The Loser Who Won

So I lost the contest that I entered.

But I knew that already.

The finalists’ list was published a month ago and Annie Spruce wasn’t on it.

What I didn’t know though, was that the judges for the 1,300+ book entries were going to provide each contestant feedback on their book.

As one of the country’s top-rated contests for indie authors, having feedback from THESE judges…

…that’s GOLD.

So when the unexpected email slid into the inbox while I puttered around online…

…and the subject line said JUDGING FORMS…

…I had to send the kids out of the room.

In one of the judge’s opinions, our gal Annie Spruce didn’t do so hot in the cover design segment.

The colors on the cover were too dull for a survival story, the comment read.

Another comment said some of the photos were too dark.

And this is my first official report card on the book and my friends love it and my kids love it and my people love it, but this…

…this is JUDGE FEEDBACK and I read it quietly and then I go back and read all six pages again and then I bit my lip and I choked a little.

Because I wasn’t prepared for this part.

Amidst the scores of sixes and sevens and eights, there it is…

…a two-sheet set from the judges in the Inspirational Category and there they all are, nines and tens and then…

“Enjoyable book with a heart-warming story.”

“Lovely story. Positive values.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed this little book. The writer has done a lovely job of telling a sweet, heartwarming, charming story…I would definitely encourage this author to keep writing. She has a gift for storytelling.”

And I felt silly sitting there because by this time my husband had come in and was reading over my shoulder but here they came anyway, hot surprising tears and I cried like I cried when I came out of surgery last year and there he was in the recovery room and he gave me a beautiful new pair of earrings all wrapped up in a pretty box with a shiny ribbon around it and a sweet little poem attached to it that I still carry in my purse.

And I cried like I cried the first time I ever wrote words from my heart that I didn’t know had been long in the making and were caressed and kissed tenderly by years and children and love and God.

And I cried like I’m crying right now just thinking of it all over again because Annie Spruce didn’t win diddly squat in the contest but she won my heart and she won our family’s love and she won my daughter’s trust in the Lord and because of that…

…that judge gave me all nines and tens.

I can change the cover someday if I want to.

I can run another punctuation edit if I have to.

But that judge gave me what I needed to hear.

My writing is solid.

My words are true.

This high-school graduate knows when a soul needs a good story that the thing to do is just to sit down and put it down.

And to bring all that love and all those kisses and all that gentle whispering from the One who created the heart that pumps it out.

That judge told me that when God puts a story in you, you have a job to share it with the world and when you do…

…it’s a beautiful thing.

That judge told me just what my cherished teacher told me all those years ago.

Share the good.

Keep going.

Just.keep.writing.

When you’ve been given…it’s up to you to share.

My name isn’t on that winner’s list.

Neither is Annie’s.

But today, we… me, and my dog…

…we’re kinda like winners.

Time to Get Weighed

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Please don’t show these pics to PETA.

Our pigs are fine.

They are sweet and they are happy and they are loved.

Honey tends to be, uh, what you’d call DRAMATIC.

Think Miss Piggy.

And it was time to get weighed.

And lets face it. Deep down, doesn’t every girl feel a little like this when it’s time for the scales?

We just had to share our piggy fun this week.

Noooooo!!! Not the SCALES! SQUEEEEEEALLLL!!! Unhand me you MONSTER!

But I only ate ONE cupcake!! I’ve gained HOW MUCH?

Go Time!

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I love writing. I love everything about it.

But it’s HARD!

It’s hard to find time. It’s hard to MAKE time. It’s hard to steal time.

But it’s even harder when I don’t write.

If you write too, you know exactly what I mean.

I learned some valuable lessons when I published Annie Spruce.

I learned that while writing is hard, publishing is even harder.

Editing (getting the baby ready to go home) was a sweaty, bloody, tearful process, and marketing (trying to show your baby to the whole world and then get them to vote for her in the cutest baby contest) is a nightmare.

IT.IS.HARD!

But my biological clock is ticking and it’s time to do it again.

