Simple Lessons

Good morning! It’s a beautiful day here in Colorado, although we sure could use some rain. I know they are getting way too much in Indiana and some other states. Maybe if we ask, the Lord could shift it west a bit?

I want to share with you something special that happened in our town last week.

Their little voices, raised in unison, filled the auditorium at the elementary school. They sang praise songs with titles like “Custom Built Heart”, “Rev It Up”, and “High Performance Mind” that carried a theme of car racing . Decorations included various engine parts, repair tools, and of course, black and white checked flags. One of the highlights of the week’s activities was the pinewood derby, held after each child had custom designed their own car.

Although the words to the songs wore on the nerves of the adults who spent all five days there, the message, reinforced with hand signs, ingrained itself in the memories of the children. They all went home with CDs and I know my granddaughter, for one, has played it a hundred times since Friday.

I’m talking about our Vacation Bible School. One hundred forty-five kids attended. That’s impressive for a town that boasted thirty-two seniors in our graduating class this year.

Even as joy filled my heart while I listened to the sweetness of young voices praising God through song and memory verses, a touch of sadness pervaded my mind. How many times will those little ones run into the guardrail or collide with each other along the racetrack of life, robbing their “custom built” hearts of the wonder of God’s love? How long before their “high performance” minds are stymied by the low-grade fuel that drives the motivations of man in this day and age?

It’s easy to start out on the track of goodness and love toward God and others, but a bump in the pavement, a distraction on the sidelines, a wrong decision, flips us upside down in an instant. We find ourselves hurt and bleeding and resenting whatever it is that got in our way, and the love is replaced with greed and hatred and the worship of false gods.

Keeping our eyes focused on Jesus is a difficult task, not because of who He is, but because of who we let ourselves become. We shift our gaze away from the cross and shove God’s simple commandments to the background of our lives, then we wonder why we end up digging ourselves out of a horrible wreck.

We need to embrace the words to those simple childhood songs and commit some basic Bible verses to memory in order to focus on the One for Whom we are running the race and the prize that awaits us at the finish line.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” – Luke 10:27.

“We love because He first loved us.” – I John 4:19

By the way, my granddaughter, pictured above, won third place for design of her derby car. Wahoo, Madison! Grandma does love to brag!

Interview with Author Tina Forkner

I am pleased to welcome debut novelist Tina Forkner to my porch this morning. It's a beautiful day here in Colorado and the wind is still, for a time anyway!

Leave a comment and you will be entered in a drawing to win a free copy of Tina's book!

Tina, welcome to Patti’s porch and congratulations. Tell us about your debut novel, Ruby Among Us.

Thanks Patti! Ruby Among Us is set in the lush vineyards of present and past Sonoma Valley. The novel weaves a story of three generations of women and the memory that binds their hearts together. Readers will journey with Lucy as she searches for a heritage long-buried with her mother, Ruby, in a tale of remembrance and redemption.


What prompted you to write this particular story?

I was living as a single mom in Wyoming and feeling particularly down about my situation in life when I began to think about my daughter and worry about what would happen to her if I were to die while she was still young. I asked myself a question that amounted to, “What would she be told about me?”

And then like a typical writer, I expanded my questions to the hypothetical. “What if someone decided to take her away from everything that has to do with me? How would she feel? Would she try to find out about me?” And I sensed she would, so I typed out what amounted to a few paragraphs of fiction, or maybe a few pages, I can’t remember, and then I called it Ruby Among Us and closed the file. It wasn’t until I later married my husband that I pulled that file back out and it turned into a book.

Your story is set in the Sonoma Valley. Do you have ties to that area?

For a time I lived in Sacramento, where I attended Sacramento State, and spent a few weekends a month visiting relatives in Santa Rosa and driving through the Sonoma Valley. The beauty of it really grew on me and served in many ways to heal my heart as I went through some tough moments known only to me at the time. I think the setting lent itself to the book easily because I had absorbed so much of it during that growing period in my life.


When did you begin writing Ruby Among US?

