“The RoseBouquet”

My head’s not together enough to come up with an article for this spot this week. If you don’t mind, I’ll take a leave of absence.

To read sample chapters of my book online, start at
http://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/rsr/RSR-index.html

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer;
http://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/rsr/orderpage.html
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use;
http://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/RSR.html

Every year, the first or second Sunday of December, there is a Carol Festival in our local school gym, put on by four participating churches. I always look forward to this. Some years each church has a choir practiced up, or sometimes they have smaller singing groups, even the school prepares a children’s choir. This year they tried the mass choir idea again.

The turnout was not so good, so I suspect people like to come hear their own family members in a particular choir. Personally, I thought the mass choir idea was good in that there would be less of a spirit of competition, and more cooperation.

Anyway, I often end up sitting beside someone that I haven’t talked to for years, or have never met before. This time I was beside a nice retired lady, who was friendly enough to ask me some questions. She saw that I was taking notes, and asked if I kept a journal. I assured her that I do, but this was simply so I could email some friends abroad about this service.

She mentioned that she always records highlights at the end of the day, and if the weather has been unusual. I told her of my Gran’ma Kroeker and her mother’s step-mother’s journal (both of which I have translated), and that they used to do that too. “But,” I said, “I myself just jot down three blessings of the day before I turn out the light at night.”

“What if something bad has happened?” she asked.

The service was about to begin, but I quickly whispered back, “Then I ask myself, what’s the blessing in this?”

Joyce, the choir director, had told me in advance that there would be an opportunity to come join the choir at the end to sing the old German/Dutch Christmas anthem, “Der Friedensfurst.” (The Prince of Peace). I love that song. It is always sung at the end of our Christmas Day service in our church and anyone may go up to participate, so even though few others joined us, I went up and sang as heartily as I could with the choir. It felt great. Now the Christmas season has officially begun for me.

Afterwards in the hall as we were heading for the door, I asked this lady her name. Turns out she’s the mother of one of the fellows I went to school with years ago. I’d forgotten his first name, but she said it was Roger.

I’m really grateful to those who have written and called to say they have enjoyed reading my gift e-book, 13 Meditations for Christmas. That’s what it was meant to do, give you pleasure. You may also freely pass this gift along to other friends. Simply send them an email to tell them about it, with this link; Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/Library/ebks/C/13-Meditations.zip

I’ve got another gift ready for you this week. Minding my tight budget, I decided several years ago, to use my writing skill to prepare a short Christmas story as a gift in my Christmas card. This has become such a tradition that some friends are eager to be on my mailing list at Christmas. ~ smile ~ Well, I got the print version ready on Sunday for my offline friends - or so I thought. Monday morning I discovered that my margins had been too small, and I’d lost some lines, so I had to do them all over again. Last night I was merrily printing away - and discovered I was using the old master over again! Oh-no!

But once I had a good master from which to photocopy, I converted the document to a PDF format, and turned it into an e-book, which you can download from: Christmas-Car.pdf.zip

You may print it out, but it won’t look quite like the small booklet I made for offline giving. There I divided a sheet into four pages, and did another four on the other side. With the PDF booklet I don’t have to worry about saving on paper and ink, so I give you plenty of font and graphics size! Much easier on poor eyesight.

Speaking of eyesight; guess what! I’ve got my new glasses yesterday. To see a dim peek through my mini-digital (toy) camera, you need to download the above Christmas letter and Story. The picture is in the P.S. Or you could just open it online if your Acrobat/PDF reader jumps into action; Christmas-Car.pdf

Incidentally, the story is a true account of my Christmas in Ontario, in 1981. I’d had to get rid of my car in June, but really needed one at Christmas. God kindly provided one!

Now I have to squeeze in all the time I can to send off the postal mail correspondence. They have to go out first, so there’s a chance the folks will get them before the holidays. Then I start emailing those friends and relatives I know are online.

Fortunately, I expect Christmas will be rather tame around here. My brother and his wife from Winnipeg are stopping by overnight on the 21, on their way to their daughter and son-in-law’s. We’ll have a mini-celebration that night. My brother Tom in Saskatoon, will be happy to come over if we go fetch him, which I plan to do for Christmas weekend. Dad doesn’t want turkey, so I’ll have to come up with some creative alternative. Hardly any baking is necessary, so maybe we’ll stick to healthy food and dwell on the real meaning of Christmas.

What are your plans so far?

In other news:
I’ve been able to order 15 extra copies of my novel at a bulk rate. Hopefully they’ll be here in time for Christmas sales.

We haven’t heard from the stores carrying Dad’s cross necklaces, and I haven’t had time to check on them, but I saw this week that I’d forgotten to put PayPal buttons on the pages on my site that are suppose to sell them online. Duh! No wonder no sales! So I did that yesterday.

But no computer glitches, and I’ve been moving forward on some projects. That’s good news.

Do you ever give thanks for dull, routine but productive periods in your life? You should; you never know when they’ll be interrupted.

By the way, I did get one good clue for a fresh slant on my book sales pages. No.1 Fan suggested a focus on all the creative suggestions Ruthe has for the people she meets in the book. Ah-ha! All about a creative, generous imagination! My favourite private luxury! Yes - I see the potential.

Anyone else with suggestions for slants to use in marketing my book?

Need to learn more about PDF documents and how to create them?
pdfzone.com

Want to coordinate colours with a certain graphic or picture?
use this tool - degraeve.com/color-palette/

On the right margin of that site, I found links like these!

Can’t draw but would like to create comic strips? Try this formula tool for free;
wittycomics.com/make-comic.php

Hangman’s game degraeve.com/cgi-bin/hangman.cgi

Do you remember playing that on the chalkboard at school?

(a character in Ruthe’s Secret Roses)

The delightful thing about having a little sister, is that you get to watch them grow up. Later on you might even have her for a friend on an equal footing. That’s not guaranteed, but sisters often report growing very fond of one another later, even if they fought over everything as children.

In Ruthe’s Secret Roses, Ruthe has a very close relationship with her younger, seven-year-old sister, but not so close to the middle sister.

Sharri is her Meitze, or kitten. At the beginning Ruthe still treats her like a little sister that must be watched and babysat. Meantime, Sharri is dying to be treated as an equal, and is smart enough to find ways to show her growing maturity.

She defends Ruthe when the rest of their family is suspicious of her, covers for her, and generally tries to show her big sister she’s trustworthy.

Since Ruthe is dying to share her secrets with someone, she seriously considers letting Sharri in on them. She delays, but then decides to test her with a few smaller secrets.

Sharri passes with flying colours. So Ruthe then introduces her to some of the other secret roses or friends, she has in the city. They go to some elaborate lengths to set up those times so that the family at home thinks Sharri has naturally good reasons to go along.

It doesn’t take long for Sharri to become an ingenue star, both in the designer shop, and in her school back in their small home town. Just associating with Ruthe’s mature Christian friends makes her wise beyond her years. Mind you, that red-headed tutor and the designers at the shop put quite a bit of effort into mentoring her. They coach her in setting a good example in school, and taking the lead, knowing that most kids are looking for someone to follow.

It bemuses Ruthe that her little sister can act like her real age, but mentally understand and be motivated as if in her early twenties. Everyone else finds it obvious that Sharri is only copying and following her adored big sister.

The downside is that the more Ruthe continues in her life of duplicity, the easier Sharri finds it to act out certain roles in her life. You’ll have to wait for future sequels to see how Sharri turns out when she really hits her twenties. Meantime, she adds a fun dimension to this first book.

To read sample chapters of my book online, start at
RSR-index

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer;
Order page
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use;
at Booklocker