A Visit With Author Jennifer Hallmark

Welcome to The Borrowed Book, Jennifer. We're delighted to have you with us. Have you always wanted to be an author? If not, what made you decide to write, and how long have you been at it? 

When I was nine, I received an “A” on a book of poetry I had written and illustrated as an English assignment. The first poem started, “My cat is fat.”  In the eighth grade, I won $5 in a poetry contest and realized I could possibly make money doing what I loved. I took my writing from hobby to career in 2006.

What do you love about being a writer, and what do you like the least? 

I love being able to express my deepest joys and sorrows through the written word. It’s therapy to me. I enjoy working with other writers and all the people I’ve met since I began. I dislike trying to explain to people face-to-face that I’m a writer.

Are you a plotter, a pantser, or a combination? 

Pantser. I tend to write scenes, in no particular order, then put it all together later. I have learned to do a little plotting. It became a necessity when I participated in NaNoWrMo, writing the rough draft for my latest book in a month.

What do your kids think about your being a writer? 

They know? Oh, I guess they do. I think deep down they’re proud of me, though its like pulling teeth to get them to read my stories. Maybe they are afraid of what they’ll find…

How do you get your best ideas? 

Writing Prompts. Our local writing group and online blog use writing prompts to spark ideas. My latest W.I.P. came from these prompts: Faded coveralls, baseball cap, and wedding dress designer. 

Writing is a sedentary occupation. What do you do for exercise? 

Does shopping count? Seriously, when I first started writing, I did nothing different. I soon realized I needed a way to combat the long hours in the chair. I now do thirty minutes of low impact aerobics five days a week, and also ride an exercise bike.

Do you have any pets? Do you own them, or they you? 

We have a Basset Hound named Max. My husband, Danny, and I both spoil him, especially since we’re now empty nesters. We have to keep him outside because of my dog hair allergy, however.

What fun fact would you like your readers to know about you? 

I love football and actually played intramural flag football in college. I never miss an Alabama game (Roll Tide!) and follow the Atlanta Falcons and Peyton Manning. I’ve considered joining a fantasy football league, but don’t really have enough time to dedicate to it.

Thanks for having me on the Borrowed Book!

Our pleasure, Jennifer!

Jennifer Hallmark: writer by nature, artist at heart, and daughter of God by His grace. She loves to read

detective fiction from the Golden Age, watch movies like LOTR, and play with her two precious granddaughters. At times, she writes. Jennifer and her husband, Danny, have spent their married life in Alabama and have a basset hound, Max.

Check out her website, connect with her by Email, on Facebook (here's her Facebook author’s page), Twitter or Pinterest.

And don't forget to stop by tomorrow, when you can enter to win a free copy of Jennifer's latest release, a collaboration with eleven other authors entitled A Dozen Apologies!

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Did You Know? ~ Milkweed as Medicine and Food

As a child, I spent many hours wandering the woods and swimming in creeks. I suspect that my generation of kids was the last who were let out of their parents’ sight all day, to go who-knows-where, as long as we were home for dinner.

I collected tadpoles and salamanders. Unfortunately, I also killed them by trying to keep them as pets in jars at home. I also picked flowers, learned what poison ivy was, and collected leaves. One of the plants that fascinated me was milkweed. The prickly pod, considered the fruit, held seeds that were attached to lovely white, soft down (sometimes called floss) that flew in the air when I threw it.

Milkweed, like so many other common plants, is quite versatile and has a rich history of medicinal and other uses. Here is a list of some of some historical and contemporary uses of milkweed. 

• Infusions of milkweed roots and leaves were given to ill patients to suppress coughs. The same infusion was used to treat typhus fever and asthma.
• The roots were chewed to cure dysentery.
• The sap of the plant was used to remove warts. (This sap has poisons in it called Cardiac Glycosides, which are used in synthetic form as heart regulators. However, its misuse can cause irregular heartbeat, vomiting, and other nasty things.)
• The stem's tough, stringy fibers were twisted into strong twine and rope, or woven into coarse fabric.
• The fluffy white floss, attached to milkweed's flat brown seeds, could be used to stuff pillows, mattresses, and quilts and was carried as tinder to start fires.
• Monarch butterflies are particularly attracted to the milkweed’s flowers.
• It was a regular food item for all Native American tribes within its broad range.
• It’s said the purple buds of the milkweed plant can be eaten as a substitute for broccoli.

