When I'm not wrangling four kids and a middle school classroom, I sit on my back porch in the mountains and write southern fiction that's short and long. I believe in Jesus, library fines, supper at the table, the Edislow life, and strong coffee. Pretty much in that order.
There’s no question your 2020 holiday schedule will look different than it normally does. Kristi and Lindsey discuss how you can use that to your advantage to make next year even better and how you can make this year awesome in the meantime.
Brought to you from our make-it-work basement offices where Lindsey is launching a new book. Magnolia Mistletoe is available everywhere in print and ebook November 10!
Holiday schedules are tough. That’s why we’re here to help you PRIORITIZE, PLAN, and PONDER how you can keep from being a Schedule Scrooge. To keep us all from being Scrooges, be sure to follow us on Instagram for some fun stories next week!
Episode Highlights
PRIORITIZE
Decide what you most desire out of the holiday season. If relaxed meals are your priority, spread out the travel. If everyone on Thanksgiving is your priority, spread out your meal with dessert here, brunch here, etc. Forget everything that doesn’t align with your priority.
PLAN
You need time to rest and maintain your routine. Keep in touch with normalcy by marking off days on your calendar. Protect your rest. If you can’t do full days, find moments like meals or bed times or something like that.
PONDER
When the season is over, decide what you want to keep for next year. Put EVERYTHING on the table. You don’t have to eat turkey. Kristi’s family is okay with everything changing as long as her mom makes dressing.
Edit Your Life Challenge
Determine your priority and put it somewhere you can see it and remember it.
How do you find a way to give your thoughts and emotions a little rest? In these stressful, noisy times, how do you find little moments to escape? We discuss the power of books, drives, walks, and mental jaunts to our happy place (Kristi apparently doesn’t have one).
Welcome guest Teresa Tysinger as we discuss the power of escaping.
Meet Teresa
Teresa Tysinger is an author of Southern Contemporary Romance inspired by grace. She writes on the fringes of being a wife, mom, and full-time communications and public relations professional. Her acclaimed debut novel, Someplace Familiar, released in 2017. Teresa is a member of ACFW, the Association for Women in Communications, and the Religion Communicators Council. She loves coffee, traveling, and prides herself in knowing and loving almost every genre of music. Born in Hawaii, raised in Florida, and educated in North Carolina, she now resides in Texas with her husband, daughter, and dog.
On the outskirts of Laurel Cove, North Carolina sits a quiet lake tucked into gentle mountains carpeted with the brilliant colors of autumn. Grief binds the lake’s only residents into an unlikely family, where old and new love build a bridge between loss and hope.
For years, best-selling author Cora Bradford has worked tirelessly to tread the unrelenting waves of grief in solitude. That is until a new neighbor moves in down the road and threatens to disrupt what she’s carefully preserved of the life she once knew. Will God ever answer her prayer for peace and calmer waters?
Following a scandal, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Luke Bassett escapes to the one place in the world he’s ever experienced peace—his mother’s cabin on the lake where he spent childhood summers. But the memory of her and the mistakes he made are hardly peaceful. To make matters worse, he gets off to a rocky start with his bitter, but breathtakingly beautiful, neighbor. Was running away from the life he’s always known the biggest mistake of all, or the beginning of something he never knew he wanted?
Spunky, opinionated, and recently widowed Ina McLean is alone for the first time in over ninety years. When Cora and Luke come together to care for their only other neighbor, Ina’s belief in God’s goodness through life’s ups and downs works to restore their hope in learning to live—and love—again.
Get Something Borrowed featuring Teresa and Toni Shiloh right here!
Lindsey and Kristi wanted to share all the wonderful things they’ve been loving for the past few months. Books. Music. Food. Gadgets. Podcasts. Get a rundown of our current fave things and hear two big new announcements.
Lindsey and Kristi have spent the past ten weeks looking at the Fruits of the Spirit, seeing how interdependent they are, and facing the struggles they have living them out in their own lives.
In this episode they recap what they learned, discuss what a litmus test is, and say the word “exactly” a lot.
In many ways goodness is the outward manifestation of all the other fruits working inside your heart. But how do we help it along? How do we recognize it?
Let’s talk about the last of our fruits of the Spirit, goodness.
We often think gentleness means being meek and mild. Kristi and Lindsey discuss why that’s far from true as we look at past uses of the word and a different way of executing gentleness.
Don’t miss Kristi’s regency novels which examine what it means to be a gentleman both in status and in heart.
having or showing a mild, kind, or tender temperament or character.
