Parabolic Orbits

 

So, I'm a bit on the late side posting this, but it's a pretty big deal and I'm posting about it now. I've had a short story published in an anthology for the first time! And it's a science fiction story. Parabolic Orbits is a collection of stories based on the parables Jesus told, rewritten as science fiction. My friend Sarah L. Frantz has a story in A Time for Everything, a previous anthology by Ben Avery, and when she mentioned that this new collection was in the works she suggested that I pitch a story idea for it, too. It looked like a lot of fun, so I did. I was so excited to be accepted! And since Sarah and I each have a story in the same book, I had to post a picture of us both with a copy of it.

My story is called "The Stars from Home" and is based on the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge. Sarah's story, "The Nebra Sky Disc," is based on the parable of the lost coin. And there are twelve more people's stories in there, too. I had a lot of fun reading them all and definitely recommend the book to anyone who might like Christian speculative fiction or science fiction in general. You can find it on Amazon here, in both ebook and paperback formats. 

Parabolic Orbits actually came out in November, so why didn't I blog about it until February? Well, I'll add a picture of my main reason for the delay, which I consider a very good one. I had a baby in January, which of course was a huge distraction. I've been pretty busy with that, first getting ready for and then taking care of him. He's not super impressed by books yet, but I'm sure he'll be a lot more interested once he is old enough to hold his head up and stay awake a bit longer. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas, everyone, and I hope you have a happy New Year! Here's the now-traditional photo of my "funky tree angels." Those were the search terms I used to find Charity on eBay, a few years ago now, and it kind of stuck as a goofy nickname. Faith was my grandmother's original angel, the one that inspired my book The Angel's Name. Obviously she acquired a name at some point, possibly when, as a child, I demanded that Grandma name her angel before I would come to dinner. Anyway, since I'm the only one who can tell the various angels apart (I have one more that's not pictured here, and my sister also has I think two of them now), this year I decided to label them by making gold sashes with their names on them.

Pollyanna Reprints

 

My best selling project at the moment is these reprints of the first several Pollyanna books. Each of mine is two of the original books in one volume. I published a paperback version of Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up all the way back in 2016, when only the first two of the original Pollyanna books had entered the public domain--all the others were trapped on the opposite side of the copyright freeze. I was a little reluctant to reprint the next books anyway, since I knew they were written by a different author. I shouldn't have worried! Harriet Lummis Smith's books are every bit as charming as Eleanor H. Porter's. They were a bit harder to find than Eleanor H. Porter's books, though, so to get the original illustrations to add to my reprints I had to track down and buy early editions of the books. All but the earliest editions were printed with no illustrations.

Here's a picture of the original copies I bought of all four Harriet Lummis Smith Pollyanna books. It took some hunting to find ones that were both in good condition and in the price range I was willing to pay for them, as they are close to a hundred years old.

The second of these three reprints, Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms and Pollyanna's Jewels, is currently the most popular. There are many more competing options available for Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up; that's why mine tends to disappear into the "see all formats and editions" link on the Amazon listing. The third one, Pollyanna's Debt of Honor and Pollyanna's Western Adventure, was new this January because Pollyanna's Western Adventure, being published in 1929, only entered the public domain this year. I believe I am currently the only one who has reprinted it since it did become public domain, though there are of course still secondhand copies available from when it was newer. But I think people are buying the previous book before that one, which makes sense if they haven't already read it. 

In Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms, Pollyanna is a bride and a newlywed, and in Pollyanna's Jewels, she is a young mother. That obviously makes these a little more mature in theme than the original two books, but not in a weird way. Pollyanna is still her sweet, sunny self--and still getting into trouble in entertaining ways. There's also plenty of drama with higher stakes, though usually it's not Pollyanna herself who is in any real danger. I enjoyed these books quite a lot, probably even more than the first two. 

