Adopt my Flock!

If you were to ask my husband what it's like living with a woman who is writing a novel, he'd probably say he isn't living with just one woman. These days, he shares his home with lots of females: a wife, a daughter, a Shih Tzu, and two roommates, Cora Rae Jones and Hazel Green. Though the last two are fictional, he comes home to them anyway. They surprise us at church, interrupt dinner and keep me out late.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the idea for this book has been simmering in my mind for about five years. When I left my full-time job to start my career as a freelance writer and stay-at-home mama, it was like my creativity just exploded. Suddenly, I was just consumed with this story. Dig through my purse and you'll find entire passages written on grocery receipts and dialogue scratched out on napkins. I've mastered the art of typing one-handed while nursing, too. What has surprised me most in telling this story is that I don't feel as if I am making it up. Suddenly these moments in my characters lives come rushing over me and its as if I'm walking in some one else's skin for a little bit, remembering what they've seen. Last Sunday, I was just singing and minding my own business, not thinking about the novel at all, when the whole last chapter washed over me. I stood there weeping and scribbling on the back of a church bulletin in the dark. I'm sure the people behind us were praying, "Lord, help this crazy sister in front of us. Her cheese has done slipped off the cracker."

So far the biggest challenge by far has been finding time to write. We decided to set Saturdays aside as my writing day and while that seemed great, it hasn't worked out for me yet. The first Saturday was a disaster that ended with me slinking off to Chick-fil-A for an ice cream, which I ate while pouting in the parking lot, cursing my husband because he had spent most of the day napping instead of helping with the baby like he promised. Saturday number two, Ada was teething on my notes. After a particularly great day of creativity, I rushed upstairs to jot notes once Travis came home on Tuesday and ended up stopping because he was standing at the doorway saying over and over again, "Puppy, poop or baby?" I wasn't ignoring him, I was just in the zone, but that ended quickly. Believe me, my husband supports me 100% in this, so if I've made him sound like an insensitive brute, that isn't the case. Really, life is just crazy and as the wife and mama, I'm usually the ring leader of this goat rodeo. And if I've learned anything the last few weeks, it's that rodeos are never quiet. Never.

Basically, this book isn't going to get written if I don't escape my very lovely, but very noisy nest a few times a week. I've sold just about everything in our house that will hold still long enough, taken on a few odd jobs and searched for pennies in the cushions of the couch to replace my broken laptop. I'm still a little short so I thought I'd reach out to you, my bloggy-friends. I have a flock of 17 birds, all beautifully decoupaged with vintage book pages. Each bird was lovingly handmade and has a special detail and if I can find a home for all of them, I should have enough to replace my laptop and slink off to a quiet corner of the world to write, write, write.

I feel guilty asking you to help me with a project that you know nothing about so here is a brief synopsis of Mother Muse:

Cora Rae Jones has come undone. Just three weeks after the birth of her daughter, Hurricane Gert sweeps up the coast of South Carolina, destroying her late father's fleet of shrimping boats. Though they've spent three years trying to keep the shrimping company and her father's memory alive, Cora's flighty and superstitious mother takes the hurricane as a sign from God that she needs to head North and take care of her own mother, Gertrude. Left with no job, no childcare and only her mother as a reference, Cora answers an ad posted by a woman in Midway, Kentucky who is looking for someone to care for her estranged mother in Bluffton, South Carolina. Though the pay isn't great, Cora is able to take her daughter along as she cooks, cleans and helps Hazel in the garden. But bad luck strikes again when Hazel suddenly dies, leaving Cora with the daunting task of finding another job as soon as she's finished cleaning out the house so the family can begin turning it into a bed and breakfast. As she is cleaning out a closet, Cora comes across a box of notebooks in which Hazel has written to her daughter since the late 1950s. Through these old letters, written by a woman she barely knew, Cora finds herself and the courage she needs to move forward.

So, if you want to find out how the story ends, please hop on over to my Etsy shop and adopt a word bird. Hopefully, it will be exactly what I need to set this story free!