. But it's actually quite serious, and there is much to ponder here regarding worlds beyond our every day, and imagination and creativity and vision, and criticism, and beauty and sadness.

But, it's also just a great little fairy tale. The most important person in the town of Wooton Major is the Cook, so of course it has to be interesting. ;-) No dragons are fought, and no one dies except for natural deaths, but there is somehow more peril here than in Farmer Giles of Ham, of a different (and not necessarily bad) sort. It is a fairly slow and quiet story, fairly short, and a good one to read, ponder, savor, and then sigh fondly about after you're finished.

If you feel in need of a thoughtful little story, you might consider giving this one a try. Then let me know what you thought!


(This is not the edition I own, but I wanted to mention that the Pauline Baynes illustrations, which are in mine, are delightful. She adds such a wonderful touch to books.)

Last night I finished reading Worlds Unseen. Amazing. I'll try to do a review soon.

Today I shall be busy writing for work, going to the eye doctor, baking potatoes, and later on going to AWANA at church. And somewhere in there I need to squeeze about four errands. Busy busy!

I am trying to blog every day. They say say writers should. But I can't think of anything else of interest to share at the moment, so farewell!

Happy Birthday to two famous heroes!

Well, today is the birthday of two of "the most famousest of hobbits (and that's sayin' a lot)" - Bilbo and Frodo Baggins!

Yay!

One of these days I want to throw an official hobbit party, complete with lots of food, maybe a reading from Fellowship of the Ring, a "no shoes allowed unless you're Gandalf, which you're not" rule, and presents for everyone who comes. But not this year.

I am planning on cooking up some mushrooms to go with supper, though. ;-) And since the weather's turned so lovely and cold, I'll probably be wearing my cloak most of the day... and going barefoot, of course. ;-)



Hobbit Day (Wikipedia)
Hobbit Day and Tolkien Week

Writing, Reading, and the North Wind

Last night I did something very frivolous. I ordered the NaNoWriMo travel mug, all for myself. *guilty grin* I had considered it before, but it seemed wasteful. But last night, I just did it. So there. I am not under a law to never buy nice liquid-holding containers. Well, but wouldn't a NaNoWriMo T-shirt be better, I pondered? It sounded more excusable. But I decided - Nope. A mug will be far more useful to me, and more fun. This is an amazing mug. I plan to make it pay its own way over many, many years of supplying me with warm caffeinated fluids.

Today I wrote for work most of the morning and a little into the afternoon. Then I did some dishes and a tinsy bit of housework while listening to Adventures in Odyssey, and then I settled myself on the floor with pages of story spread out, reviewing story bits I barely remembered and trying to make sense of a decent plot out of it all. Not there yet! This is one reason I so regret not finishing my first NaNoWriMo story. Once you loose the flow and forget where you were going, it's immensely difficult to pick it back up and finish the thing. At least for me. Especially when I tried a while back...meaning I now have at least three different versions to sort through. It could take a while.

Then the rest of this evening, while eating some amazing vegetable soup made by my lovely Mother, I have been swept away in Worlds Unseen, a fantasy novel by a young lady named Rachel Starr Thomson. She is a bit older than I am and still lives happily at home with her family. She has become a very inspiring example to me of the both dependence on family and of the energetic productivity a young lady can thrive in, instead of just sitting around waiting for life to start at marriage or diving off on her own lonely career. I have grown to respect and admire Rachel over the years, first through her thoughtful posts on Boundless, but also on her own blog, which I link to in my sidebar.

Rachel's book, Worlds Unseen, is amazing, and the first book is free to download. Beware, though. If you like well-writen fantasy from a Biblical worldview, it will suck you in! I already know I will be buying the second book (and possibly a hard copy of the first).

The air has been still and warm most of today and this evening as we all waited for the predicted cold front. No wind, no wind... But a few minutes ago, I heard it. The trees rushed as the North Wind came sweeping through branches and fences, proclaiming in wild and familiar voice the coming of cold. It was a thrill to recognize it's coming. I forget... How I forget!

More writing tomorrow, hopefully of both work and fun, and perhaps I'll finish the marvelous story about Maggie and her assorted friends, and the strange and wonderful and frightening world she lives in.

Oh, and tomorrow...er, today (I need to go to bed!) is exciting for another reason, too. Can you guess? Find out in my next post! Here's a clue: it has to do with a two literary characters who share something.

Because I love quotes...

These are only a few of many that struck me from the first few chapters. Enjoy!

Janner missed his home... He missed the rhythm of life at the cottage. He missed the hot meals, the slow change of the land as the seasons turned, and the family of birds that nested in the crook above the door where he, Tink, and Leeli would inspect the tiny blue eggs each morning and each night, then the chicks, and then one day they would look in sad wonder at the empty nest and ask themselves where the birds had gone. But those days had passed away as sure as the summer, and whether he liked it or not, home was no longer the cottage. It wasn’t Peet’s tree house, either. He wasn’t sure he had a home anymore.

North! Or Be Eaten, pages 2-3

Podo and Leeli shared a special bond, partly because each of them had only one working leg and partly because of the ancient affection that exists between grandfathers and granddaughters.

North! Or Be Eaten, page 6

“I’m parched, to paraphrase the wise words of Lou di Cicaccelliccelli.”

North! Or Be Eaten, page 10

Boys sometimes forget that before one leaves on an adventure, if at all possible, one must pack. There are situations in which packing is secondary – such as escaping a burning building – but if there is time to plan and arrange and discuss before leaving, then it is a fact of life that grownups will do so. When children say it’s time to leave, they mean “It’s time to leave.” When grownups say so, they really mean, “It’s time to begin thinking about leaving sometime in the near future.”

North! Or Bea Eaten, page 14

“The digtoad (bumpy) is one of the few creatures in Aerwiar that poses no threat to humans, except perhaps to those humans for whom moist stretchy, warty skin is fatal to the touch."

~ Bahbert Ollister Pembrick