Dictionary definition of Gentle
Edit Your Life Challenge
Consider your position of power–at your job, within your family, in your decisions. How do you execute this position with gentleness even when you have to make the hard choices? Am I making this choice out of what’s easiest for me or out of what’s best for the whole?
In Lindsey’s house, we’re making some tough choices about media, television (i.e. Netflix) and phones.
Connect with Us!
Follow us on social media @aroughdraftlife on Instagram and Facebook or join our Facebook community group and join in the conversation (or start it because full transparency, we’re a little overwhelmed right now).
Rachel McMillan joins Lindsey and Kristi to discuss how our definitions of peace have changed during the pandemic, how we’re learning to find it, and how Rachel’s travel book that didn’t do well and her WWII novel–that’s doing amazing–have given her a new understanding of finding peace in knowing herself and God.
Meet Rachel McMillan
Rachel McMillan is a keen history enthusiast and a lifelong bibliophile. When not writing or reading, she can most often be found drinking tea and watching British miniseries. She is the author of the Van Buren and DeLuca Mysteries, the Herringford and Watts Mysteries and the Three Quarter Time series of Viennese contemporary romances. In 2020, she released her first work of non-fiction, Dream, Plan, Go: A Travel Guide and her latest historical fiction, The London Restoration. A Very Merry Holiday Movie Guide releases October 6, 2020 just in time for Christmas movie watching season!
Listen to Rachel offer wisdom and insight into publishing during the pandemic over at this bonus episode of Friends and Fiction.
Finding peace is not about finding balance–as Kristi referenced with this quote it’s more about knowing that you actually can’t always juggle everything.
One time, I was at a Q&A with Nora Roberts, and someone asked her how to balance writing and kids, and she said that the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic & some are made of glass.
You can use this graphic organizer or make your own, but take some time this week to really think about what you can and cannot control. Rather than letting the things you can’t control offer you anxiety, we encourage you to ponder on the fact that knowing you can’t control much is actually PEACE. Because it means that ultimately, life is not completely up to you.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, PEACE, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Galatians 5:22
Follow us on social media @aroughdraftlife on Instagram and Facebook or join our Facebook community group and join in the conversation (or start it because full transparency, we’re a little overwhelmed right now).
Faithfulness. It’s something profoundly connected to God but much more difficult to see manifested in the fallible humans around us. How can we find faithfulness when it feels like there’s none to be had? How do we ensure that we ourselves are working towards faithfulness?
How long will Kristi let Lindsey ramble?
All these answers and more in this week’s episode.
Patience. We often think of it as the ability to wait but what if we considered it something active that we could do while we wait? Kristi and Lindsey discuss where they are finding patience difficult, where they are using impatience to their advantage, and Christmas.
Yes. Christmas in September because it’s 2020 so why not?
Kristi and Lindsey discuss the all important love with guest Toni Shiloh. Riveting moments include Toni’s method of declaring love to Joe Schmoe, Kristi’s ability to make up stories about total strangers, and Lindsey’s obsession with Wal-mart parking spaces.
Meet Toni Shiloh
Toni Shiloh is a wife, mom, and multi-published Christian contemporary romance author. She writes to bring God glory and to learn more about His goodness. Her novel, Grace Restored, was a 2019 Holt Medallion finalist and Risking Love is a 2020 Selah Award finalist.
A member of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and of the Virginia Chapter, Toni seeks to help readers find authors. She loves connecting with readers and authors alike via social media. You can learn more about her writing at http://tonishiloh.com.
But most importantly, check out her latest release The Price of Dreams! Here’s a quick peek:
Ballet has always been my life, but one terrible moment may have destroyed everything I’ve worked so hard for—especially my title of Octavia Ricci, principal ballerina. I thought for sure my physical therapist, Dr. Noah Wright, could help me obtain my dream once more, but he wants more than I’m prepared to give.
I’ve seen firsthand the trials of interracial relationships. I’m a product of one myself and promised I’d never put my hopefully-someday kids through that drama. Everyone keeps telling me to let go of other people’s expectations, but I’m just not sure I can. Besides, if my dreams of returning to ballet are futile, what hope is there in seeking unconditional love?
The Price of Dreams is the third and final book in the Christian Chick Lit series: Faith & Fortune.
Edit Your Life
This week practice showing love and tell us about it!
Follow us on social media @aroughdraftlife on Instagram and Facebook or join our Facebook community group and join in the conversation (or start it because full transparency, we’re a little overwhelmed right now).
A Rough Draft Life 