Over the last couple of months, I’ve been redecorating.  I hired a young woman whose work I’d seen before and challenged her to help me make a few changes, including finding  a place to call my own for writing.  The caveat was that we had to use as many things I already owned as possible.  Can I get an “Amen” to being budget conscious?                                                                                               

One of my favorite results came when we took the front living room, a room that when originally designed had too many openings to easily accommodate a sofa, and turned it into a writing palace.  We moved bookcases from other rooms, kept the rug, and traded other furniture around so I could use a small dresser to store my mailing supplies.  I highly recommend this type of “repurposing” the things you already own when you are looking to make a change.  The only new things in my office are the paint, the large monitor, the curtains that my friend Gail made for me, and the cubes on the bookshelves for organizing the storage. 

Best of all, we got my favorite desk out of storage and I now had a place to use it.  I originally purchased the William and Mary style desk you see in the picture above when I owned a 100+ year-old Victorian and the huge rooms dwarfed it.  When we moved into this house, I couldn’t hardly get it in through the doors.   BTW, did you notice that the desk style and my characters’ names in The Doctor’s Mission are the same?  Coincidence? 

Disclaimer: The walls look green in this first picture, but they aren’t.  don’t ask.  There is a reason why I normally leave  the photography to my daughter and son-in-law!

So, where I used to be a bit of a house gypsy concerning my writing space, I now have a completed office that I love.  Apparently, so do my dogs.  In this rare photo where they are both out from under the desk, I managed to get a shot of the office dogs doing what they do best. 

Sleeping and keeping me company.

I wouldn’t mind having you guys keep me company too.  Just awake and on the blog, not the rug.  Tuesdays are my new Heart and Home posts.   And yes, I know it’s Monday, I’m just putting it out there a day early to give folks time to discover it exists.  On Tuesdays I’ll share remodeling photos, pics from our Sunday suppers, or just anything related to family and the things I love. 

To encourage you to stick around and visit, I’ll have the occasional contest for leaving a comment.  Today’s giveaway is something I feel suited to Monday’s theme of Hearth and Home: Debbie Macomber’s Knit Together: Discover God’s Pattern For Your Life, a set of 3 cd’s read by Sonja Lanzener. 

So tell me, have you redecorated, repurposed, or even rearranged in your home or a particular room?  Is there a particular item that you own that you’ve found a new use for in your life? Or do you just have pets that are underfoot?  Leave me a comment to be entered.  I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday morning.  Entries accepted until Nov. 8th at 11:59 p.m. EST.  No prize subsitutions.  One entry per person, per household.  Void if not permitted in your state.  US entries only.

Carlene Love Flores and Rosemarie Szostak are my winners.  Ladies contact me at debbiekaufmanauthorATgmailDOTcom with your snail mail addresses so I can ship your prizes!

Watch out for my next contest in October!  And my blowout contest for the entire month of November!  Gotta celebrate that November release in a big way

I managed to accomplish exactly one thing off my to-do list yesterday. 

One out of twenty-three.

One of the five items I highlighted as essential.

But, it was a big ONE for me.  I created, formatted and posted the excerpt from my first book, The Doctor’s Mission!  Let us pause for the infamous Snoopy Dance.

And to really celebrate, I’m giving away books and more for those who take the time to read chapter one.  

 TWO lucky winners will each receive the following: 1. A set of Love Inspired Books consisting of one Love Inspired, one Love Inspired Suspense, and, of course, one Love Inspired Historical.  2. Your choice of a $10.00 Starbucks, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble gift card. 3. Small gift bag of jungle-inspired and author-related  items.   

HOW do you win one of those sets?

EASY: READ HERE: www.debbiekaufman.com/excerpt

Then come back to the blog here and leave me a comment about the excerpt.  Any comment that reasonably indicates that you actually read the excerpt.  Solely my discretion to decide if you did or not

Deadline to enter is Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. EST.  I’ll randomly draw two names from all my comments on Sunday, September 11, 2011 and announce the winners in the comments here and in a separate, new blog post.  Winners will have until Tuesday, September 13, 2011 to claim their prize as directed in the winner’s post.  I reserve the right to reaward any unclaimed prizes!  No purchase is necessary to enter this contest. Void if your state or country prohibits this type of contest by law.  (Sorry, have to say that).  Limit one entry per person, per email, per household during the contest period UNLESS obtained by the following means:

EXTRA ENTRIES:

1. Refer a friend and have them leave your name in the comments.  One extra entry for each referral.

2. Go “LIKE” my Facebook fan page and leave me a note about this contest on my wall.  Don’t worry, if you already LIKE my page AND leave me a comment here, you still get FB credit.  www.facebook.com/debbiekaufmanfanpage

3. Refer your friends to LIKE my Facebook fan page and have them leave your name in their comments on my wall.  You both get the extra entry!  No limit on referalls.

