Update and Top Five Favorite Authors

It took a Homeschooled Authors Read-to-Win post to motivate me to revisit my own blog today!

First, my top five favorite authors:
Jane Austen
Elizabeth Goudge
L.M. Montgomery
Elizabeth Gaskell
Louisa May Alcott

These ladies inspire me with every word they wrote. Who are your top five favorite authors? Check out the Homeschooled Authors for some great choices!

Update: I’ve missed my blog, and I’ve missed keeping up with other people’s blogs. But that’s what comes with the busiest summer I’ve had in years. God has blessed me with many new experiences and fun and challenging opportunities! One day before too long I hope to share more about them.

Enchanted Island

Two days ago, the word artist Lucy Maud Montgomery turned 140 years old. This lady is one of my top five favorite authors; I love her poetical descriptions and her well-drawn characters. She knew how to observe and translate those observations into writing that fills readers’ senses with images and insights … she heightens our appreciation for natural beauty and human personalities. There is deep emotion running beneath her descriptions, which makes their impact greater. The land, the water, the trees, the gardens, the houses, all are characters in themselves. She almost always wrote stories with Prince Edward Island, Canada, as backdrop. When you have read much of Montgomery’s work, the island becomes as much a storied land as England, or, in our individual experiences, our own homes. L. M. Montgomery’s work is probably what first revealed to me how much I value setting in a story.

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What fueled her development as a writer? How did she become so good at what she did? She wrote all the time—daily diary entries, letters, hundreds of short stories and 22 novels. She read—Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Anthony Trollope, William Thackeray; poetry, prose, history, psychology, contemporary best-sellers. She loved her home, Prince Edward Island. Her vivid imagination gave her no rest. I read an instructive biography a couple of years ago called Magic Island; you can read my review of it here and see what I learned about her life and writing. That’s where I found this endearing quote from her diary: “How I love my work. I seem to grow more and more wrapped up in it as the days pass and other hopes and interests fail me. Nearly everything I think or do or say is subordinated to a desire to improve in my work. I study people and events for that, I think and speculate and read for that” (December 31, 1898). If you’re a writer, doesn’t that sound familiar to your experience?

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Her family and friends called her Maud. Her mother died before she was two, and at age seven she was sent by her father to live with her maternal grandparents. She was brought up strictly, and had little contact with children her age … she made up imaginary friends and worlds instead. She attributed her keen creativity to that necessity. She was good in school and achieved her teacher’s certificate in one year (as opposed to two!) at college before studying literature at a university. That certificate was useful—she became a teacher for some years—but she vastly preferred her writing … beginning in 1897, her short stories were regularly published. Her first novel, the phenomenal Anne of Green Gables, burst into readers’ hearts in 1908. In 1911 she married Ewan MacDonald, a Presbyterian minister, and had three sons, two of whom lived to adulthood: Chester and Stuart. Sadly, she suffered from depression, and her husband was mentally ill in later life. She wrote until her death in 1942, but the last novel she saw through publication was Anne of Ingleside, in 1939. The Anne-related short stories in The Road to Yesterday were published posthumously. Funny, and fitting, how she bookended her novelistic career with much-loved Anne ....

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I’ve read the eight Anne books, the three Emily books, The Blue Castle, Chronicles of Avonlea, and Further Chronicles of Avonlea—but I’ve by no means exhausted Montgomery’s supply of fiction! We readers have many opportunities to dip into the beautiful, occasionally disturbing and thought-provoking world that she sculpted out of the shores, meadows, woods, and people of Prince Edward Island. Have you read any of her books? Which ones?

Sales, a Link, and Birthdays

Whew. It seems like I have a lot to spread on the table in this post … sort of like a Thanksgiving dinner. And, like said dinner, I’m having trouble deciding where to start ….

How about business, first? I will be participating in two online book sales this weekend: One spans Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and includes a bunch of Indie authors. The print version of my book will be on sale on Friday; check here on Friday to see who else is participating and maybe find something really nice! The other is a smaller, exclusively Cyber Monday sale in which some of the Word Painters will be marking their eBooks down to $2.99 each. So stop by on Monday for more info!

Speaking of Word Painters, you may be interested in a post I wrote there recently: Encouraging Verses for the Writer.

And now for the birthdays. The birthdays, to be precise, of some of my favorite authors. It turns out the end of November is chock full of them! Each of these authors has written at least one book that is on my list of absolute favorites:

George Eliot—Nov 22, 1819­–Dec 22, 1880. Her 1876 novel Daniel Deronda, about a young man seeking his identity and befriending some remarkable European Jews, is high on my list.

John Bunyan—Nov 28, 1628–Aug 31, 1688. Author of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). What more can I say?

Louisa May Alcott—Nov 29, 1832–Mar 6, 1888. I enjoy all her novels, but high up on my list are Little Women (1868) and An Old-Fashioned Girl (1869).

C. S. Lewis—Nov 29, 1898–Nov 22, 1963. The Chronicles of Narnia have been a part of my life since I was I don’t know how young!

Mark Twain—Nov 30, 1835–Apr 21, 1910. Twain’s skill with words always leaves me in awe. My favorites by him are Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), quite high on my list, and The Innocents Abroad (1869), a hilarious travel memoir.

L. M. Montgomery—Nov 30, 1874–Apr 24, 1942. Montgomery is my favorite of these November authors. I love every page her lyrical words are printed on, but the ones I love best belong to her Anne of Green Gables novels, 1–6.

Which of these authors are your favorite(s)?

To wrap up this post, I want to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for these birthday-authors, I’m thankful for each of you who read my blog, and I’m thankful to God for everything … everything. I don’t want to sound trite, but He has blessed me so much, and I can see that even the bad things always, somehow, work out for good, especially when they are just to make me depend more on my Lord.

Have a blessed and meaningful holiday! 

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