Animals of the Bible

Okay, folks, brace yourselves. This is my feeble attempt at marketing!

I have known all my life that I cannot sell or market anything.  So, you ask, why would I write and publish books?  I can’t imagine anything that needs sales more than books.  No-one, it seems, other than the publisher, makes much off selling a book.

I worked with a PR person who gave me some tools for marketing books and I have not used the tools for that, although I have used them to connect with people.  As my good friend Viv says ‘The 4300 Twitter followers I have are 4300 useless people, if they don’t buy books!’  Well, they are not useless people because I have learned quite a bit from them.  There are some that I follow that tweet stuff that I’m not interested in, but I am hoping that even though I seem useless at marketing my books through Twitter, I at least tweet things that are inspiring and let folks know they are not alone out there.

I am also on Facebook, and again, I am not using it to its full marketing capability.  I post mostly prayers on my business page that I either make up myself, or find on the internet.  I am hoping that those are also inspiring.  It is not selling any books, though, and I have only 60 friends who ‘like’ my business page.  How sad is that?

For those of you who don’t know, I self published four children’s books last year, aimed at the preschooler, to learn the stories of the Bible and each one is told from an animal’s point of view.  I haven’t repeated an animal yet, although I have a couple of different types of birds and cats.  I have donated more than I have sold and to be honest, I haven’t sold a single book this year--the few sales that I had, were last year.

I will be at the Toronto Word on the Street this year, on September 27th and Northumberland Word on the Street on November 7th.  I have also managed to get one of the books--Animals of the New Testament, that features Malah the mouse that lives under the manger --into the insert of the children’s Christmas books catalog that will go to hundreds of bookstores.  So, I have some hope before the end of the year.

For those of you who are interested in purchasing, they are sold by many online retailers, including Amazon.  You will find them here.  You will also find the website for the books here.

I’m afraid that this is as ‘salesy’ as I get.  I truly believe that these books are useful, or I wouldn’t have published them.  I believe that I was guided to write them, so that they could be enjoyed by young children.  God willing, they will be.

God bless you in all of your endeavors!

Family

Good sunny Sunday morning everyone!  I pray that your day is starting out as lovely as mine, at least weather-wise.  For me, it was an especially lovely week, as I got to spend some of it with my family.  The best part was that I got to spend time with both of my daughters!

Last weekend, my youngest sister arrived at my Dad’s home in Napanee with her darling new daughter, and what a little sweetheart she is!  Cavan and I went out to see them on Sunday and had a lovely day and I got to hold my new little niece many times and we had great chats.

Wednesday, my sister’s husband flew in from Vancouver, and Thursday, my oldest daughter had a rental car and came out to meet me and the two of us went into Napanee.  We had a wonderful afternoon and evening with everyone and Alysse and I got to chat about lots of things on the drive there and back.  I’m a little over an hour from my Dad’s place.

Yesterday, I drove into Oshawa to pick up my youngest daughter from the GO train and we drove together to Dad’s and spent the afternoon with everyone.  My brother and his partner were there from Toronto and my sister, her husband and two kids were there as well as my single brother, all from Ottawa.  So, it was a great time to catch up with quite a bit of my family and spend some more time with the latest addition to our family.

Family is very important to me and we are spread out from Ottawa to Vancouver, so we are unable to get together as often as we would like.  My two daughters are just over an hour away and yet we don’t get together very often.  My working from home keeps me out of the city (fortunately and unfortunately!), and both of my daughters, simply by the nature of their work, work weekends, so it is tough to find some time when we can get together.  When my youngest graduates from university, it will get easier, I hope!

Enjoy your family, on this lovely Sunday, God’s day of rest.  I pray that everyone has a wonderful week!

Paleo and Exercise

Hello everyone!  I’m blogging a bit early this week, but you will still see this post on Sunday.  I’m writing it ahead of time because my baby sister is here in Ontario with her new little one and they will be staying at our father’s home, only about an hour from where I live, so I will be driving into Napanee tomorrow to spend some quality time with my latest niece and some of the rest of my family.  I love family time!

Oddly enough, family time isn’t what I am blogging about!  I am blogging about my working on the Paleo diet and having added some exercise.  I will firstly confess that I fell off the paleo wagon in a big way yesterday.  It was Ribfest here in the resort town of Cobourg, but it rained most of the day.  After our chiropractor appointment, we were going to run a couple of quick errands and then go down to the Ribfest.

Suffice it to say the Cavan was really hungry, so he pulled into a Tim Horton’s.  I broke down and had a very tasty turkey club sandwich and the most decadent of all, a sour cream glazed donut.  I will confess that it was delicious, and as the deluge of rain continued, we even bought peanut butter cookies.  I will admit that those were not worth breaking away from paleo for, but there you have it.

We went to the Ribfest much later, without the rain, and succumbed to the special at Boss Hogg’s.  The ribs were not bad, but Cavan can do better, I liked the chicken, and even the pulled pork and beans, but all evening long, I was very uncomfortable.  I have paid for my straying from the paleo path, so much so that I was investigating the Whole30(r) diet.  I think I will give this a try in a few weeks, when I know that I don’t have any events coming up to encourage me to stray.