4. Sign up for my newsletter here: www.debbiekaufman.com/newsletter.  (P.S. this also puts you in the running for an e-reader when I reach 1000 subscribers!  Bonus!)

5. Refer a friend who signs up for my newsletter and lists you under referred by. 

6. TEN EXTRA ENTRIES: Pre-order the book online and forward me a copy of your receipt at debbiekaufmanauthor@gmail.com  (Hey, if you’re going to read it anyway, why not get extra credit?)  I promise to take your name ONLY from your receipt and delete the rest.  Prefer to mail a redacted receipt?  It must arrive at my designated address no later than Sept. 10,2011.  Not responsible for lost or late mail.

Mail your receipt along with your name, address, and contact email to:

Debbie Kaufman, 1423 Southworth Dr. Griffin, GA 30224

I only had a few pages by the time I joined Susan C. May (Nick’s New Heart), Sandy Elzie (The Diplomatic Tutor and In Daddy’s Shoes), and Tammy Schubert,  to do nothing but write.   I was determined to finish and polish enough pages for an entry into the Maggies (http://www.georgiaromancewriters.org/the-maggies/).  I didn’t want to miss out on the great critiques from published authors that the chapter is known for giving.

As a part of the Petit Fours and Hot Tamales blog group, we’d scheduled this “no Internet available” writing retreat for three days at Susan’s family lake house.  From daybreak to sunset and beyond, we did nothing but sit on the screened porch and type our little fingers to the bone.  Well, okay, there was an occasional conversation and we stopped for meals.  Other than that, we really produced.  We were all good about shutting down any lengthy chats and forcing ourselves back to work.  Outside of a local coffeehouse, it is still my favorite place to write.

Rapidly, my story began to take shape, along with its synopsis.  Finally, feeling a little insecure, I asked my friends to read the first three chapters and tell me what they thought.  They were very encouraging and I began to think that maybe I hadn’t lost my mind by thinking I could write an historical. 

Before I’d left for the cabin, I’d put an item on my watch list at the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes (www.brendanovak.auctionanything.com/), an auction I strongly support.  Love Inspired’s Senior Editor Melissa Endlich was offering a critique of a partial and a private meeting at RWA Nationals in July.  Realizing the auction was about to end, and with no Internet at the cabin, I called my dear husband and gave him instructions for bidding.  Then I bit my fingernails and waited.

I was outbid.

However, because of Melissa Endlich’s boundless generosity, I was able to match the winning bid and got a second critique she offered.  I was nervous, but more excited than anything.  After all, who better to get a critique from that the editor of a line you’ve targeted.  If anyone could give me direction on how to better structure the story for Love Inspired Historical, she could.

So, I set out in June of 2010 for RWA Nationals and my fateful meeting with Melissa Endlich.  I just made one mistake…

AND that’s a mistake I’ll tell you more about on Monday!  I’m leaving this next offer open until Monday, May 9th.  Leave me a comment and be entered into a drawing for a copy of my new release, THE DOCTOR’S MISSION, when it is published in November of 2011.  Gain extra entries if your friends post here and say you referred them.   Have you ever had a “must write” moment, or a time of clarity about a direction in your life that suddenly shifted everything for you?  Please share!

In the meantime, visit the Novak auction and bid on my book, or any of the fabulous offerings from soaps to Safari trips!  http://brendanovak.auctionanything.com/

Here’s a preview of what they’ve got!

So how did I get the idea?  Am I just fascinated with cannibals?  No, not really.  The idea for The Doctor’s Mission literally  walked in my fron door one evening in the guise of a visit from one of my married children.  As kids piled in the door, my daughter handed me a small paperback authored by my son-in-law’s great-great uncle.  It had a rather provocative title, Before We Kill and Eat You.    This book, the story of pioneering missionary, H. B. Garlock and his wife Ruth, sat on my dining room table for months before I picked it up and finally read it. 

The story of how God worked in the Liberian jungle with the Garlocks was fascinating, probably because missions have always been my heart.  The subject and the country grabbed hold of me after reading that book, and wouldn’t let go.  Before long, I had read what seemed like a library full of Liberian pioneering missionar stories, and names like Bishop William Taylor, Rev. Adolphus Clemens Good, and Miss Amanda Smith became more than familiar to me. 

The more I read of these dear saints on the mission field, one question grew with each page turn.  Could I set a romance here and bring this world to life for readers? 

To be continued….

I’m curious today.  Do you or a family member have any experience with missions?  If you could go anywhere in the world, missions or not, where would it be?

Join me starting Monday for the first installment in the story of my road to publication. Traveling back to the beginning, we’ll answer the question of where the idea for The Doctor’s Mission, my first book due out in November, came from in the first place. Hope to see you here!