Anne Faye

      It is always exciting when after months and months of work, a book finally has a cover. It means it is getting close to the time when a book ceases to be something only living in my imagination and becomes a tangible object ready to find its place in the world. This cover features a backdrop of Alencon lace with a photo of St. Zelie Martin in the foreground.  The book has passed through the hands of a beta reader who offered some helpful comments. I made her recommended changes (which were thankfully minor), formatted the book, and uploaded it to Amazon. My proof copy should be here Tuesday. I'm looking forward to seeing it!    Then, I will be able to do a final read, make any necessary changes, upload the corrected paperback file, create the Kindle version, and then, fingers crossed, have it go live and be available for sale. Have I ever mentioned a lot of work goes into creating a book?     

  It took about six weeks, but I finally finished typing The Lacemaker ! It ended up being about 56,000 words. Next up is proofreading and then sending it out to be beta read by a couple trusted colleagues/readers.  This has been such a project. All books are. I work as an editor in my other life. My life as a writer helps me understand the blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into what they are sharing with me. After all that work, it is hard to put a book out in the world. It is harder still to have it be rejected or ignored. What if no one reads it? What if no one cares? As much as I know that the work is not me, the prospect is still painful. My life goes on whether or not this book succeeds in the world, but all the work will feel like it was for nothing. All my time and effort will feel worthless. I have had this happen with other projects. I'm not sure I can bear it again. But for now, the work continues. For the moment, there is still hope.

  I was surprised to see it had been a year since I last wrote in this blog! That post was about how I wanted to write a novel about St. Zelie Martin. I spent much of the first portion of 2020 doing research. The writing began in earnest over the summer and I fully committed to it in the fall, trying to write every day.  I prefer to write my first drafts in longhand in simple notebooks. It is easy for me to carry them when I am going places or to pull them out for a quick few minutes of writing when I have a chance. I finished the first draft last night! I ended up filling up one-and-a-half notebooks. There is still a lot of work to be done. I need to type it up. I write my second draft as I do that, making changes as I go. I'm not sure how that is going to happen. It is much easier for me to pull out a notebook and scribble down a couple of paragraphs than it is for me to set up my laptop and type. I'm going to try to take 10 minutes out of my computer time each day (I usuall...

It's been quite a while since I've worked on any fiction, but I've had an idea percolating for the past few months that I have been doing some research on. I want to write a novel about St. Zelie Martin, the mother of St. Therese of Lisieux. I have read a few books about her, including The Extraordinary Parents of St. Therese . It soon became apparent that the book I absolutely needed was the one of her letters: A Call to a Deeper Love.  I ordered this book from Amazon at the end of December. The ship date was a few weeks later, but I could wait. The day before it was to be shipped, I received a notice saying the order was cancelled and that they had no idea when the book would be available. I started looking for other outlets. I found a convent bookstore that had it for sale. I hoped that they had one on their shelf they could ship out to me. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The book was nowhere to be found (at least not for a price under $100). The publish...

The Catholic Writers Guild has opened registration for its annual Catholic Writers Conference Online, the must-attend online event for Catholic writers. The conference is scheduled for September 20-22, 2019. Cost is $30 for Guild members and $45 for non-members. Registration is open at the Guild's website: https://catholicwritersguild.org/cwco-member-registration or https://catholicwritersguild.org/cwco-non-member-registration . This faith-focused, professional writing conference is being held completely online through webinars with audio-visual access. Attendees are able to ask questions of the presenters and receive knowledgeable feedback, and there is time between sessions for networking and socializing. The schedule is an immersive two and a half days covering all aspects of writing from idea conception to editing, publishing to marketing. Recordings and reference materials from the presentations will be available free to all conference attendees. ...

Browsing my local library recently, I came across two books that would make great gifts for the book lover in your life.  Improbable Libraries: A Visual Journey to the World’s Most Unusual Libraries by Alex Johnson explores libraries that don’t fit one’s usual mental picture of “library”. Johnson, the son of two librarians, was clearly raised with a love of books. In Improbable Libraries, he showcases libraries found in airports, tents, subway stations, taxes, and hotels. He highlights libraries in rural locations that travel via mules, donkeys, camels, and elephants. There is also a section on the Little Free Library movement as well as on home libraries. Improbable Libraries is a delight to explore and will challenge your thinking on what a library can be. Remarkable Books: The World’s Most Beautiful and Historic Works is a feast for the eyes. Using a chronological format, it traces the history of influential books from 3000 BCE to today. This oversized book...

Ever Eden is a new Catholic Literary Journal written by women but intended to be read by both women and men. It is a print quarterly and features fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. From their website: Our literary journal is not strictly about the Faith. Although some pieces explicitly concern Catholic tenets, many do not. All pieces are created flowing from the writers’ identity in Christ. Our literary journal, complete at 68 pages, features creative nonfiction, flash fiction, and poetry that will nourish your soul, engage your mind and draw you to true wonder. To find out more as well as download a free sample of the first issue, please visit https://www.everedenpublishing.com/