I’ve spent a lot of time on the new website this week, updating all of the old Spotlight posts so that they all now have pictures of the authors and covers of some of their books. I need to make the new lineup for 2010 Spotlight interviews – hopefully today! I’m hoping the new website will go live before the week is out. In any case, soon…

I’ve also coordinated the recipes I had on this site and plan to add more as time allows. At least now I was able to find my Starbucks imitation peppermint mocha drink recipe. I had hunted on this site and couldn’t find it! Now it’s right there behind the recipe link.

I found out last week that Michal is going to be printed in German! My German grandmother would have loved that – she might have even been able to read it. So far Michal will have a Dutch and now a German edition! Very cool!

And it also looks like Abigail will have an ad in Messianic Times! I’m thrilled and honored to have this market added to the list, along with a few other new ones. Abigail also now has a Fan Page up on Facebook, where you can read a short excerpt. The first chapter will be available soon on the book series website.

I made a pact with myself this week to stop looking up sales numbers on Amazon’s website. Authors tend to look at their books to see how well they are doing there, but Amazon is only one bookseller, and their numbers change every hour. So when my books would be in the low numbers and higher on the top 100 in biblical fiction, I’d be glad, but when they dropped off the list and the numbers rose, my spirits tended to sink. I realized this constant checking is like watching the stock market. Unless I plan to sell stocks, what good does it do? And Amazon numbers will change with or without my perusal, so I quit checking.

Besides, Amazon numbers do not give the full picture. My publisher told me that they’ve had authors not do so well on Amazon but still have great sales. So you really can’t tell by one bookstore. I’m amazed how freeing letting this go has been. And my emotions don’t have to be linked to a fluctuating market. It also helps me resist the comparison to others temptation.

As Jesus once said to Peter when he tried to compare himself to John, “If I want him to live until I come, what is that to you? You follow me.” Comparisons aren’t good. Our focus needs to be on following Jesus, not someone else.

The cats have been more needy these days. Depending on which room or chair I’m in, one or both of them is consistently in need of my attention. This can be good at times. At others it’s downright annoying. :)

I’m trying to motivate myself to get on the treadmill again. I walked a mile yesterday and hope to do so again today. Tendinitis, carpal tunnel and other symptoms keep cropping up again. I can’t tell if it’s the position I use to type or what. I can’t seem to find the perfect place to use a laptop and the desktop works too slow.

We bought tickets to bring our boys home for Christmas! Now to get the matter of sleeping arrangements taken care of. (We need a new set of mattresses.) And I do hope we can get some furniture rearranged by then too. Our projects got stalled after our trip to California because Randy had too many outside car and yard projects to work on. With the weather changing, perhaps I can get him to help me with those inside ones now. :) I still think turning one of the rooms into my own office would be nice, but motivation to clean is not coming without a struggle.

In the meantime, I need to finish writing a course I’m co-teaching next month through ACFW – one more lesson to go, then get back to Bathsheba to finalize it before the deadline. I don’t know where I’m going to cut 1500 more words, but now that it’s sat for almost two weeks, it’s time to look it over again.

~Shalom