The comments on yesterday’s post were so beautiful and inspiring to me. I’m learning one of my favorite questions to ask writers is the question we asked yesterday. Your answers were perfection. But back to business. The 10 winners of Mary Demuth’s 11 Secrets of Getting Published are:

Anna K.
Kim VB
Katie
Genie blazi
Hannah
La Donna
Beth (A Mom’s Life)
Charlotte
carissa
Vicki

Congrats! I will be notifying all of you via email on how to claim your prize. In other news, we’re gearing up around here for 31 days! Tomorrow is the big day and I hope you’ll be back for 31 days to Change the World. It will be epic. Ish.

The winners of a signed copy of Grace for the Good Girl are: Just B @ Love Where You Live, Rae, Amanda, Kelli , and Jennifer D. Please email me at emily(at)chattingatthesky(dot)com and put “book winner” in the subject line. Please include your mailing address  in the email. I hope you enjoy the book!

 

The winners of a copy of Shaun Groves’ Third World Symphony are: Brooke, Shannon@Chickens in My Kitchen, Becky J., Krissa, and Diane Bailey. Please email me at emily(at)chattingatthesky(dot)com and put “CD winner” in the subject line. Please include your mailing address in the email. I hope you enjoy the CD!

The Relevant Conference :: Tickets go on sale at midnight EST on March 1. And that means on the east coast you have to stay up late on February 28th to buy them. So really, they go on sale February 28th really late at night. That always confuses me, the midnight thing. Is it today? Is it tomorrow?

Lara Williams Grace Story :: My friend in real life, Lara, tells a part of her story at Stacey’s place.

Carlotta :: I’ve recently discovered a lovely blog called Pastor’s Girl’s Ponderings. She takes beautiful photos, writes lovely words. And she is only 15. Oh – and I’m linking to her self-portrait challenge tonight because I just saw it and I have a photo of me and my big self up there at the top.

Stephanie :: Have you met Stephanie? She co-founded (in)courage with Holley Gerth, and now she has started her own business. She is a creative mastermind, and her passion is to help you bring out yours.

Sarah Markely :: says “conjuring desire where it has flown is almost an impossible task.” Her words on this are  like water and yes.

Let me know if you plan to go to Relevant! I’ll be there too, and we can chat it up.

I shared on my Facebook page that I cried during The Dog Whisperer last night. I know. What is happening to me? I guess that dog is working his way in. All that to say, I now have a Facebook page for Chatting at the Sky. I’ve had it for a few weeks, but haven’t really told you about it.

I’m trying to keep my personal profile personal as there is a lot of identifying information on there and I’d like to keep my kids names private from the blog. So, I thought it was time to separate the two. If you’d like to keep in touch on Facebook, you can like Chatting at the Sky here. And the dessert has nothing to do with anything, but doesn’t it look good? It’s from a date night a few months ago. That was a good night.

I’ve been weepy today as the girls are off to school and we saw their kindergarten teachers from last year in the hallway and they were nervous/excited/happy and a mama just gets weepy on the first day of school just because. And the dog just broke a lamp. How does a dog break a lamp? By being an animal in the house, that is how. I’m gonna go find me some dessert.

The winner of Marybeth Whalen’s book The Mailbox is Heathalee of Butterfly Genes. Congrats! I sent you an email so check your inbox. Aren’t free books the best?

Home from Charlotte, it will of course take me about a week to process through She Speaks in my head. I will say there was graciousness and loveliness exuding from the pores of the women in my session for which I am eternally grateful.

I took exactly 9 photos the entire weekend and one of them was of me with these two sweet things. Emily is on the left and Brittany, the right. Emily has already been able to process some of what she’s been learning and it is worth a click over to check her out. These two are both super cute and I almost believed I was their age for at least one meal.

My editor Andrea Doering spoke in my session as well, and she had great things to say about what editors are looking for when they listen to authors pitch their books. I think her perspective was really helpful and I would love to share some of the things she and I shared in our session. Just not today. Today is re-entry day.