I fashioned this stand-up work station. ((one thing I didn’t know is that when you write a book, your rear end will take on the size and shape of your office chair if you don’t STAND UP now and then)).

And then I did something that required me to steel myself and muster up all the guts and fortitude I have within me:

I did online research on the techno pages and I learned the terms and I learned the specs and I found myself the perfect laptop.

It is not within my cellular structure to visit such pages. My husband is the purchaser/researcher of all things techno in our house, but just like it wasn’t in me to move the chest freezer full of food across the laundry room floor when I was nine months pregnant just because it needed done, I muscled it like a boss and decided what I wanted and I brought my new friend home.

I love her already.

I tap out these words on her keys so pretty and dainty and it’s like my fingers were meant to live on them.

Cheesy right?

I’ll tell you a secret.

I’ve decided I’m not even going to give my children the password. Only my husband and I will know the hidden code that opens up all of Betty’s (that’s what I named her) digital beauty. I searched her out to help walk me through writing the next book, and I’m afraid if I let the kids use her too, she’ll meld with the electronics of the household and before I know it, she’ll be loaded up with Solitaire and history games and YouTube clips of farm animal showmanship.

Betty’s not going to be like the prized fur coat thrown into the winter tote of mud boots and stained-up Columbias and 4-H hoodies.

I sought her out and brought her home and now it’s time for her and I to get to work.

She’s serving me…

and my hind end…

very well.

What are YOU working on these days? What special tools help you create? Would LOVE to hear about it, care to share?

Painting Toenails, Washing Feet

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Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. John 13:14

So I was kinda mean last week.

Actually, truth be told, I was really mean.

Stomping around the house, throwing things in the trash, grumping on my husband no matter what he said kinda mean.

He saw the angry side of me.

Not that he hasn’t before.

If we’re being honest here, he’s seen it more times than I care to admit.

He ‘s told me more than once that one of the things he loved most about me when we were dating was my spunkiness and firey temper.

I’m not sure if all these twenty-some years later he’d say the same.

I’m used to loud arguing and getting over it. He hates that. Quiet talking and peaceful resolve are more his style. All these twenty years, I’ve had to smother my anger and learn how to live without it.

Put it in the grave and nurture the tree called gentleness that’s planted in the dark dirt near the headstone.

Angry wants to rise up sometimes.

Claw her ugly way out and dance on the grave and mock the gentle tree that grows taller each year but still shows it’s fragility on those days when it’s not facing the Son.

It makes him crooked when we argue, he tells me.

It twists his heart up and he can’t think of life being right and he’d do anything in his power to fix it.

He wants unity between us.

Peace.

But it’s not peaceful when I’m cranky and ornery and being mean.

It tears up our household. It tears up him.

And it tears up me.

I don’t like being mean. I don’t like feeling mean and I certainly don’t enjoy the cranky feeling that overtakes an overwhelmed mama when there’s so much do that she can’t see the light of day and no one else can seem to see things the way she does and she’s just carrying it all ON HER OWN.

Being mean is feeling like the lonely girl who’s pouting as she sits in the car alone because she threw a fit on the way home and now no one wants to be around her so they left her just sitting there in the cold car parked in the driveway.

Isolated.

Angry.

Left with her ugliness.

But too stubborn about protecting it to get out of the car.

Deep down though, she’s lonely and crying.

So when we ignore the advice of the sweet elderly couple at our wedding reception…those ones long gone now…that pair who’d weathered life and loss and decades and death…that precious woman who lifted her sweet little wrinkled gnarled finger to the two of us standing there in ivory and said

“This is the secret. Don’t be mad when you go to sleep. You fight, you work it out. Before you go to sleep. Over fifty years. That’s the secret.”

But when we’re sitting in the car alone we forget her face and forget what she said.

So the next morning I sat with my Bible and my coffee, and even though we’re told to leave the altar and reconcile our differences, I tried to read anyway because angry people need Him and somehow just having that Book there in my lap with words red and history true, well, just that alone will start a gal on the path to reconciliation…then in walks my husband, just waking up and with a peacemaker’s smile…

…he washed my feet.