The plot of Pollyanna's Debt of Honor centers on some friends and neighbors of Pollyanna's family, as Pollyanna herself is pretty much settled down by now. Pollyanna gets to do some matchmaking and other well-meaning interfering. But in Pollyanna's Western Adventure, the whole family is uprooted and sent on, well, a Western adventure. No one seems to remember that Pollyanna spent the first eleven years of her life in "a little Western town," which should have prevented too much culture shock when she goes back West as an adult. I suppose by this point she had lived longer back East, but eleven is old enough to get used to a place and remember it. So it's kind of weird when she makes a rookie mistake like leaving the door open when she just has to go outside and get a drink of water straight from the pump in the middle of the night.

Pollyanna and Pollyanna Grows Up was my second attempt at designing a book cover, and it was my first attempt at formatting a book over five hundred pages long, so it was a valuable practice project. I gave it a font change and new hardback version in late 2023, when I was getting ready to publish the next book in early 2024, but since I had saved all my files from 2016 I could make the books match without having to do a complete redesign. One could argue that I went a bit overboard on the flowers and rainbows, but if you can't go overboard with flowers and rainbows for Pollyanna, when can you?

Jeremiah's Robot ABC

 

My newest book is a thing I promised to one of my kids. When I published A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet, back in January 2023, I showed it to my then-four-year-old and asked what he thought of it. "I hate it," he told me. "There aren't enough robots." Preschoolers are a tough crowd. Anyway, I told him that I didn't know how to draw robots, but if he would draw them for me, I would make him another book. So he did, so I did, and now Jeremiah's Robot ABC is a real book, with twenty-six robots drawn by my son when he was five years old. Since my last alphabet book was a rhyming one, I wanted to do something different with this one, and since my son is at an age when he likes to count things, I decided to make this one a counting alphabet book. That means the illustrations got progressively more complex as we went along, until I was trying to stuff over twenty counting objects onto each page. It was a wild ride. 

Oh, and we also threw in a bit of art appreciation. All the illustration backgrounds are from paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Here's one of my favorite pages--how can you resist counting sheep in Van Gogh's Starry Night?

My son insisted on holding a shiny gold plastic egg in his other hand when I took his picture with the book. That's what I get for sneaking in a photo session on Easter Sunday, I guess. Anyway, he's also happy with our new book.

The Angel's Name--Spanish Translation Available

 

The Spanish translation of The Angel's Name is now available on Amazon! El nombre de la angelita was translated by Amy Hernandez and has illustrations only slightly altered from the original ones. Here's a picture of the new book with the angel that inspired the story--she's not made of glass, but she did belong to my grandma when I was a kid, and I remember once asking my grandma why her angel didn't have a name. She was eventually christened Faith, perhaps because I wouldn't sit down to dinner until the angel had a name. There was also a glass music box that used to sit on my grandma's electric organ, with the angel next to it at Christmas time. One day the music box fell off and broke, and I guess that became part of the story, too.

You can see from this picture that the Spanish and English versions are meant to match each other. I added a banner across the bottom with the translator's name, but otherwise it's pretty much the same cover. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

I'm a bit late this year, but I still wanted to wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! And I'm posting my apparently now-traditional group photo of Christmas tree angels, because I think that's fun (here's a link to last year's). I spent Christmas with my sister, and between us we found four matching tree angels this year (or mostly matching, since one of my sister's is blue). The one in the back middle is my grandmother's original angel--the one I thought ought to have a name when I was a kid, which eventually inspired my first picture book, The Angel's Name. I actually misplaced one of my angels and didn't find her in time to pack her for the trip, but my sister recently bought a new one, so the choir is growing anyway.

I had a particularly wonderful Christmas this year, as we were able to spend it with my parents and sister and also my husband's parents. Also, I unexpectedly got a new job right after Christmas and New Year's, so I've been preparing for and starting that instead of blogging. I'll have less time for writing for a few months, but I'm close enough to the end of a couple of projects that I'll be posting about them soon enough anyway. I'm looking forward to an exciting 2025!

The Angel's Name--Spanish Translation Proof Copy

 

Today I got my proof copy of the upcoming Spanish translation of The Angel's Name, El nombre de la angelita. I've had the recolored illustrations ready for years, but it's only just been translated. My friend Amy Hernandez did a great job--it was a new type of project for both of us, but I'm pleased with the results so far. It still needs to be proofread again for typos and accent marks, but it's very close to finished. I'm excited! The Spanish I learned in high school and college is quite rusty by now, but a picture book like this is about at my reading level. I'm having fun with it already and can't wait to be able to share it!

