It's Not ME!!!

My first book came out last week. I' ve given review copies out and have received some pretty good feedback. I gave copies to many of my friends and neighbors, and even gave a copy to my mother who read it. It's the story of a woman who has moved to a new area and whose husband is travelling. She is lonely, off center and just can't seem to pull it together. Through some incredible experiences she meets a woman in a nursing home who helps her during this difficult time and gets Cath back on her feet. But know, this woman is NOT ME!

So my mother finished reading the book and called me to say she really felt my main character had to learn how to put routine in her life, she needed to actually plan weekly meals and get her children to school on time. I'm like, "Mother, it is fiction! This isn't me!" If this poor woman in the story had it all together, she wouldn't need these life-changing experiences. In fact, I don't think there would be a story. Who wants to read about someone whose life it totally under control? Where's the conflict?

After twenty minutes of assuring my mother that this is not an autobiography of my life, I did come away with one positive. In the next "Visiting Teaching Adventure" you will see Cath's growth. She will have a little more routine in her life but the next story is not hers- it's the story of a young mother with an escaping toddler who pulls her out of her little shell, and opens doors she would never have thought to approach. It's going to be a great story.

A Great Blurb

My blurb came today. You know, the few paragraphs on the back cover of a book that either grab you so you buy it or turn your stomach so you slap it down and run away. Well, mine came. So here it is- what do you think...


The nurse looked at Cath with raised eyebrows and then laughed out loud with a raspy smokers’ laugh. “Let me get this straight,” she snickered. “You are new, and the ladies from the Mormon Church, who probably knew exactly what they were doing, strapped you with a totally incoherent visiting teaching companion and a bunch of inactives? That is rich. What did you do to get on their bad side?” She chortled again.

Who would have thought that moving into a new ward could be so hard?

Cath Reed is at the end of her rope. Her husband travels constantly, her teenage daughter is going off the deep end, and to top it off, her new ward has made it clear that they wish she’d never moved in. Now Cath has been given the worst visiting teaching assignment in history—and a companion who never wakes up! The stern Relief Society secretary tells Cath not to visit her sisters in person. Cath doesn’t feel that neglecting her calling would be right, but is she ready to face the challenges of visiting unfriendly or even hostile women? And how can she visit them if she can’t even speak to Gwen, her visiting teaching companion, who stays asleep most of the time?

Between hot fudge, a valuable organ, and a lot of crayons and scratch paper, life will take Cath on a roller coaster she won’t ever forget—her sleeping companion is about to awaken her to a whole
new world of possibilities.

So I guess my question is, does it do its job? Does it make you want to read it?