Conversations with the Characters

If I were to meet my characters, something like this would happen:

Conversation #1:
Me: "Hello, I'm your author."
Random Character: "You're...oh, hi."
Me: "What do you think of the last couple chapters?"
Random Character: "Um...they were okay, I guess."
Me: "Only okay? Why is it everyone says that?"
Random Character: "It would have been better if you hadn't...(whatever I'd done)."
Me: *wince* "Yeah, that was necessary for your growth."
Random Character: "I don't see how."
Me: "You don't need to...OH!"
Random Character: "Tell me that isn't what I think it is."
Me: "I just thought of a book scene!"
Random Character: "Tell me it doesn't involve more 'growth'."
Me: *Looks sheepish* "Sorry."
Random Character: "Oh no, here we go again."



This is made very true because almost everything I see and every conversation I have helps in the making of a book scene. Sadly, if I talked to my characters, they might just trigger a book scene! And they would probably be in it! That would be a bit strange!




Conversation #2:
Me: “Hello, Chester, I’m your author.”
Chester: “Good morning.”
Me: “How are you?”
Chester: *Looks distracted* “Okay. You?”
Me: “Fine. Something wrong?”
Chester: *Smiles* “My voices of reason are telling me you are bad luck.”
Me: *Grinning* “Tell them they wouldn’t exist without me.”
Chester: “I already did.”
Me: “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
Chester: “I never would have guessed from my life.”
Me: *Looking downhearted* “The worse your life, the more you can know I love you.”
Chester: “That is very discouraging, and confusing.”
Me: “Write a book and you’ll understand.”
Chester: “You talk in too many riddles.”
Me: *Smiling* “I know, isn’t it cool!”
Chester: *Shakes his head and smiles*



It would be a little hard to explain what it is like to be an author - especially to my characters! But that is the truth. The more I like a character, the worse their life is! This is simply true because I give them more attention. But it also means they get a good ending, nice marraige and plenty of kids! (And they usually don't die!)



Conversation #3:

Me: “Hello, Alonzo.”
Alonzo: *Stands up* “Who let this peasant in here?”
Me: “I have my own key.”
Alonzo: *Looks shocked* “You dare speak to me in that tone?”
Me: “Someone certainly needs to.”
Alonzo: “You can’t…how dare… I am going to be king!”
Me: “That can change.”
Alonzo: *Mouth drops open* “You wouldn’t!”
Me: *Shrugs* “If your attitude doesn’t change…”
Alonzo: *Chin rises* “There is nothing wrong with my attitude.”
Me: *Shakes head sympathetically*
Alonzo: “I’m going to call the guards!” *Storms away*
Me: “I tried. I guess I’ll have to send someone to straighten him out. Or maybe a near death experience! That would work.” *Disappears*

Sadly, a lot of the time I have no control over my characters and they end up nothing like I thought they would. But God always seems to have something in store that I never even thought of and in order for it to happen; my characters need to be different than I thought. It is like writing yet you have no idea why or what you’re doing! Yet, God always shows me in the end. God doesn't just guide me in life, He guides me in writing, as well.

And I am SOOO thankful that He does because I have no idea what I'm doing half the time!

Mandy

Why Does God Love us?

As most of you know, I write books. If you’ve never written a book you don’t know how it feels, how amazing it is. I love to watch my very own world come to life as I write. I love to see my people and places come into existence before me. I love the people, long to return to the mountains and hold my breath until the time I can go back again. And you know what? I wouldn’t even care if no one ever saw my work, ever opened my books, and never visited my creek and mountains. Why? Because when I write, I feel something few people have.

Through writing I’ve gotten a glimpse of God’s heart. He made the world. He watched as it came to life before him. He gave it life and meaning and love. He loved it, like I love my world, and I can understand why He’d want it back. If someone stole my world, my books, I’d want them back too. They are mine and I love them. When I think of someone stealing them, I get sick inside and my heart aches. It would be like someone stealing part of me.

People ask all too often, “Why would God want us back when we are so evil?” That question isn’t even true. God wants us back from this evil. He doesn’t want us back with the evil. The evil in us is what stole us from Him. What He buys us back from the evil and unto righteousness.

Too many people think, “God must be evil because the world is evil. He can’t really love the world if He made it like this.” If you think that, you don’t understand. God didn’t make the world evil! He made it perfect. He made it wonderful. No creator would willingly make something wrong.

Say you’re the manufacturer and your company makes cars. You aren’t going to look at the plans and say, “I know, let’s make this engine so it doesn’t work. And down here, make these wheels flat so they can’t drive and are handicap.” Why would you do that? You wouldn’t! God didn’t make the world an evil and terrible place either. Sin did that.

“But if God made everything He made sin, too, now didn’t He?” you think. Wrong. God did not make sin.

“So God didn’t make everything,” you exclaim. Wrong. God did make everything. There is no such thing as sin. There is a famous argument between Albert Einstein and his teacher in which he tells the teacher that there is no such thing as darkness or cold or sin. He was very right. Just think about this a moment. Is there such a thing as darkness? No! You can’t have darkness by itself. If there was, you could make darkness darker or lighter. You can’t! Darkness is simply the lack of light.

What about cold? No, there is no such thing as cold. If there was, you could make cold. Cold is only the lack of heat. So, cold does not exist.

What about sin? No, there is no such thing as sin. Sin is only the lack of righteousness. It isn’t a thing. It isn’t made. It is simply the complete lack of godliness. God did not make sin because sin can not be made. Albert Einstein did an excellent job of explaining that.