Light of Hope Holiday Craft Market 2024

 

Last weekend I was in Claremore again for another craft fair. This time I shared a table with Kristi Woods, who had bookmarks and handmade cards as well as books. Kristi really knows how to set a table up nicely! The Light of Hope Holiday Craft Market was smaller than the last craft fair I went to, but I had fun and I did sell a few books. Our table was in the front, a little apart, and we had some great conversations with people who stopped by. Kristi's new book 101 Prayers for Military Wives has an interesting QR code bumper sticker that she's trying to get on cars in all fifty states, and I know it's now being sent to two states that weren't already on her list.

We had a third person helping out at our booth the whole time, which was extra fun! My son was an enthusiastic salesman and said he really enjoyed being there. Here's a selfie of the three of us getting ready for business. I was happy to have my "apprentice" along for the ride. A couple of other friends also came to see us, but I didn't get any more pictures after the beginning of the event. 

Westside Craft Bazaar 2024

 

This Saturday I had a great time at the Westside Craft Bazaar in Claremore! My friend Renee' La Viness and I shared a table and each sold several books, even though we ended up placed in sort of a back corner. There were booths throughout the whole elementary school building, and I'm not sure everyone knew they needed to wander around to see everything. Eventually word spread, though, and since it rained quite a bit we were much better off in a back hallway than we would have been outdoors. I think it went pretty well, overall, and also that my children's books and Renee's holiday coloring book made us ideal table mates. Some of the other booths were also really fun to look at--I think my favorite was the one with a laser engraver to customize wooden objects on the spot, but there were also fancy soaps and birdhouses and coin banks and Christmas ornaments and recycled book art and tons of adorable crocheted animals. One booth near us was all gourd art, which was pretty cool and not something you see every day. And now that I know how much I like them, maybe I'll go to more craft fairs in the future! 

Mayetta Pioneer Days 2024

 

I had a rather eventful trip to Kansas last weekend, for the Oct. 5th Mayetta Pioneer Days celebration. My family was supposed to meet up and share a booth space, but my parents didn't make it there due to surprise health issues (all appears to be well now, but not in time to make it to the party). The rest of us managed to have fun anyway. Here's a picture of me that morning at my newly-set-up book table, wearing my sunbonnet because it was Pioneer Days. The sun came out later on, but so did the wind. I tried taping my book stands in place, but in the end I had to take about half of them down and just lay the books flat so they wouldn't keep blowing over. I did sell several books, so that was nice, and I gave away a lot of advertising bookmarks.

Here's a picture of my kids watching the rope spinning demonstration. None of my still shots from that turned out--maybe because I didn't realize my flash was on, which slowed down the shutter speed--so I took a screenshot from the video I recorded. The rope spinning demonstration is always my favorite activity at Pioneer Days.

The battery for my phone didn't last through the day very well, so I couldn't use it to take photos of the parade at the end. My aunt let me borrow her phone to get a few shots, though, and I like this one of my kid waving at a float. It was a busy day that didn't exactly go as planned, but I was definitely glad I went. 

The Butterfly's Ball--Early Children's Book Reprint

 

 

Here's an unusual little project I put together recently. I found an amusing book from the early 1800s and did a silly amount of research about it, and in the end I reprinted not one combination volume but two. 

The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast, by William Roscoe, was unusual for its time in that it did not focus on morals or education--it was just good fun. It describes, in poetry, a party given by a butterfly and a grasshopper. Many of the guests are described in amusing detail; for example, the snail is mentioned as being exhausted after traveling a relatively short distance to attend. It is estimated to have been written for Mr. Roscoe's children around 1802, but it was first published as a poem in November 1806, in both The Gentleman's Magazine and The Lady's Monthly Museum. There are a few slight differences in the poem as printed in each magazine, and the Gentleman's Magazine version is a little closer to the first edition printed as a picture book in 1807. 