Next week I'll be writing about another familiar plant I played with as a child.

********

Disclaimer: I am not recommending milkweed be used as medicine or food. Please do not hold me or the Borrowed Book team responsible if you decide to eat milkweed seeds and get the floss caught in your teeth. I also don’t recommend chowing down on milkweed pods. Besides the fact that they look nasty and prickly, they would feel icky in your mouth. They probably taste bad, too. Some people claim that (contrary to claims of herbalists) milkweed can make you sick, most likely due to the Cardiac Glycosides mentioned above. I don’t know. I’ve never tried it, and I probably won’t. 

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Finding Time to Write by Author Jennifer Hallmark

In this interesting, busy world we live in, time has fewer hours than a cat has lives. We scurry and flurry from event to function to work, shouldering guilt over unaccomplished tasks. Writers are no exception. I read their blogs, facebook pages, and websites. My own life is the same.

Since I decided against moving to a mountain and becoming a hermit, I had to find time to write and still enjoy my life. But how? Now, before you get depressed, there are avenues we can explore in this search for time. I’ll share mine with you today. Hopefully, others will have discovered writing “pockets” and will share them with us at the end of this blog.

Planned time. The easiest to discuss is planned time. This is different than writing a certain amount each day or week. Planned time, to me, is days or hours when I can write and work for long stretches. When my husband is working a twelve-hour shift and I have no baby-sitting or doctor’s appointments, I mark off this stretch and go to it. No excuses.

“Pockets” of time. In my everyday life, I often have more “pockets” of time than planned time. I actually wrote this article during the thirty minutes I have to wait after I receive my allergy shot. I forgot to bring a pad of paper in my purse, so I found a scrap page crammed in the bottom of my bag and scribbled it out. I cleaned it up when I added it to my launch folder during a planned day.

During the night. These don’t occur often, but occasionally I awake during the night having a dream or an idea for a story. I keep a pad by the bed and if I can get awake enough, I write enough down to remember. I’ve gathered material for several short stories this way and once I captured it on paper, I can go back to sleep. A word of warning: Sometimes I don’t want to go to the trouble to get up and assume I’ll remember it in the morning. I seldom do, so don’t chance it. Get it on paper.

First thing in the morning. This is similar to in the night writing except its ideas or thoughts I have the minute I awake. I write them on the pad also. My devotion time occurs before I crawl out of bed in the morning, and often while reading the Word or listening to music, more ideas come and I jot them down.

I believe as we continually seek God first and give Him our lives, He’ll show us new and wonderful ways to write our story or article. What ways have you found to increase your writing time? Please take a moment to share with others.

Writing this article has taken on new meaning as I work on promoting a book project I’m involved in, a romantic novella e-book called “A Dozen Apologies.” This romantic comedy portrays a young lady who needs more time to apologize to twelve men she’s offended through a sorority prank while in college. Mara needs more time and so do I. No, I need to take my own advice…

Blurb for A Dozen Apologies

In college, Mara and her sorority sisters played an ugly game, and Mara was usually the winner. She’d date men she considered geeks, win their confidence, and then she’d dump them publicly. When Mara begins work for a prestigious clothing designer in New York, she gets her comeuppance. Her boyfriend steals her designs and wins a coveted position. He fires her, and she returns in shame to her home in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where life for others has changed for the better.

Mara’s parents, always seemingly one step from a divorce, have rediscovered their love for each other, but more importantly they have placed Christ in the center of that love. The changes Mara sees in their lives cause her to seek Christ. Mara’s heart is pierced by her actions toward the twelve men she’d wronged in college, and she sets out to apologize to each of them. A girl with that many amends to make, though, needs money for travel, and Mara finds more ways to lose a job that she ever thought possible.

