“The RoseBouquet”

Have you ever installed a new component in your computer? Did you know that it isn’t that hard to learn?

Saturday I exchanged my DVDrom drive for a DVD/CD burner and guess what, it wasn’t as hard as I had feared. First I went online and checked for sites that show how to do it. I copied some notes and printed out instructions, then tried it out on an older computer with a spare CDrom drive, while I had this computer open to that site. When that worked, I shut this one down and tried it here with the new DVD burner I had bought with some Christmas gift money. Voila! It worked right off!

You may not want exactly this kind of drive, but these are the links I found most helpful. You might click around on the sites and see if they have instructions for whatever you need to fix.

Links about installing and using DVD burners;
Troubleshooters.com
HelpwithPCs.com
Reviews.cnet.com
DVDdemystified.com (Has a HUGE list of questions and answers!)

(Profile of a character in the novel)

Another bad girl turned good in Ruthe’s Secret Roses, is Darlin’ Bonne Barrett. (Not her name at the beginning, but I want to leave some puzzles for you).

Darlin’ Bonne has a prostitute for a mother, so it is no wonder that she’s picked up promiscuous ways in her early teens. She wanted to do good, and often resolved to turn over a new leaf, but when a child has no better example, it is hard to be and behave in unlearned ways.

With some abortions behind her, and more sexual conquests than any other girl in school, Darlin’ Bonne was bored and started a game of her own. She would methodically lure and have sex with every boy in school, starting with the Zs in the class lists. All just to say she’d beat out every other girl in the numbers race.

Ho-ho-but, not all the boys liked being used, so one small guy sicced his older brother on her. Trouble! Big-time TROUBLE for Darlin’ Bonne. (You read the novel for that scene, okay?)

Ruthe, our heroine rescued Darlin’ Bonne in the nick of time, and as they got acquainted, Ruthe saw in the black-haired sixteen year old who looked to be twenty-one, a natural winsome way with people. She was able to make friends easily and win most of them over to her way of thinking, and she was truly motivated to be good and make a clean name for herself. Darlin’ Bonne had used these skills in the only way she’d observed in her mother, but with guidance and mentoring, or discipling as Ruthe thought of it, there was hope Darlin’ Bonne could succeed as a business woman.

Since Ruthe herself had thought about starting up a dress-making-designing shop she brought up that idea and offered it to her new sister in Christ, who was kicked out of her mother’s apartment for that new decision to trust Christ’s finished work on the cross to give her a truly new lifestyle.

Darlin’ Bonne leaped at it, confident that if Ruthe stuck with her and showed her what to do, she could learn it. This provided some new tensions and turns in Ruthe’s life, but despite her naivete in the city and these seamier sides to life, she was game to jump in and learn too, trusting God would supply all they needed, and give fresh grace as required.

I’m happy to report that in this novel, these two friends are honoured with much success. Other young women join them, and that shop becomes a location for many wonderful make-overs and transformations. Some of them, such as the teacher, Phyllis, are included in the novel, but many others are up to your vivid imagination.

To read sample chapters of my book online, start at The 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; order from Booklocker

Do certain kinds of weather bother you?

I generally don’t dwell on it much since it’s out of my control, but yesterday when Dad and I were in the city, he complained several times that the fog was making him feel depressed. I’d mentioned various times that we needed new windshield wipers and yesterday he wanted to know where we could buy them. Canadian Tire, of course.

He managed to get one changed before we headed home and he remarked on how the fog had lifted. The lights were brighter. I said, “Dad, that’s because you have a clean windshield now on your side.” Later on the way home we ran into some real fog.

Around here, people cheer each other up when they see fog by saying, “Guess that means in 100 days we’ll have rain.” I don’t know if anyone has ever studied this to prove it, but farmer types like to figure out if that will come before or after seeding time.

Dad and I agreed that it sure does make the trees look lovely with all that thick layer of hoarfrost on it. In fact, the whole prairie horizon turns a pristine white, and when the sun finally shines on it all - oh the glittering diamonds everywhere!

Oh yes! My prayer and planning retreats have enthused me. I’m looking forward to all the things I hope to get done this year. I think I went a bit overboard in the things I’d planned to do last year, so a lot of them are on this year’s agenda too, but taking into account the new skills I learned, and the better grasp I have of how to do these things, the more I feel like this will be a very productive year.

I haven’t got time or space to share everything, but will drop a few hints.

1. I’m expecting to really promote and sell my first novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses, with new and effective sales pages.

