A note of apology

Dear Readers,

I'm sorry that I did not blog today, and I'm especially sorry that I did not announce the winner of the book giveaway. You see, it was sunny and gorgeous in my neck of the woods... The sort of early summer day when (8 months pregnant or not) I couldn't bring myself to stay cooped up inside with my eyes glued to a computer screen. Instead of flipping open my lovely laptop, I spent the day planting flowers, helping my sons wash their bikes with the garden hose (you can imagine how much "washing" we got done), scrubbing our car seat and stroller in preparation for little Baart Baby, and playing at the pool. Whew. I am exhausted. It's time for me to heave my big baby belly into a cold shower and then off to bed. Nothing in all the world sounds quite so sweet right now as the cool side of my comfy pillow. Mmmm... pillow... Night-night. Sleep tight. I'll blog on Tuesday (have a happy Memorial Day on Monday!) and announce the winner then. Guess that means if you haven't told me a bit about yourself (look back two posts to the one titled Journeying Together) you still have time to participate in the giveaway. As for the rest of you, thanks for understanding. :)

Hugs,
Nicole

Enigmatic

Thanks so much for all of your responses to Tuesday's post! I can't tell you how fun it is getting to know you... Though I get glimpses of your personalities, your interests, and passions through your comments and emails, it's nice to have the opportunity to flesh you out in my mind. Exciting stuff! I just really do wish I could see you and talk to you face to face.

Anyway, I'm having so much fun that I want to continue in the "getting to know you" vein today. One of the issues that has come up in the author's group I belong to (see Tuesday's post for more info) is the fact that I'm a bit of an enigma. I don't quite fit any stereotypes, and therefore my books are kind of hard to market. Who would like them? Not romance readers, mystery-lovers, or fantasy buffs. But maybe those people would like them... Young people? Old? Somewhere in between? Perhaps people who are passionate about adoption (like I am) will like my books. But I don't handle adoption in my books the way that I approached it in real life. Argh. It's like trying to nail Jell-o to a tree. Slippery and impossible!

Oh well, I've decided that I'm going to embrace my inconsistencies! I like the unexpected and I like being surprised. So, I'm going to share a few of my quirks with you... And I'd love to hear a bit about yours!

• I am a small town girl at heart, but I LOVE the city. In fact, while I long for wide open spaces and huge expanses of blue sky, I could easily envision moving back to Vancouver (or Chicago, New York, wherever) at some point in my life. I'm just as comfortable working with large animals on a farm as I am walking the streets of downtown in a pair of heels and a killer suit. Even though I have no use for my beautiful city clothes these days, they still hang in the back of my closet. Someday...
• I am both painfully shy and incredibly extroverted. When I was a kindergartner, I was so silent my teacher wondered if I was a selective mute. There are still times that I am nearly paralyzed with fear in social situations. But I can also work a room with the best of them. I'm comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people, and I'm fairly confident about my ability to communicate and express myself clearly. Sometimes it feels like a switch that I can turn on and off. If I flick on the "outgoing" switch, I'm fine in nearly any circumstance. If I forget, all my insecurities rise to the surface and I'm numb with terror.
• I am a homebody and an adventurer. Have you seen the cartoon Toot & Puddle (or read the books)? Toot and his brother Puddle are pigs who live together in a beautiful, fantasy house in the middle of a lovely wood. Toot likes to travel and see the world. Puddle likes to stay home. I am half Toot and half Puddle. I would backpack Europe with abandon, but be mildly homesick the entire time.
• I take mothering very seriously, but I would be lost without my career. I wish I could be the kind of mom to abandon myself to my children during their formative years. But I need to be working outside of the home in some capacity. It's true, my kids get the bulk of my time and attention, but my career keeps me grounded and sane. Even if I wasn't writing for publication, I would have to be plugged into the professional world in some way. Teaching, developing curriculum, writing for a newspaper or freelance... Anything that would keep my mind engaged and my creativity fresh.

Okay, I've shared four idiosyncrasies with you. It's your turn! Please take a moment to tell me at least one thing about yourself that other people might find enigmatic. I'd love to know I'm not the only one who doesn't fit every stereotype! Oh, and don't forget to leave a short introduction on Tuesday's post. I'll be drawing for a winner on Saturday.

PS - I included photos throughout this post of several of my different sides. The top one was a promo shot my good friend took. She wanted to try and glam me up. ;) The middle one is me "mothering" (or is it smothering?). And the last one was taken when I taught high school. Yup, those are my pajamas. It was pajama day and I took my job very seriously. ;)

Journeying Together

I've recently joined a small group of fellow authors that is interested in better understanding who we are and who we write for. If you've been reading my blog for a while you know that I've touched on this topic before--most notably when I signed a new book contract with Simon & Schuster and had to give some serious thought to the concept of branding. I'm no expert, but I'm slowly learning... And I'm starting to realize that the better I grasp this, the more meaningful my work will be.