Mara stumbles, bumbles, and humbles her way toward employment and toward possible reconciliation with the twelve men she humiliated to find that God truly does look upon the heart, and that He has chosen the heart of one of the men for her to have and to hold.

http://www.writeintergrity.com 

Bio

Jennifer Hallmark: writer by nature, artist at heart, and daughter of God by His grace. She loves to read detective fiction from the Golden Age, watch movies like LOTR, and play with her two precious granddaughters. At times, she writes. Jennifer and her husband, Danny, have spent their married life in Alabama and have a basset hound, Max.

Links

http://www.jenniferhallmark.com 

http://jenniferhallmark.wordpress.com 

http://writingpromptsthoughtsideas.wordpress.com 

https://www.facebook.com/jenniferhallmark  

https://www.facebook.com/authorjenniferhallmark 

https://twitter.com/JenHwrites 

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Amish Romance Book Review ~ The Calling

About the Book

"Book Two in the Inn at Eagle Hill series.

Bestselling author Suzanne Woods Fisher delivers her trademark twists, turns, and tender romance in this delightful and exciting visit to the deceptively quiet community of Stoney Ridge. 

Twenty-year-old Bethany Schrock is restless. Her love life has derailed, her faith hangs by a thread, and she is spending the incredibly hot summer days wading through a lifetime’s accumulation of junk at the home of five ancient Amish sisters. About the only thing that holds her interest is the spirited and dangerously handsome Jimmy Fisher–and he seems bent on irritating her to no end.

When the sly old sisters and a guest at the Inn get Bethany involved in running the local soup kitchen and starting a community garden, she suddenly finds herself wondering, Shootfire! How did that happen? Despite her newfound purposefulness, a gnawing emptiness about a childhood mystery continues to plague her. Encouraged by Jimmy Fisher, she will seek out the answers she craves–and uncover a shocking secret that will break her heart, heal it, and point her to love."

Amber's Review

With the first book in this series taking a while to grow on me and turning out not to be a favorite (although it was still good), I wasn't sure what to expect with this one. I did hold out hope, though, that Bethany and Jimmy - characters whose potential romance I was interested in - would save the day and make this an enjoyable read. And all in all, my hopes were happily fulfilled! While this series does have a different feel due to the uniqueness of the characters, family situations, and the B&B, I felt like The Calling was a reminder of (and a return to) what I love about Fisher's books.

We've got an interesting cast with this story: a young Amish woman who likes to organize things, is a bit sassy, and doesn't like to step out of her comfort zone; her younger sister with a couple of big secrets involving some letters and a crush; a young Amish man who's torn about his future and about his feelings for a certain headstrong girl; and a female preacher who comes to stay at the Inn at Eagle House when she loses her job. And those are just the main POV perspectives! There's also the rest of Bethany and Mim's family, Jimmy's overprotective and determined mother, the neighbors, a group of older women bent on helping others at the cost of a cluttered home, a group of "outcast" girls, an attorney, and a "villain." One thing's for sure - Fisher knows how to create some authentic but quirky characters! And she demonstrates once again in this book that she can make the reader care for them.

I really enjoyed seeing these characters grow, watching them interact and respond to revealed secrets, and observing them live in love. There are some intriguing twists in the plot, with a dash of suspense to boost the pace of this character-driven novel. And the lessons learned through it all are really touching - about the importance of truth and of reaching out in compassion and understanding.

The Calling is a great continuation of "The Inn at Eagle Hill" series, one that held my interest and won me over much more than Book 1. Fisher continues to write fascinating Amish novels!

*With thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for my honest opinion, to be shared during the Litfuse Publicity blog tour.*

Extras

• You can buy the book now on Amazon!

• This review was posted at Seasons of Humility on February 7th for the Litfuse Publicity blog tour. Click HERE to read that post and view the author bio and related links. (Note that the contest has already ended.)

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Winners!!

Good morning, BB fans! Thanks to everyone who participated in our "puzzling" Friday giveaway! Keep all those facebook and Twitter notifications, coming!