“Alright, so God didn’t make the world with sin but now that it has sin in it, why doesn’t He just get rid of it if He is so powerful?” you think next. God doesn’t take away sin because He wants to be loved.

“What?” you ask. “Everyone would love Him if He took away sin!” That is not true. Love is something you give freely. If we no longer had the choice to not love Him, it wouldn’t be love. God gave us free will for that very reason. He wants to be loved. It is the very reason He made the world, isn’t it? He made us for Himself to be His and to walk with Him and be His companions.

“So, how did He buy us back?”

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”(Romans 6:23.) Death is the price sin demands. Death is the price God’s righteousness demands but He doesn’t want us to die.

Let’s go back just a second and discuss what I mean by ‘death’. We all die physically. All of you who aren’t Christians can vogue that we Christians die, too, right? When I say ‘death’, I’m not talking about physical death. Our bodies here are already marred by sin. By ‘death’ I mean spiritually. You will never get to be with God. You will be tossed into a lack of fire to stay there for all eternity. Eternity means forever, means that it will NEVER end. There will be no relief. There will be no time for repentance. You will be dead to God. You won’t ever get a chance again. That is what I mean by ‘dead’.

But you don’t have to die. God loves you! He wants you to be His again. He is just waiting for you to see that He is there.

“What do I have to do?” you ask. All you have to do is believe. To confess that you are a sinner and tell God you want to be forgiven. You don’t ‘do’ anything. Jesus does it. He died for you, took all your sin on Himself so you could be free. You’ve just got to accept it.

And the best part? You can never lose your salvation. No matter what you do, you will still be forgiven. All of your sins are forgiven, for past and for present. We all sin, even after we are saved but God doesn’t see our sin anymore. He only sees Jesus’ righteousness which covers them. In His eyes, we are perfect.

Faith is hard, yes, but it is worth it! Walk with God,

Mandy

Only Seven Animals? Why Not A Hundred?

When we first started getting pets Mom gave us this rule, "We can have as many animals as there are main characters on Gillian's Island." Basically, that meant seven. We stuck to that rule for awhile. We even named some of our animals after the characters. There were Mr. and Mrs. Howl (is that how you spell their name?), the two parakeets. We had Gillian, the cat and Skipper, the fish. We even had two dogs that were named Ginger and Maryanne but they got mean and we had to send them away. The others slowly followed. Skipper, my fish, died after an…accident. We were going to camp and I didn’t want him to die of hunger so I gave him the whole bottle of food. Needless to say, when my dad got home, the fish was dead. He got flushed. As for the Howls (I’m pretty sure I’m spelling this wrong, let me look it up… Ha ha! I was right that I was wrong! It is spelled ‘Howell’!), they left with our aunt when she moved to town. Gillian died after many happy years of scratching at our ankles. : )

The rule eventually went out the window. It started with three mangy chickens and one small, ‘A’ shaped house. The chickens were called Rose, fluffy and…I can’t remember the other one. It might have been Lily or something but I’m not sure. These chickens were soon followed by about a hundred more which we shared joint ownership of with our neighbors. We kids went wild with excitement! One hundred cute little balls of fluff just for us to ‘play with’ (which basically means torture, in this case.) We dressed them up in who knows what and took one along with us just about everywhere we could get away with. We could not get away with it when going to church. Evidentially, cute balls of fluff did not have a place there.

We got the goats, of course, and three small, cute goslings. First they lived inside but that didn’t last very long. They soon went out with the chickens. It was the barnyard for them! Every year they attempted to have babies and every year they just failed! We finally learned the reason. You won’t believe this but we didn’t have a male! Now why didn’t we think of that? Who knows!

We kept a few of the chickens (round thirty or so) but the rest were chicken dinner! No, we did not eat seventy chickens. Half of them went to our neighbors (who owned part them). First came the killing. At that age we didn’t think nothing of it. The neighbor girl came over and we had an awesome time watching them run about with their heads chopped off. Well, we had a fun time until one chased us across the yard! No, I’m not kidding, it did!

You should have seen Jules! She was probably three at the time. Dressed in a pink to-to, cute as could be and running around picking up the chicken heads to throw away. Of all the strange things!

After we got done we had lots of hens and something like ten roosters. I’ll tell you right now, ten is too many roosters. They will fight and crow none stop! Did you know that a rooster crows to tell people that it is his territory? They don’t just crow at dawn, that is a myth! And if you have ten roosters all claiming your yard as its territory, the others are going to crow back their objections. This makes for one noisy yard! Our main problem, though, was the Big Bad Rooster. Yes, we actually called it that. We also called a different one Butterfly, so in comparison, Big Bad Rooster isn’t so bad. The Big Bad Rooster really was big and bad. He didn’t mind attacking you, even looked like he enjoyed it! If you ask me, he was rude. He steered clear of two people: Peter and Jules. Peter he steered clear of because if he dared attack him he’d get a beak full of stick or rock. Peter, even at his young age, would not put up with a rooster attacking him.

Jules on the other hand was a totally different matter! You all remember Thelma, the goat? (Or should I say the watch dog?) One day Jules was out in the yard. Now, the Big Bad Rooster loved to sneak up on people and attack them from behind. He was doing just that when Thelma came charging at him. He went flying through the air to never again return to stock Jules! No, I’m not kidding! Honest! This really happened. I think God used that goat, as strange and fairy-tale as that sounds!

We had all kind of other times with the animals but I’ll let you all go for now.

Yours truly,

Mandy