That first edition has very whimsical illustrations, in which each insect or animal character is represented by both its realistic form and a human-looking figure wearing or riding on the insect or animal. Above is a picture of the tired snail. The book would have originally been sold with a choice of either black and white or hand-colored illustrations, and of course I chose the colored version to reprint.

The human-looking figures appear to represent each character's spirit and personality--in the only sequel I could find that imitated this convention, the 1808 The Butterfly's Funeral, the butterfly herself is shown without a human figure, as she is dead. The Butterfly's Funeral, like many other sequels--The Butterfly's Ball was massively popular and had a lot of imitations--was written by a different author than the original. If it's meant to teach anything, it might be about how to conduct a funeral; that seems like an odd topic for an illustrated children's book, but I guess that would have been a more common part of everyday life in a time with higher mortality rates. More likely it's just a game of imagination, though, like the once-common doll's funeral. Maria Flaxman's illustrations, though not as amusing as William Mulready's from the earlier book, are still charming in their own odd way. My reprint of these two books together can be found on Amazon here, but you can also read The Butterfly's Ball on the Internet Archive here and The Butterfly's Funeral here.

In 1808 The Butterfly's Ball was reprinted with a few additional lines of poetry and other small improvements. This second edition was given completely new illustrations in a more realistic style, also done by William Mulready. These aren't as weird and fun as the earlier ones, but they are pretty. This was the version that was considered the definitive one and reprinted in facsimile in 1883.

When I realized there was an 1810 "sequel" written by the original author, I had to hunt that down and reprint it also, and since it didn't fit with the 1807 illustrations I made a companion volume of the 1808 version with the 1810 The Butterfly's Birth-Day. I can't be completely sure if William Roscoe was familiar with The Butterfly's Funeral, but The Butterfly's Birth-Day certainly makes an interesting contrast with it. Both books are bluntly about death, but instead of describing a funeral The Butterfly's Birth-Day uses the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly as a metaphor for the hope of resurrection. It has only six illustrations, but they are lovely and dramatic. The one below is my favorite, with the children being studied by angels in the same way in which they are studying the caterpillars.

My reprint of the 1808 version of The Butterfly's Ball with its 1810 sequel The Butterfly's Birth-Day can be found on Amazon here.

 

The Princess and the Goblin and Curdie--Before and After Book Covers

 

When I need a break from my own writing projects, I sometimes practice my skills on public domain books, reprinting things that I want to have on my own bookshelf. One book I fixed up in 2021 turned out particularly well. Kindle Direct Publishing did not offer a hardback option at that time, but that has changed in the meanwhile, so I thought it would be nice to make a hardback available on Amazon. Unfortunately the document was five pages over the limit for hardback! Eventually I decided to remove five of the blank pages I had put in to make sure all the chapters started on the righthand side, when I had some spare time. Anyway, it's George Macdonald's The Princess and the Goblin, printed in one volume with its sequel, The Princess and Curdie. It has a lot of pictures, too, collected from two or three separate public domain editions of each book--though I unfortunately had to make the colored ones grayscale because it's just not practical to print 550 pages in color. The new hardback edition can be found on Amazon here. What I want to show off on my blog, though, is a before-and-after comparison of the book covers. 

When I realized that Maria L. Kirk had done pictures for both books, with illustrated covers, I wanted to reuse that art for my project. But the scans I could find were of book covers that weren't exactly in pristine condition. I think they were originally matching red covers with gold lettering and pictures done in black ink and white paint, but the white paint had rubbed off quite badly. The single scan I could find of that cover for The Princess and the Goblin had only a few traces of paint left, so in the end I had to copy a bit of paint texture from the other book cover to restore the image. And the red scratches all over Curdie and Irene and the birds looked simply ghastly. It was quite a lot of work to make that old artwork beautiful again, but I thought it was worth it. The picture above shows the covers as I found them, and the one below shows the images restored for the front and back of my combination volume. I chose to add teal to the color scheme, as Princess Irene's peacock-feather fan is more convincing in teal than in red. 

