It's Not How You Feel that Matters by Laurie Alice Eakes

Laurie Alice Eakes

Writing has nothing to do with how you feel. When I see people talking about having to be in the right mood, having the exact music or silence or pile of dark chocolate M&Ms to write, I shake my head and smile. I was there once, too. Since those days, I have written in the back of a car on a cross-country move from Virginia, to Texas, while my father-in-law and husband played singer-song-writer music in the front of the SUV. I have written in a hotel suite while waiting for my home to be ready for moving in, and I have written in the middle of a sea of boxes I couldn’t even find my keyboard and the desk hadn’t arrived yet, because I had no choice—deadlines don’t care if you have the right conditions to suit your muse.

In the past fifteen months, despite two moves—one of 240 miles and another over 300 miles, getting to know a new city, and having to pack and unpack twice, I have written a novella and three books. Now I have more deadlines and a new distraction. . .

Two weeks ago today, my mother went home to Jesus. Even writing that closes up my throat and brings tears to my eyes. We didn’t always get along. Mom raised me to be a strong and independent woman because she was a strong and independent woman. That is a combination that creates clashes. Yet despite those clashes, two things about her always shone like beacons to me: She prayed for me every day and she was one of the most amazing women I’ve ever known.

Though she had only lived in her tiny town in Virginia for two years, eighty families showed up for her memorial service she made such an impact on their lives in that short period of time. She was smart and talented and, despite the cancer that took her life, gave generously to others until she grew too weak.

That wasn’t because her life was so easy. She suffered many tragedies from being a single mom with two blind daughters, to the deaths of her own parents, to the death of my stepfather, and many things in-between. Yet she kept going, got herself out of bed, went to work, baked a batch of cupcakes for a grieving family, worked harder so I could graduate from college without debt, and, I learned at her memorial, performed myriad tasks for her neighbors and others she never mentioned to anyone. She has left a huge hole in the world, and most definitely in my life, but my writing schedule has no holes in it.

On the contrary, my writing schedule at the moment is bulging with tasks big and small that have deadlines attached to them, and I am not in the mood to write, to be creative, to keep my mouth shut when I think an editor is out of line in a comment. I don’t want to tweet and Facebook or perform all those marketing responsibilities despite a book releasing this week. I want to curl up with an afghan, hot cocoa, and a good book to push the sadness out of my heart. I cannot write about people being happy and madly in love.

Yet I must. My deadlines and career cannot suffer because my heart, my world, has had a meat cleaver taken to it. Writing, if we want to be a professional author, is not connected to how we feel. Writing is sitting down at our work station, whether that is an antique desk in an office with a fabulous view, or a corner of the kitchen table amongst dirty dishes and another meal needing to be made. Being a professional writer is writing when the muse, the mood, and everything else that inspires us has disappeared like morning mist and we want to seek out the largest carton of Haagen-Dazs we can find and eat it instead. We don’t make excuses for being late on deadlines because we aren’t late on deadlines.

That seems to take the romance out of the profession. It seems businesslike and calculated. Here’s a difficult truth: Writing to deadline, or even writing with the eye to selling, isn’t romantic. It’s hard work. It’s dedication and commitment and determination not to let down the one who called us to write.

That afghan and good book have now been augmented by a cat, an additional temptation to give up and check out of the real world for a while, and my computer reminds me that I have work to finish today. I remind myself that my mother didn’t give up and take the easy road when she found herself single the first, nor the second time in her life. To honor her determination to be a woman serving with the gifts the Lord gave her gives me the strength to meet my deadlines without a complaint.

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“Eakes has a charming way of making her novels come to life without being over the top,” writes Romantic times of  bestselling, award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes. Since she lay in bed as a child telling herself stories, she has fulfilled her dream of becoming a published author. To date, she has sixteen books in print with five more under contract for release over the next two years. Eight of her books have been published in large print editions, one as a Crossings Bookclub hardcover edition, and one book has been put into Braille.

A graduate of Asbury University with a degree in English and French, and Seton Hill University, with a masters degree in Writing Popular Fiction, she also writes articles in writers publications, teaches writing workshops, and gives inspirational talks.

The Professor's Heart
by Laurie Alice Eakes

She lives in Texas with her husband, dogs, and cats. She enjoys long walks, all too rare rainy days, and knitting—rather badly—while watching movies or listening to music.

Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurieAEakes

Read excerpts from her books at: http://www.lauriealiceeakes.com

The Professor's Heart

Mia Roper has what she always wanted, independence, career and a home back East. But when a train wreck strands her in Hillsdale, Michigan, the town she once called home, Mia begins to wonder if she made the right choice to leave Hillsdale—and her true love—behind. Rescuing injured passengers, Professor Ayden Goswell can't believe his eyes. Could that really be Mia, the woman who once owned his heart, emerging from the wreckage? Long ago, Mia and Ayden chose their careers over love. But God, it seems, may have other plans for them ...

This Writer's Thanksgivings by Laurie Alice Eakes

The Moon in the Water

And Other Tales of Inspiration for which I Am Thankful

I am lying on my back on the deck of my uncle’s cabin cruiser. We are perhaps ten miles off shore in Lake Huron. No lights shine except for one—the moon. Butter yellow, it glows in the sky like a beacon to me and my ten-year-old soul, and the water in which I have always felt as home as on land, reflects the call—Write about me. Describe me. Place me in a scene.