The kids still quiet in bed and the house still sleeping, he went to the bathroom and he got the nail polish fixings and he came back and he put my feet on the footstool and he started painting my toenails.

His big hands held the little glass bottle and I sat there quietly, my Bible and my coffee still in my lap, while he prettied my toes with my favorite red.

And when he accidentally knocked over the nail polish remover and it spilled a wood-eating mess of chemical all over our dark wood floor, he quietly and patiently got up and went to the kitchen and came back with a wad of paper towels. He gently and silently mopped up the spill and went back to work on my toes.

My Bible held me still and quiet, anchored to my seat and not breathing one word about the mess.

This was bigger than the mess and bigger than the fight and bigger than the pride and the little issues that I’d allowed to be too big the day before.

I wasn’t lonely in the car anymore.

I wasn’t sitting in the driveway feeling left and abandoned and prideful in protecting my heart with those swords that want to scratch their way up from the dirt and the depths and cut those closest to me..

I was loved.

I was accepted.

And I was forgiven.

There was a mess but it didn’t matter.

Because life is messy and sometimes it gets ugly messy and while we wouldn’t want the finish to be stripped away, when we look at the dull spot, that one that doesn’t shine quite as bright as the rest of the story…

…that spot right there is one to be remembered.

That spot right there is where something important happened and it was important enough to leave its mark.

That spot is where a knot formed and that tree just went on growing right around it.

That spot right there says “There! Right there! THAT happened to help us remember.”

That spot right there is where love grew.

And it won’t ever be perfect.

But in its imperfectness, it has a purpose.

It will be used.

It will serve.

And it will be strong.

In your anger do not sin…Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Ephesians 4:26

Chapter One, Annie Spruce

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1 ~ BO

“When the Man waked up he said, ‘What is Wild Dog doing here?’ And the Woman said, ‘His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always.'” ~Rudyard Kipling

I told the kids to put their hands on him every single time they passed him.

“Your hands can heal.”

“Mama are you crying?” Their big eyes searched mine.

I’d found him emaciated and barely able to hold his head up when I returned home after a weekend women’s retreat. Irritated at my husband, I asked him if he’d only remembered to feed the kids.

Irritated only until he told me Bo wouldn’t eat. Worried then.

I dug out the syringe from the first aid kit, opened up the golden goodness in the jar of chicken broth I’d been saving since a friend gave us a case of it for helping her family butcher their flock that fall.

He sniffed at the handful of nutrients I offered him, licked at it, then, after three or four syringes of water, finally found the energy to eat a cup or so of good, strengthening protein.

“Good boy Bo.”

It had been almost exactly nine years since I’d brought him home from work. He was a gift. A present from the officers and dispatchers on night shift. They’d held him aside, kept him from going to the pound, given him to me at morning shift-change.

When I called Matt to tell him we had a new little buddy he told me no. Give it back. We already have two dogs.

I can’t give back a birthday present!

“Yes you can.”

Fostering him wasn’t exactly keeping him, but it wasn’t giving him back so that’s what I called it when I cut my shift short and brought the pup home to get him a good meal and a long rest.

And as soon as Matt pulled in the driveway and saw me standing there with that fat yellow pup under my arm, there was never any more talk of giving him back. Bo belonged to us.

If it was his parathyroid as the vet suspected, a simple surgery would fix him, most likely put him on the path to several more happy years as our family’s watch dog. Mascot. Faithful friend.

So we had blood work done and waited on the results. The lab was out of state, so we had to wait a long time. While we waited, he wasted. Natural remedies kept him alive. I hand fed him pure coconut oil, depleted our supply of organic chicken meat, and syringed him kelp broths and as much water as I could get him to take. The kids and I researched online and checked the feed store for things that would help him hold on until we had a diagnosis.

His comfort took priority. Had there been just a smaller chance of a full recovery, we would’ve put him down, he was that weak.

But there was hope. Strong hope.