Three Strange Years: Daily Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic

 

My pandemic diary is now available in paperback! I kept the diary on social media while COVID-19 was upending everything, and it seemed important to preserve it, so it's now available on Amazon here. Obviously I've been working on this one for a while, since I started writing it at the end of March 2020. Originally it was simply meant to fight loneliness while everything was shut down, but it grew into a detailed look at daily life over three historic and really strange years. At heart it's a celebration of family love and simple pleasures--novice gardening and other new hobbies, socializing at a distance, and being there for each other the best way we knew how. The ups and downs of life during the pandemic, captured in real time, are never to be forgotten. 

Christmas Angels

Merry Christmas! My internet hasn't been working at home lately, so I haven't blogged as much as I'd like. But I wanted to share this picture of my story-book angel with her real-life inspiration, plus two more "twin" angels--I guess they are triplets now--that I bought on eBay because my sister has the one that belonged to our grandparents (We spent Christmas together this year, so the angels did, too). They do all have their own names, of course. (Faith, Charity, and Mercy, since the book angel is Hope!) Faith was the original angel who needed a name--a previous post with a picture of her and the book she inspired can be found here.  Paper dolls of Hope are here and here, and a printable Nativity stable to go with them is here. Merry Christmas again!

 

Bartrug's Mother Goose Rhymes--Coloring Books

 

Some time ago I was looking for old nursery rhyme books on the Library of Congress website, and I ran across a quite interesting one by Carey Milton Bartrug. Mother Goose Safety Rhymes was published in 1940, but the Library of Congress lists it as being in the public domain because the copyright was never renewed. I looked up the author's obituary, and it seems that the copyright was not renewed because Carey Milton Bartrug died in 1952, before the time came to renew it. (The Library of Congress people checked for copyright renewal in 2019 and didn't find it, and I'm pretty sure they would know.) His obituary and a picture of his headstone can be found here on the Find a Grave website. He sounds like exactly the sort of person to write nursery rhymes about safety; he was superintendent of schools in Iowa Falls from 1928 until 1945, and then he ran an insurance agency. Besides the nursery rhyme book, he wrote an entire series of workbooks about a character called Safety Sam. 

I've chosen a relatively innocuous page from Mother Goose Safety Rhymes to show here; Old Mother Hubbard falls off a chair while getting a bone for her dog, and the helpful moral is given to "Always beware when standing on a chair." Besides standing on chairs, children who read the book are warned against swimming alone, playing with matches, touching loose wires, riding on bicycle handlebars, etc. Some of the pages are scarier than others. Anyway, it tickled my fancy because it's so very... blunt. Me being me, I jumped down a research rabbit hole and discovered that Bartrug and Peters made two more nursery rhyme books, one about health and the other about etiquette. Since the illustrations were done in black and white, I thought it would be fun to turn them into coloring books for my kids. 

My Mother Goose Safety Rhymes Coloring Book, My Mother Goose Health Rhymes Coloring Book, and My Mother Goose Etiquette Rhymes Coloring Book (which are all available on Amazon if you click on the links) are formatted with a blank back to each picture. Not only does that prevent the pages from showing through each other, it allows the pictures to be creatively extended by those who are coloring with crayon or colored pencil. Here is an example page from My Mother Goose Safety Rhymes Coloring Book that has been colored by my son. Little Tee Wee has carelessly put himself in danger by going out alone in a small boat and tipping it over, and my four-year-old decided to increase the danger by asking me to draw a shark on the facing blank page. This was a fun, relaxing little project. 

A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet--Pocket Size

 

I thought A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet would make a cute mini book, so this summer I formatted a 4" by 6" pocket size version. It's a lot more portable than the original 8.5" by 11" book. The extra stuff in the back that I excluded from the ebook because of unreadably small print was also left out of the pocket size version, though, so you'll have to get the full-size book if you want a historical tour of the A Apple Pie nursery rhyme. The more streamlined mini book still has the same information in the back about Kate Greenaway, about me, and about the nursery rhyme, just without the example pages from other old books. Unfortunately the black-and-white picture of Kate Greenaway's dog also didn't fit, but that meant I could include the photo of Kate herself in its original sepia instead of having to make it grayscale to match. And I think she looks more natural and friendly in sepia. Anyway, I am quite pleased with how the mini book turned out. Find it on Amazon here. 