This week's winner is: 

Michelle McLean (authormichellemclean AT yahoo DOT com) - Worth the Wait by Laura Jackson.

Congratulations, Michelle! Thank you all so much for stopping by The Borrowed Book.

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Sunday Devotional: When God's "Yes" Is The Unexpected

I heard somewhere this week that when God says “no” to something, sometimes it isn’t a “never” but a “not yet.” I’ve experienced plenty of those, and they can be difficult to deal with.

There are times, however, when His “yes” is almost as difficult. Especially if the “yes” doesn’t come in the way we expected.

And what happens then? What do we do when we feel caught between gratitude for His being with us in the first place, for the fact that He’s made it clear that He loves us and is working in our lives, and our disappointment for certain expectations not being met?

In those moments, we have a choice to make. Will we look at the disappointment, dwell on what we wanted that it seems God has delayed or even shut the door on? Or will we turn, take a long look at all that God is doing, and let ourselves marvel over it?

That choice makes all the difference.

My family made the move I talked about a couple of months ago. It’s my first major one in more than twenty years, more than halfway across country, from a busy city on the South Carolina coast to a small town on the North Dakota plains. Twelve miles north of said town, in fact. The long separations from my husband are over, but we left behind half of our children. (All 18 and older, in case anyone’s wondering.) I’ve had all sorts of questions about the whole thing ... why was this God’s answer for an alternative to my husband’s working overseas? Wasn’t there even one good prospect in the city we’d made our home for so long? Couldn’t we have found something a little closer to our older kids? And why were we moving in the middle of the coldest winter our new friends and neighbors say they’ve had in a while?

To all things, I have to fall back on what I know of God—He loves us, He’s completely good, He’s all wise—and trust Him in it. I’ve not refused the journey, and for the first time in my memory, I’ve tried to remain attuned to His silent promptings to savor each step, to practice gratitude for every sight, every  new experience, to breathe in wonder at each moment. And I’ve found that in so doing, the fears have fallen away. There’s been strength for the rigors of the move, both physical and emotional. People have been unbelievably welcoming to this bunch of weirdos from the South. Our new home in the country, both the land and the house itself, are every bit as wonderful to live in as we hoped. We're even adjusting to the climate more quickly than I expected.

As icing on the cake, an area of ministry I thought long dead has suddenly been revived, and the old anxieties I used to feel in conjunction with it are simply gone. I thought at first that it was because this phase of my life just doesn’t quite feel real yet, but—it’s more than that.

It has to be God’s grace extending in a new, fresh way to cover this part of the journey ... even for the things I still ache over. Because oh yes, the struggle is still there, but I can’t account for the difference any other way. Whether it's because of the multitude of prayers that went behind and before us, I don't know, but I am very grateful.

And by His grace, may I stay that way.

⁵ Blessed is the man whose strength is in You,
Whose heart is set on pilgrimage.
⁶ As they pass through the Valley of Baca [Weeping!],
They make it a spring;
The rain also covers it with pools.
⁷ They go from strength to strength;
Each one appears before God in Zion. (Psalm 84, NKJV)

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Weekly Drawing ~ Jackson

It's Fun Friday at The Borrowed Book!

To enter:

Leave the time it took you to complete the puzzles in the comments section as well as your email address for notifying you if you've won. Winners will be drawn from ALL of the times, so the person with the fastest time may not be the actual winner, but by leaving your time, you double your chances.

Want another entry? Tweet your puzzle time and mention The Borrowed Book, get another entry. RETWEET our Tweet, get two entries!

Post your puzzle time on BB's Facebook wall and...you guessed it...get another entry!

Post it on your OWN Facebook wall and you could get as many as FIVE entries.

It's all a way to spread the word about the great giveaways on BB. So c'mon! Help us spread the word, and have a little fun at the same time. Enter all weekend long! Winners will be announced Sunday night at midnight.

This week's puzzle feature is brought to you by Laura Jackson and her newest release, Worth the Wait.

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