Believe it or not, it's not just about selling books (at least, for me it's not). Of course, that would be a nice side effect, but I am convinced, heart and soul, that we all want to be a part of something that matters. According to Seth Godin in his book Tribes: "People want connection and growth and something new. They want change... We [all] want to belong." Yes! I do! I want my life to make a difference and I want that passion to translate into every area of my being, not just my spirituality or my understanding of good and bad or right and wrong.

This desire for positive change impacts so many areas of my life that sometimes it's hard to pinpoint what I am most passionate about. Some of my most engaging interests are:

• Writing. My books are much more than a paycheck for me. They're a way to engage the world around me, to point to beauty in brokenness, and to explore things that I don't fully understand. When I write, I long to engage people in a conversation.
• Philanthropy. Our non-profit (One Body One Hope) consumes me. I can totally see the Baart family ending up in Liberia someday, for a much more extended stay than a two week mission trip. I would love to do life with our friends in West Africa.
• Motherhood. Before I had kids, I never considered myself the motherly type. But now that I'm a mom to a six-year-old, a three-year-old, and a soon-to-be newborn, I take bringing up children very seriously. My job as a mom takes first place above any of my other pursuits.
• Adoption. I've always been drawn to adoption, but now that I'm a bona-fide adoptive mother I'm downright rabid about it. I take seriously the biblical mandate to care for widows and orphans, and I love advocating for the least of these.
• Simplicity. With the current recession forcing the entire country to reassess our finances and the extravagant way we live, this doesn't seem like such a unique passion. But living a simple, un-busy life is something I've always longed for. From re-examining the concept of frugality, to getting rid of processed foods in my home and buying local, I believe that contentment can be found in refusing to give in to the lies of our materialistic culture. I hope to continue to explore this idea in the coming months and years.

Okay, these are just a few of my interests and passions. But right now I'm trying to condense all of this information and apply it to my career as an author. I'm trying to answer the following questions: Who reads my books (or would love to read my books if they only knew about them)? And, even more importantly, what can I offer these people? What do we have in common, and what has the potential to draw us closer so that we want to continue journeying together?

I have a couple of questions for you today and I would be so grateful if you would take a moment to answer them!

Question #1: Who are you? Tell me a bit about yourself... Include as much or as little as you want!

Question #2: What are you passionate about? I mentioned five of my pursuits, now what captures your imagination?

*As an added bonus, I'll tie a giveaway into this little exercise. I have a lovely, signed book up for grabs. All you have to do is leave a comment and I'll pick one winner from the bunch. Thanks for reading!

Booksignings

Do you write? Do you dream of being published someday? You have to watch this video. It's a great dose of reality, served up so funny you won't worry too much about the sad truth of it. If you don't write, do you read? Maybe this video is even more important for you to watch... Love an author. Say hello. You'll make the world a happier place.

Research Trip, Part II

Yikes, I learned a lot in Alaska. Even as I begin to type this I'm wondering which parts to share with you. I think I could blog for weeks! Just the best, Nic, just the best...

Be Brave

You're looking at a photo of Exit Glacier, taken at 3500 feet from the cockpit of a Cessna 172. To tell you I was scared of flying would be a flat-out lie. I was terrified. I've been researching bush plane accidents and disappearances in Alaska for months now, and let me tell you: a lot of flights go down in Alaska. If that wasn't scary enough, as our pilot, Blair, was calling in our flight plan, the dispatcher with the FAA told him to tune his radio to pick up emergency signals. Apparently a flight had just gone down in the Kenai river. And while we were in the air, a Coast Guard helicopter ran into a snowstorm on the top of a mountain and crashed! The helicopter apparently rolled down the mountain for a while before it stopped. Thankfully, the pilot and co-pilot were okay. However, when we left the tarmac the missing plane on the Kenai river had still not been recovered. Talk about scary. But I did it! I flew! And I'm so glad I did... Oh, I also ate moose burgers and reindeer sausage while I was in Alaska. Also very brave of me. ;)

Ask Questions (Lots of Them!)

See that little strip of land in between the water of the Cook Inlet? Guess what? It's not land. Nor is it sand, which I was quite sure it was. It looked so inviting during low tide that Aaron and I were planning to go for a little walk along the beach... But I'm glad we didn't. Apparently, the soft beach we were so convinced would be perfect for strolling along was really the beginning of the mudflats. As viscous and unstable as quicksand, the mudflats are extremely dangerous and can gobble up an unsuspecting tourist before the Coast Guard has a chance to pull you out! Creepy... And incredibly important to the unfolding of my story. Who knew? Thankfully, we learned about the mudflats within the first day of being in Alaska. My newfound knowledge taught me two things: 1.) Don't walk on the mudflats. 2.) Assume you know nothing. Ask questions about everything. So I did. I probably sounded like an idiot, but I learned so much. What's this? What's that? Why is that moose in someone's backyard? Is reindeer meat really made of reindeer? Why do Alaskans drink so much coffee? What's a snow machine? And on and on and on...