So the kids would lay down next to him on his bed, make sure his blanket was on straight and use their hands to heal. Daily calls to the vet to check on lab reports became the news of the day. No results.

We prayed for him every single night.

Hang in there Bo.

When we brought the first baby home, he was like a big awkward teenager. Not quite sure where to stand, what to say, how to act. So he just wagged his tail and sniffed. Stood in the corner and looked at the new thing.

By the time the third baby came there were two toddlers in the house and his big buddy died. His big buddy had been boss dog.

When his big boss was loaded up in the truck and never came home, Bo sat in the front yard for a whole afternoon looking up the driveway.

The next day he became the big boss. He had a lot of things to take care of.

When the kids went outside, Bo went outside. When the kids came in, he came in. If a moose came into the yard, he chased it off. When a car pulled in the driveway, he sniffed it out before anyone came to the door. He made sure the kids had a sidekick. He sat patiently while they saddled him and tied him to doorknob hitching posts.

When the fourth baby came home, he was an expert. It was just another thing to take care of.

The vet called on a Thursday night after their office had closed. They’d received a late afternoon package. The lab results confirmed yes, it was his parathyroid. Bring Bo first thing in the morning for surgery they told me.

I strapped everyone in their car seats, watched the sunrise as we crossed the bridge over the river, Bo curled up on the floor behind my seat, right beneath the dangling feet of his kids.

“What if BoBo dies Mama?” My oldest has always been my worrier.

I choke back tears and tell him no matter what happens, they have been blessed in a way that many people will never be. To have been loved by a dog so loyal, so faithful, even if we don’t get to bring this yellow dog home, even if this was the last ride in our truck that he’d ever take, our life was made more beautiful because God put this dog in it. And that was what we thought of when we left him at the vet’s office.

And I cried all the way home.

We picked him up the next day at lunch time. The tumor was the size of a walnut. It’d been clinging to his parathyroid, an organ the size of a grain of rice.

He was a new dog right out of the office. He felt so good we took him to the beach. I borrowed a little red hoodie from my son and put it on Bo to keep off the chill.

As soon as it was zipped up across his furry chest, Bo went splashing in the ocean. He was alive again.

We had a good few days with him until the morning he urinated blood. Then began the every other day calcium checks. After a disease like this, the body may not remember how to make and regulate calcium and vitamins the vet said.

Steroids, Vitamin D, antibiotics…he had his own pharmacy. I turned to the coconut oil again, and started boiling chicken, shredding kale and carrots. I fed him well.

But still he deteriorated. If he could just get over the hump. If we could just get his kidneys to kick back in gear. Each lab test showed he was at a standstill.

On a Wednesday, after two weeks of running him in for lab checks, Matt and I decided it was time. He wasn’t improving. I knew if I could keep his system strong he’d have a fighting chance. But all the system strengthening wasn’t working. He could barely hold his body up to pee. If he didn’t make a significant turn-around by Saturday, we were going to take him in and let our beloved Dr. Tabby put him to rest.

We never had to decide. He left us on Thursday morning. He died with his big yellow head in my lap, right here in the home he watched over and loved.

When Matt carried him outside, wrapped tenderly in one of our best sheets, we gently set his body down and let each of the children say goodbye, pet the velvet ears of the sweet animal that’d been part of every single day of their childhood. Then we put our old friend in the ground.

We wept as we prayed around his grave. With tears rolling down our chins, we filled in the hole, tamped down the earth, and thanked God for the life of our yellow dog. Then, with the sun sending sprays of light through the spruce trees, we wiped our eyes and we went inside and had pancakes.

Bo’s last photo on his last trip to the ocean.

***

From the pain of losing our Bo, to the joy of finding our Annie Spruce, our family has learned so much about love and friendship and the surprise of God’s care. Join our family, and find your heart warmed by this sweet little story that is both good…and true.

Purchase your copy of Annie Spruce for Kindle here, or a soft cover version at www.cassandrarankin.net

In the woods of Alaska, an unexpected and bloody surprise awaits a family at a rural pull-off. Little did they know, the mess they stumbled upon would soon build the faith of a small girl, her family, and a homeless man. Their story is a tender display of how, by answering the smallest of prayers, God shows us the bigness of Him.

