Pleasant Surprises

The pleasant surprises started on January 2, when this beautiful little tree arrived in the mail, a surprise gift from my sister-in-law. I set it up on the kitchen table to send her a picture, but then put it in my den by the fireplace. I took the rest of the Christmas decorations down, but kept this tree up to brighten my spirits, and it continues to do that.

The next pleasant surprise was discovering that my cousin and his wife were in New Orleans for the weekend. I had not yet met his wife, due to COVID and Cecil's cancer restricting our travel. I met them for breakfast yesterday, and had a wonderful time. The is absolutely no greater gift than time with family.

This morning, I checked my Amazon dashboard like I do every morning, and was pleasantly surprised to see I sold 5 books yesterday. I honestly did a double take when I saw the dashboard. It has been a long time since I last had a sales day that good.

I'm trying to hold on to the positive emotions generated by a week full of pleasant surprises to accomplish more writing this week. I wish that there was some way to take the story that is beautifully crafted in my head and translate it into the story on my computer screen.

Before I started the hard work of actually writing my stories, they existed in my head. I never imagined the transition from idea to actual story would be so hard. Sometimes the frustration of trying to translate those stories into the world is so big it stops me in my tracks.

But then someone buys a book. Or a bunch of someones buy a book. Or a someone buys some books. And I have a glimmer of hope that my books are reaching someone, and putting a glimmer of hope into the world. And I have the energy to keep trying.

So if whoever bought my books is reading this, thank you.

If one of those sales results in a good review, I will be over the moon.