Perhaps the call came to me earlier than that. I didn’t answer it until many years later. And always I come back to that scene, that moment when that sailing moon invited me to sail along on wild adventures of the heart.

Water still inspires me and lifts my spirit in a song of thanksgiving. Rain sends me to the window or onto the balcony to listen and drink in the freshness. Snow compels me to grab up coat and boots and go for a walk.

Recently, feeling burned out from too many upheavals in my life and too many writing deadlines, I took advantage of the fact that I live 20 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. Within five minutes of walking along the beach, the surf roaring in my ears, the water lapping at my legs, my soul felt washed clean, my spirit renewed. 

I am apparently not the only person who finds renewal in water. A survey conducted a couple of years ago found that the happiest of people live within a half mile of some kind of water. I live about half a block from a resaca, a kind of natural canal, with a walking path beside it and ducks upon it.

I am thankful for many parts of God’s creation—my husband, my dogs, my cats, the scent of jasmine in the spring—and nothing makes me more thankful than the gift of water. 

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Bestselling, award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes used to lie in bed as a child telling herself stories so she didn’t wake anyone else up. Sometimes she shared her stories with others; thus, when she decided to be a writer, she surprised no one. Family Guardian, her first book, won the National Readers Choice Award for Best Regency in 2007. In the past three years, she has sold six books to Baker/Revell, five of which are set during the Regency time period, five books to Barbour Publishing, as well as two novellas to Barbour Publishing and one to Baker/Revell. Seven of her books have been picked up by Thorndike Press for large print publication, and Lady in the Mist, her first book with Revell, was chosen for hardcover publication with Crossings Bookclub. She also teaches on-line writing courses and enjoys a speaking ministry that takes her from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast. Laurie Alice lives in Texas with her husband, two dogs and two cats, and is learning how to make tamales.

We Can’t Sell That by Laurie Alice Eakes

Welcome to Fortifying Friday—the day we focus on encouraging writers in their journeys to publication and feature guest authors who share their own success stories. If you’re discouraged by hearing that the genre you want to write just won’t sell, you’ll be particularly interested in Laurie Alice Eakes’ personal story. 

Enjoy! ~ Dawn

We Can’t Sell That

by Laurie Alice Eakes

That is a brief paraphrase of my first rejection from a Christian publishing house. Discouragement followed, not because I am a wimp who can’t take rejection, but because I so wanted to write historical romantic suspense set in the English Regency era and this looked like a negative referendum on my dream.

Crazy dream? In 2004, absolutely. The Christian market wanted books set in the United States and preferably the Mid West or true West states. Without a track record, a dishearteningly few authors were selling outside those locations. So I was probably silly to waste my time writing such a book, let alone wasting my agent’s time with it.

Yet I’d attracted my agent with my interest in the time and place. I guess she likes my writing, too, and we held a common interest in the Regency era.

Mind you, I’m not talking Jane Austen. I’m talking Georgette Heyer, Patricia Veryan, Clare Darcy, and other twentieth century greats of the subgenre of historical romance. They were my literary favorites since I was a teen, the authors whose works inspired me to write. So this sales committee hadn’t dissed only my efforts; they had dissed my favorite writers, too.

In response, keeping my courage up, I wrote a contemporary romance with suspense elements. It was what was selling.

The less said about that rejection the better. I’d obviously misunderstood my calling to be an author.

Then my agent suggested I write a Regency for Avalon, secular, but clean. So I did—and sold it. It won the National Readers Choice Award, and I managed to sell a few Americana titles to Barbour’s Heartsong Presents line and another book to Avalon.

Heart pounding, I took another chance and proposed a historical romantic suspense story with an English hero, a man who might have been a Regency hero in another setting other than Virginia in 1809 (Yes, I know that technically the Regency is 1811-1820, and publishing stretches out that era). It sold in a mere handful of weeks, and the publisher wanted more from me.

They wanted a Regency series from me. I wrote up a proposal, submitted it, and sold The Daughters of Bainbridge House series to Baker/Revell. A Necessary Deception has just been released, my first inspirational Regency.

Now that dream to sell historical romantic suspense has come true many-fold times—two set in Virginia, the high seas, England, Guernsey, and France, and a three-book Regency series. I’ve sold Barbour a couple of novellas in my other favorite era—the colonial period.

The lesson here is so simple it’s cliché and trite: Don’t give up on writing what you want to write. You may need to compromise a tiny bit to pay your dues in the publishing business and earn a track record, and my experience is not unique. It’s the tale of perseverance and believing that, if you are called to reach an audience in a specific way, then God will make it happen. We get told this again and again and not believing it is discouraging; however, many of us are living proof of dreams coming true.

Award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes wanted to be a writer since knowing what one was. Her first book won the National Readers Choice Award in 2007, and her third book was a Carol Award finalist in 2010. Between December of 2008 and January of 2010, she sold thirteen books to Barbour Publishing, Avalon Books, and Baker/Revell, making her total sales fifteen. Recently, she added two novella sales to that collection, as well as having her first book with Baker/Revell, Lady in the Mist, picked up by Crossings Book Club, and six of her books chosen for large print editions by Thorndike Press. She has been a public speaker for as long as she can remember; thus, only suffers enough stage fright to keep her sharp. In 2002, while in graduate school for writing fiction, she began to teach fiction in person and online. She lives in Texas with her husband, two dogs, and probably too many cats.

To learn more about Laurie and her books,

please visit http://www.lauriealiceeakes.com