Annie Spruce is the true account of an extraordinary dog who reminds us that amidst the messes of this life, there is joy and there is love. The story of Annie Spruce brings a message of family and friendship, and evokes a sense of delicate care that will delight all ages for generations to come.

“This book HAD to be written, and it’s AMAZING. A story too miraculous to be true. Yet it happened.” G. Litzen

“Your talents give you the ability to place the reader in the midst of the story, feeling the heartbreak and jubilation as each tender moment develops. The message is clear, God hears our prayers, great and small – our faith in Him brings life to those prayers. Annie Spruce sits right in that spot of your soul where it reaches out and plays your heartstrings like a well tuned fiddle. I give it a standing ovation!” ~S.Wafer

“I loved this book. Beautifully written and very heartwarming. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Highly recommended for dog lovers.” ~Nicole (Amazon)

“I love this book! I love this dog! I love this family and their incredible story of faith, compassion, and strength. This book cannot help but touch the very core of your heart. God bless you Rankin family!!!” ~C.J. Rhoads

Muskrat Mornin

Dancing With an Indie Publisher

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I stink terribly at this book selling gig.

I think I just wanna go back to WRITING the books and let the seller person take care of selling them.

Oh wait.

Right.

I AM the seller person.

How depressing when you want to just do a sale and start giving some books away for FREEE and you get to see all kinds of new names from a drawing who are going to get FREEE books and you dance and dance in circles and decide you’re going to get your Kindle side in on the fun and your hair spins around and your dress floops out in a flowy circle as your outstretched arms gracefully release rose petals and free books…things that will beautify the WHOLE WIDE WORLD.

And then FWAP…it all comes to a screeching halt when you misstep and trip and the rose petals fall to the ground and one of those books comes flying back and hits you upside the head and you remember…

Oh yeah.

It ain’t like that is it?

So today my wee little dream of my wee little sale was like that book fwapping when Amazon told me I WASN’T ALLOWED to have a sale on MY book because I just had one and I had to WAIT until MAY.

Bossy huh?

How’s a gal supposed to get her Julie Andrews on with THAT kind of noise??

Talk about a writer’s straight jacket. Geez.

So I have to wait.

BUT.

I am SO excited that I get to mail copies of Annie Spruce to ten happy winners from nine different states! Those ten were out of 606 that entered the Goodreads giveaway.

See why I just want to let my sweet books fly into the arms of my readers? Six HUNDRED people y’all! They wanted to read about my little girl’s prayer and our sweetie pie dog. How SWEEEET is that??

So, I guess you probably get the idea that I like people to have our book. So there’ll be a sale. As in, a FREE sale. SOON. As soon as Amazon LETS me. Gosh we love em but these rules..these rules….

And this Goodreads giveaway has been so much fun…don’t be surprised if I soon don my twirling skirt and my rose petals. I’ll be ready for another go round.

Minus the fwapping of course.

🙂

Not Quite But It’ll Do. For Now.

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It was Fairbanks for poems then Juneau for horses and all I did in those quiet moments between busy when I wasn’t writing…

…was think about writing.

So much to write about.

The beauty.

The fun.

The growing.

The goodness.

But laundry calls and the animals are hungry and the sun is shining…

…and the chores they just won’t wait.

If I start writing today I just might not stop.

So it’s not quite writing these ten minutes of being here.

No, not quite.

But almost.

It’ll do.

But only for now.

One Hour and a Glass of Red – 100 Word Challenge

Cassandra Rankin

Life is Messy and Things Aren't Always Little on this Crazy Little Farm

The Loser Who Won

Time to Get Weighed

Go Time!

Painting Toenails, Washing Feet

Chapter One, Annie Spruce

Muskrat Mornin

Dancing With an Indie Publisher

Not Quite But It’ll Do. For Now.

One Hour and a Glass of Red – 100 Word Challenge

Twenty-Three Aprils Ago

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