Now, the title of this blog mentions exercise.  I think I spoke about exercise in an earlier blog.  Co-incident with my paleo journey, work started this wellness program and issued a challenge.  The challenge is to do at least 900 minutes of exercise over six weeks.  For you mathletes, you know that equates to 150 minutes a week, or 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.  Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.  

I was already doing the 12 minutes of the T-zone Vibration machine 6 days a week, plus stretching, a bit of weight lifting and/or Bowflex and had added some elliptical training.  I will admit that this is a bit of a challenge even for someone doing as well as I am with multiple sclerosis.  But I am doing it and I’m even up to 13 minutes on the elliptical as of this morning.  Add to that this great little app I found for my Android called 7 minutes yoga.  This I would like to do twice a day, just to get away from my desk, but so far, I can only seem to fit in once a day.

What does all of this amount to?  Not a whole lot of weight lost (still only 12 pounds), but I am losing inches and, when I stick to the paleo plan, I feel good.  I’m still rather fatigued, but I realize that I am pushing the MS a bit much.

So, there you have it!  I’m working on a better me.  A better me, who still works full time, likes to write children’s books and loves to read!  I would recommend it to anyone!  Work on a better you and God willing, we’ll all be here to compare notes for years to come!  God bless.

Talent

Good Sunday morning, everyone!  Here in the lovely town of Cobourg, there is a beautiful blue sky and a wonderful breeze. It’s pretty quiet, considering how close I am to the neighbors, but perhaps they are enjoying the weather elsewhere.

I was reading my very first blog, that I wrote over a year ago, where, among other things, I mentioned sharing my God given talent for writing.  Well, based on book sales, I am suspecting that the world at large doesn’t enjoy my writing as much as I thought they might.  I have given away more books than I have sold and truthfully, I think that the price point I am forced to set because of the cost of the copies I buy from AuthorHouse is rather high.  But, unfortunately, that’s what I am stuck with.

The good news is--and don’t I always have a positive spin on things?--I have three marketing opportunities set up.  One, I am having one of my books (Animals of the New Testament) featured with a catalog that will go to bookstores for Christmas sales.  Two, I managed to get a table at the Word on the Street Toronto, which will be on Sunday, September, 27th, hosted at Harbourfront Centre.  Three, I will be at Word on the Street Northumberland, hosted here in the lovely little town of Cobourg at their library on Saturday, November 7th.

I am hoping that I do meet some people interested in my stories.  I don’t think my books will win the Pulitzer Prize for literature, but I do believe that God guided me to write them to provide a new and unique way of telling Bible stories to young children.

I remember how much I loved to read to my  girls when they were young and I know that there are many people out there who like to read to their children and would like a new and fun way to tell some of the stories from the Bible.

So, I think that I will continue with the gift that God has given me, content in knowing that at least God is pleased with my gift and perhaps over time, others will see the value in that gift as well.

God bless and may you all find your own God given gifts to share the world.  Enjoy your week!

Go with the Flow

Another glorious Sunday morning!  I just wish I could shake this chronic fatigue because I just don’t feel like doing much of anything.  I started reading, but I just feel like I’m going to doze off.  I did indulge in a nap yesterday, but it doesn’t seem to have helped.  Ah well, time to fight through.  This is even my day away from my daily exercise.  Perhaps I would feel better if I did do at least some exercise!

I am managing to fight through the urge to rest most of the time.  The fact that I can still be upright after living with MS for over 20 years tells me something.  It tells me that a positive attitude and fighting through the fatigue has, for the most part, worked for me.  I know that it doesn’t work for everyone.  I am very blessed.

I realized the other day that not only am I very blessed, but I am happy.  Not everyone has that, I know.   That isn’t to say that life is perfect.  No-one’s life is perfect, but being happy in the moment and understanding that you are where you are meant to be and are content with that, brings happiness.  Now, if I could just get my finances under control.  Oh yes, back to contentment…

Here we are at the beginning of August--more than half way through the year.  I still can’t get used to the fact that it is 2015, much less that we are half way through the year. Every year brings something a bit different, and gee, they seem to fly by so quickly.  I do still long for retirement, I must say, but I have figured out that I need to be in a better financial place to be comfortable retiring.  I just need the MS to cooperate and we’re good.

I also need to find a new level of patience at work. I am working in an area that scares me.  My kids will tell you that I like to believe in rainbows and unicorns.  I believe the best in people.  So, working where I have to be worried about cyber security doesn’t exactly align with that.  But it does pay well.  So, I shall hang in there a bit longer and, hopefully, manage to make a reasonable contribution while I’m there.

So, I seem to have wandered through this blog today, not really having a point I suppose, but it’s that kind of day.  It’s a beautiful Sunday, a day of rest and reflection.  It isn’t meant to be a day for major work.  So, I shall just go with the flow.

God bless everyone and I pray that you find your flow……….