Document Everything & Take Pictures (even of things that don't seem important...)

I took this photo on the pier in Seward because I thought it was cute. But I'm already starting to realize that all the little details I didn't consider important at the time are going to add a depth and authenticity to my story that I could have never acheived by simply researching Alaska online. From the Heart Attack on a Plate and the Veggie Bypass (breakfast platters at Snow City Cafe in downtown Anchorage) to my little evergreen friend, the intricacies of life in Alaska are what is going to make my story feel real. The story truly is in the details and I'm so excited that I was able to experience so much during my time in Alaska.

Your turn: The lesson I took most to heart during my Alaskan research tour was be brave. For the sake of my story I hopped into scenarios that I normally would avoid like the plague. But it was so good for me (in so many ways)! My question for you today is: Does your story require you to be brave? To go somewhere you've never gone? Deal with an emotion you'd rather avoid? Forgive someone you'd like to simply forget? I'd love to know if you're being pushed right now and how you're responding to it.

Research Trip, Part I

So I just got back from Alaska! What an adventure... If space is the final frontier, Alaska is the last true wild frontier. Wow, it's a different world up there. From the midnight sun to the hearty, friendly people, Alaska was truly like no place I've ever been. It would take me weeks to sum up our experiences in Anchorage and beyond, but I'm going to try to condense it all this week into a series of photos and tidbits of wisdom I gleaned. This was my first true research trip, and the learning curve was harsh. But also thoroughly enjoyable--I'm already looking forward to the next time my research takes me somewhere unexpected. (Aaron is hoping for Tahiti or the south of France. Think I could set a book there?)

Without further ado, research nuggets from the Last Frontier.

Soak it in.
Smell it, feel it, observe it, listen to it, drink it up. Aaron was so patient with me--even when I insisted we pull over every five minutes so I could get a feel for Alaska from a hundred different perspectives. I wanted to experience the wind and the rain, the sun and the dark (though dark is a relative term in Alaska in May), and everything in between. Believe it or not, I did not take pen and paper and try to capture these experiences. Instead, I engaged them fully, living in the moment, and later (when I had time to pop in a coffee shop or relax during some downtime in our hotel) I released everything I could on the page. It was interesting in retrospect to see how I remembered each event and what stuck out in my mind as important. I think I waded through a lot of the initial junk that would have cluttered up my mind if I wrote as I was "in it."

Meet the natives.
This is a photo of me, my pilot Blair, and the Cessna 172 that we took over Resurrection Bay surrounding Seward. Our good friends, Josh and Jessica, were gracious enough to introduce us to a host of amazing people that regaled us with stories of life in Alaska. Ken, Fred, and Blair are just a few of the people we met, but I cannot begin to tell you how much they influenced the trajectory of my book. The stories they told and the wisdom they shared will play a huge role in the unfolding of my tale. I hope that I can do justice to the tidbits of life that they so graciously blessed me with.

Have an open mind.
Before we went to Alaska, I thought I had a pretty good idea of where my story was going. I knew where my pilot would take-off from, and I knew how his tale would unfold. Several days in Alaska uprooted many of my well-laid plans! For example, the town of Seward wasn't even on my radar--until I went there and realized that it was the absolute perfect setting for part of my book. And who knew that Resurrection Bay, a deep bay on the Kenai Peninsula would play a significant role? Honestly, I didn't even know it existed. At first, it was a little unnerving to watch some of the details of my story unravel, but I'm glad that I was able to hold my intentions loosely--the book is going to be much, much stronger for it.

Stay tuned on Thursday for more research insights (and more of my Alaska photos)! :)

Your turn: What is something you've learned in researching for a book or story?

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Here's the recipe I promised! One of my all-time favorites. :) Usually I make the cake from scratch, but you can just as easily bake it from a box. When I'm pressed for time I like something really rich and dark like Devil's Food or Dark Chocolate Fudge. I don't recommend German Chocolate or something similarly sweet or too light with this decadent recipe.

Have a great weekend!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake

1 dark chocolate cake, baked according to directions in two round pans
peanut butter cups

Filling:

1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
salt to taste

-Blend butter and peanut butter until creamy. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. If desired, add salt pinch by pinch until it tastes perfect.

Frosting:

3 cups confectioners' sugar
1 cup butter (not margarine!)
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp. vanilla
dash of salt

-Melt butter and add vanilla. Sift cocoa and sugar togehter. Add dry mixture to melted butter bit by bit. When the frosting becomes too thick, begin to slowly add evaporated milk. Beat until smooth and creamy. Again, add salt if needed.

To assemble the cake, place one round cake on a serving platter. Top with all of the peanut butter filling. Layer second round cake on top. Frost the entire cake, and garnish with chopped peanut butter cups.