I guess that depends on if you count the few paragraphs I wrote when I was a single mom or later when I got married. I guess I finished it about three years ago.

In some ways, it seems like I’ve been writing Ruby Among Us my whole life in my head. I just never knew how everything I was thinking was going to connect. It took life experience to put framework around my writing thoughts.

What has helped you the most with your writing career?

This is a boring answer, but what has helped me most is reading and what has helped me next is writing a great deal of fiction, essay, and poetry.

I am an English major and took creative writing courses in college that I know helped me learn the craft of writing and discover my voice (which I think I’m still discovering).

I didn’t start attending writing conferences until after I wrote Ruby Among Us, but I can say that conferences helped me make connections and learn about the business side of writing and publishing. Conferences are really very inspiring.

I have read writing books too and I’m sure all of those things help, but first and foremost are the simple acts of reading and actually writing that, I believe, will make you into a good writer.

By the way, I highly recommend the ACFW conferences. They are wonderful.

You recently held a launch party for your book. Tell us a little bit about it.

The launch party for Ruby Among Us was more than I could have dreamed. I know I’m blessed to have had a turn out of about 100 people and to have sold almost 100 books. I am truly amazed and humbled that so many people turned out.

I have to brag a little bit on the folks who threw the party. The Laramie County Library Foundation with the Laramie County Library were the wonderful hosts. Not only was it wonderful to have my first launch in our amazing new library building, but they had real Mantecadas, just like Kitty makes in Ruby Among Us and there were beautiful quilts hanging in the reception area since Kitty is a quilter. There were roses and vines everywhere and both the reception and launch party were amazing.
It was fun to sign books for the first time at a signing and to meet and interact with readers. That was the best part, getting to meet readers.

Do you feel the launch party helped further your career? How?

Yes. For one thing, it’s great to get that boost of confidence. Even though we ended up selling lots of books, selling books was never the goal. The goal was just to have a “coming out” party if you will, to introduce me to the public and allow my family just to celebrate the occasion with our friends at the library.

It ended up that the library publicity, local media and some of the local stores really jumped on board to help make my debut as much of a regional success as possible. I think local sales are definitely related to the success and publicity of the launch party. Those sales may never go outside of Cheyenne, but it won’t be for lack of a good start out the gate.

What kind of writing schedule do you keep?

Since writing full-time I try to write early in the morning and again from about 9am – noon. Now that the publicity is really moving, my schedule is thrown off balance. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure it all out, but I know the heavy publicity for Ruby Among Us won’t last forever and then I can get back to my old schedule.

Do you have a speaking platform? How essential do you think this is to a writer’s career?

No. I don’t have a platform. That’s not to say I don’t speak. I speak about Ruby Among Us and the writing and publishing journey because that’s what is happening right now in my life. I can still speak to groups like MOPS, women’s conferences, churches and small groups about things that relate to the book, such as, keeping close family ties, motherhood, etc., but on the most part I’m a novelist.

It’s hard for fiction writers to come up with a platform for our books. We have to be careful because the platform shouldn’t be contrived, but should be a natural part of that speaker’s personality and purpose. Liz Curtis Higgs is an excellent example. There is nothing contrived about her speaking platform.

To me, having a platform isn’t 100% necessary for a fiction writer, but there are many who disagree and would say that I haven’t been in the business long enough to know that. They might be right. J

Do you have any advice for unpublished writers?

Not to ever lose site of the act of writing. Blogs, conferences, writing loops, (planning our speaking platforms! J ) etc. etc. are great networking tools, but can take a great deal of time away from writing. Doing too much of it before you are published seems to me a little like putting the cart before the horse. Work on your craft first. The only way to get better at it is to write as much as possible.

And for writers who are Christians, God is in control of our ultimate outcome anyway and for me, I have to remind myself of that every time I feel like a failure. We hear it and say it all the time, but living it is more difficult.

Thanks, Patti!

Thank you, Tina, for a great interview. I wish you the very best of success with Ruby Among Us and in your writing career.