2. I should finish the writing of the second novel this year. Not sure of the funds to publish yet.

3. If that Prof gets his grant, I’ll have a transcription job one night a week by May that will pay like a full-time job.

4. Renovations on all three of my sites should update them and make them far better quality, and more productive financially.

5. This may well be the year I put shopping carts on all my sites, and some that I look after for others.

6. Now that I can create PDF e-books so easily, I hope to produce about a dozen of them this year. Some as gifts, some for sale.

7. With all my heart, I do hope that this year I can save Saturday afternoons to practice and develop my sketching and art abilities. That’s gone on the back burner and been shoved right off the to-do table so many years. Last year my major learning curve went into switching to a Linux based operating system on the computer. May it be in ART this year!

I still have a stitch of pain in my ribs from the pleurisy, but the coughing has cleared up, and my energy is back, and I’m trusting God for grace and health to leap into this year with both feet and a confident cry of victory from my mouth!

I’ve been doing some catchup reading in the ezine for affiliates of SiteSell. In considering how to apply the web business advice given there, and in reading the success stories of people who found and bought into the SiteBuildIt model, I think I have a clearer picture of what it takes to get financially productive site up.

1. Find that pocket, that area of information that you know best - it’s called your niche.

2. Build an informative web site about that topic. It doesn’t have to be glamorous or cutesy; just easy to read and use.

3. Add AdSense ads for one stream of income.

4. Find and sign up (free) as an affiliate with various businesses that match your niche, and that offer good commissions on referrals. Work tasteful references to those businesses, using your coded affiliate links throughout your pages of info.

5. List your site with Search Engines, and directories. Place ads to it wherever you can. Pay when you run out of free places.

6. Set up a blog and or mailing list so visitors can get to know and trust you. The sooner they trust you, the sooner they will buy those affiliate products, or - the ones you’ve created yourself.

7. Maintenance consists of: keep an eye on your web site’s links, placing ads, answering emails promptly, and being friendly in your blog and/or ezine. Oh, and depositing your money as it comes in. (You don’t need help to plan for spending do you?

You can do this all yourself (as I do), or get the SBI subscription, and have a lot of it automated for you. No web design skills required. In fact, people who use SBI and follow the instructions, usually end up in the top 1% or 3rd of all sites on the web, and often find that site can be shifted to auto-pilot, while they create more! Read about it for yourself, SiteBuildIt

(a friend in my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses)

She was orphaned as a child in Australia. At thirteen she had grown not only withdrawn, but bitter against God and the world when she was raped in a deserted stretch of woods through which she usually walked from school to her foster home.

Afraid to trust anyone, especially men, she had locked herself into a world of books, a safe and private realm where she could have adventure without involvement. Diligent and thorough, she earned degrees in literature and history while still in her twenties.

Then she had to set new goals. She wrote a textbook for elementary schools, and travelled to the States. There she went to another university and got degrees in arts, music, and philosophy. Education, journalism and even political science followed. She drove herself on, only stopping to write another textbook or history tome when she ran low on tuition fees and living expense money. She set higher goals and got doctorates. No matter how long or difficult the courses, as long as she did not have to think of relationships, or her lack of them.

A time had come when there were no more courses that interested her. Realizing she had some responsibility to pass her knowledge on she decided to

teach in Canada. She chose high school, rather than a professorship, so she could feel superior to her students. They would not notice her short-comings, or so she thought.

Instead she ended up antagonizing the whole student body! Some called her the Fire-Spitting Dragon, and they had no respect for her at all.

Though Phyllis had written complicated theses to prove it was impossible for God to exist, her main argument was that in all her travels and studies she had never met anyone who was the kind of transformed person prescribed in the New Testament.

In Ruthe’s Secret Roses, when Phyllis hears about this promiscuous sixteen year old who has dropped out of school to start a dress designing shop, she marches over there to tell this girl off. Yes, this fifty-ish woman, who looked like a model skeleton escaped from the labs, wearing a charcoal crepe dress from the 30s, with her greying red hair severely knotted into a neck bun, clicked and clattered in her high heeled black oxfords off on her crusade. She would teach that drop-out the value of an education!

Now, if your imagination is not up to featuring in your mind what a totally transformed Phyllis would be like, then you NEED to read Ruthe’s Secret Roses and find out how I pictured it. Oh what fun! What great fun that was to turn an ugly, bitter woman into one of stunning beauty! People did not recognize her afterward. Phyllis got to start life afresh.

To read sample chapters of my book online, start at
Sampler

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer; order e-book
(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; softcover at Booklocker