This size of small book makes a perfect prop for 18" American Girl and similar dolls, so I got out my Kirsten doll to take some size comparison photos. My son was pretty goofy about having to sit next to her, but I wanted to show how well the pocket size book fits Kirsten compared to how the original book fits a real child. It's a fun option to have available.

A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet--Kindle EBook

 

Happy Pi Day! I decided it was the perfect day to format A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet as a Kindle eBook, so here it is. An earlier blog post describing this book is here. I removed the selection of historical examples from the back of the eBook version--most of the text in those would have been too small to read--so the paperback is a better choice for those who are really interested in the historical background. But the eBook is a fun, less expensive option for those who want to check out the combination of Kate Greenaway's classic illustrations and my own quirky accompanying rhymes. 

A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet

The idea for my new book A Apple Pie: An Active Alphabet started out with a search for public domain pictures of pie. I was making the illustrations for Baby Ballads: A Family Treasury and needed pies for two of them, so I was happy to find a whole book about pie to choose a picture from. I eventually picked the illustration for the letter P to alter for my project--and in the process I fell in love with Kate Greenaway's sweet little alphabet book. It really bothered me that it was missing a page for the letter I, however, and that it ended with a single page for the last six letters. (See Kate Greenaway's original book on the Library of Congress web site here or on the Project Gutenberg web site here.) I showed it to my son, and those things bothered him, too--every letter certainly deserves to have its own page in an alphabet book. Then I realized that the book's legal status of being in the public domain meant I could make my own version and fix it up however I wanted!

In the end I used Photoshop to create eight new illustrations, seven for the letters that didn't already have their own plus a facing page to go with the original ending. I wanted the new pictures to blend in with the old ones, so I took all the people for them from other books illustrated by Kate Greenaway. Then I decided it really needed a little poetry to go with it, so I wrote twenty-seven rhyming couplets to put under the illustrations. Every letter is used as many times as reasonably possible on its own page and highlighted in red. Of course I needed to read up on Kate Greenaway so I could put together an about-the-author page, and then I went very far down the rabbit hole researching the nursery rhyme itself. It turns out that it's at least as old as 1671 and has a wide range of variations, so I thought it would be fun to select some interesting examples and add a historical tour of the apple pie alphabet. It all took me quite a bit longer than I expected, but I really like the results. Find it on Amazon here.

I love the public domain! It's great that it's perfectly legal to reuse an old page like this one to make new things like the two below, without having to ask anyone for permission. The baby jumping out of the pie on the page from Baby Ballads was originally found in a different picture by Kate Greenaway, and the poetry on both pages is my own.

The Angel's Name--Another Reversible Paper Doll

 

I've recolored another version of my angel paper doll from The Angel's Name, so I thought I'd share her here since it's the appropriate season. The other two versions are available here. I think it would be fun to print them all out together, along with the matching Nativity stable paper craft, and set them up for Christmas. If printed on stiff paper they should stand up all right. They could also be strung on a garland or have loops added to hang them on a tree. although that would mess up the ability to change their clothes. Anyway, I have fun with these and I hope you enjoy them, too. Merry Christmas!

The Angel's Name--Alternate Illustrations

I've had a set of alternate illustrations for The Angel's Name sitting on my computer's hard drive since 2014, and I finally decided to make the book available with those illustrations also. It's kind of a long story, but back in 2014 I was taking Swahili lessons and thought it would be fun to have the book translated to Swahili. Life got in the way, and then eventually CreateSpace, which did support books in Swahili, merged with Kindle Direct Publishing, which does not. The only part that ever actually got translated was the title, anyway, but the illustrations were almost complete. A couple of people asked why the angel came in two colors on the bookmarks I posted recently, and that started me wondering what happened to those illustrations. There was surprisingly little work left to do on them, so now the book is available with a choice of illustrations. The only difference is that the characters have darker skin tones in the "new" alternate illustrations edition--otherwise the book is exactly the same. The new version can be found here.