And let me tell you, I need a re-entry day because conferences? They suck the smart right out of me. Do you ever find that when you get around people, you do really weird things that you would never do in a normal situation? Take this for example:

This is me and Mary DeMuth. You know, the one I want to be when I grow up? Well. There I am with Mary and what do I have in my hand? A book Mary wrote? No. A book someone else* wrote. But inches from the book someone else wrote is the book that Mary wrote. Not just any book, her memoir book. Her beautiful, redemptive, difficult-but-worth-it read, Thin Places. Now, I already have a copy, so I’m thinking Oh, I’ll leave that for someone else. But hello? There is Mary. WITH A PEN IN HER HAND. Ready to sign a copy of her memoir. And I could have been all Hey Mary, I’d love to have a signed copy of your memoir because that is all kinds of awesome. But no. Instead I have to put me and my big self and someone else’s big book right next to her and get a photo. And not get a book. Because I was under the influence of conference brain-suck. In my defense, I had just finished teaching my session and I had no common sense left up there. But still.

So if you ever go to a conference and you get the chance to have one of your favorite writers sign their memoir, don’t sit next to them with someone else’s signed book in your hands and get a photo without getting a signed copy of their book. Especially when the books are free. Did I mention that?

Thank you all for your words of support and encouragement. I was blessed to be a part of such a great conference and now I’m also feeling blessed to be home. So come back tomorrow for Tuesdays Unwrapped, my favorite day of the week. After being away, I’m seeing those moment-gifts more clearly. It’s true what they say about absence and the heart.

*Christa Allan‘s book is the one I’m holding (Walking on Broken Glass) and I look forward to reading it!

The blog has been down for nearly 48 hours. I know. It was something about a server and a host and a gobleneckyhohaha. I don’t know. Translated that means uh, oh. I hope it’s not gone forever. It isn’t. Yay. But because it was down, I had no access to it at all. Not the dashboard, the drafts, my cpanel. Nothing. So I’m playing catch up this morning, and it’s Tuesday. I plan to have Tuesdays Unwrapped up today, hopefully by 10 am EST. Come back and link up then!

“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.” -Irene Peter

Remember that post I did on change a few weeks ago? This might be a good time to read it again. {wink}. It was simply time for a change. What you saw on the former design was lovely (I thought) but what it lacked were things that you could not see.

If you miss the old design, I at least hope you will be able to appreciate the searchable archives and the ease of use of this new one. Darcy has worked her little fingers down to the bone while I have asked for minutia with fonts and sizes and coloring. She is a gem wrapped up in gold topped with a cherry and sprinkled with magical fairy dust. And? Look what she made.

And for Tuesdays.

And for when you need reminding.

It’s not all the way finished, so check back when you can. I am so happy to have something that both looks pretty and works well. And to have Darcy. She is every bit as helpful as everyone says. And then, a little bit more.

title quote from Price Pritchett.

Thanks to everyone who joined up on the Glimpses of Home linky. That was fun, no? I’m not sure I can ever go back to non-image linkies now. So tomorrow for Tuesdays Unwrapped? Image linkies. See you then? Notice all my questions? They aren’t really questions.

Except this one. If you don’t mind taking 2 seconds to answer, that would be fantastic. If you are reading in a reader, you will have to click over. It is only one question, so it won’t take any time. Promise.

The nights have been late and the rooms have been loud. Tomorrow we leave Nashville for home. I look forward to de-briefing on BlissDom soon-ish. Unitl then, link up with Blessed Moon. She wasn’t there, either.

You have all made me cry in a good way this week. Thank you for your overwhelming support and enthusiasm about this book thing. I have indeed started to actually write and I am beginning to realize how much fun this is going to be! Many of you asked about the publishing process and I’m working on a post to tell you what I’ve learned. I am not an expert by any definition, but I can certainly direct you to those who are.

In brainless news, this girl here? Love her voice. You should give her a listen.

And just as fun but completely unrelated, my friend Amy has been doing a tour of her house on her blog and you simply have to go nose around over there. And? She and her husband basically did all the work themselves.  Here is the first post.

image from Playing Sublimey

Finally, Amber wrote a lovely post that she calls a non-post (but we know better) on writing and such. She asks a question at the end and since I’m on a panel with her at BlissDom in a few weeks, I would love to hear what you have to say. I always love to hear what you have to say.