About the Paula piece and the Iceland incident

The closing months of 2017 have been unexpectedly pleasant for me in that I finally sold my house, published my book, got a huge article in the Washington Post Sunday magazine about Paula White (President Trump’s spiritual advisor) and won a contest for a trip to Iceland. I was long overdue for some good things to come my way.About the Iceland trip: I’d seen this ad about a swishy retreat for writers in downtown Reykjavik and I was dying to go. I’d visited Iceland twice: In 1997 and 2001, but other trips and adopting Veeka made it tough to go back in recent years. Plus, the country itself has undergone a huge tourism boom in that the island's population triples each summer with all the visitors.But this retreat, situated at a nice hotel near the municipal airport, seemed so lovely with interesting speakers and an international clientele. Only a handful of people were going to get scholarships to go and I wanted to be one of those people. And the timing is during Veeka’s spring break, making it easy for someone to take care of her while I’m gone. So, I applied, sketching out my writing experience; why I – as a single parent – was more than ready for some time to myself; my financial needs; all about my interest in Iceland; why I wanted to hear the speakers who were showing up for the retreat and my personal writing history plus how I have a manuscript for young adult readers that I’ve been trying to get out the door for years but haven’t had the time to do that final push. I also got a good friend from my getreligion blog and a Washington Post editor to write the recommendations.I also knew the odds were against me. I was much older and I was sure any help would go to younger applicants, so I asked for a partial scholarship, figuring I had a better chance than asking for everything to be paid. It turned out that more than 700 people from multiple countries applied. They chose four.Thus, on Dec. 2, I saw an email that looked innocuous but was an announcement that I was one of two people given a partial scholarship. The announcement, which ran Dec. 4, showed photos of the four of us. I am beyond delighted. I’d gotten a hunch that 2018 was the year I might begin traveling again and this will be a great start. And arrangements for Veeka’s care during that week are coming together as well.Veeka, for her part, was promoted up to middle school level in late November, which made for much rejoicing on her part, as she was more than ready to move out of her present class. In her new class, she is learning some German along with everything else, so we are practicing simple sentences at home.Then on Nov. 14, my long-awaited, nearly 6,000-word piece on Paula White came out in the Post’s online editions with the print edition out on the 19th. I got some very nice reaction from lots of folks, as no one else had published anything like it elsewhere. I’d worked so hard on it over the months and gone through so many drafts. My fellow getreligion bloggers nicely wrote it up here and I did a follow-up piece with more information on Paula here. I won’t go into a full recital of all the behind-the-scenes drama that accompanied it, but let’s say it was a piece that got passed around lots of people at the Post before it ran. I wish I could have gotten some quotes out of Trump himself for the piece, but that was not to be, even though I contacted the White House to ask if that was possible.One of the people most affected by that article was Veeka, who was entranced by the thought of women preaching and pastoring. She decided God had called her to preach or lead worship, so she set up a music stand in our living room, grabbed a toy mic that we had and loaded a bunch of Bibles and other notes on the stand to help her preach. I put on some Paula videos to inspire her. We're attending a new Bible study just south of us on Monday nights where she likes to watch, then copy the adults as they pray for people. Although it's been hard to get to know people at our church, I made some progress to that end this fall, when we attended Thanksgiving at the home of one of the families we've gotten to know. They live way out in the foothills of the Cascades beyond a town called Carnation. I signed up to be part of a welcoming crew on Sunday mornings. Seattle is a little less strange and lonely.So, November was a good month. Other stuff that got published included my piece in ParentMap about skiing at Vancouver’s Mount Washington ski area last February. We traveled very little this fall, instead staying home to do things like make brandied fruit for Christmas and viewing a jag of sand-and-sandal movies like “Ben Hur,” “The Robe,” and a bunch of life-of-Christ epics and Christian movies like “I am Not Ashamed” (the story of Columbine martyr Rachel Scott; “To Save a Life” which we really liked; “God’s Not Dead” #1+2 and “The Hiding Place,” which introduced Veeka to the concept of the Holocaust for the first time.And we’ve been branching out in the Japanese anime world, having already watched every Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film in existence. We’ve been making our way through works by Makato Skinkai, which are almost as good. The other day I won a Fandango movie gift card for $40, which means we’ll be going to see “The Last Jedi” pretty soon as well.And I’ve started doing booksignings. The one at Third Place Books went OK – the Seattle traffic that night made the roads horrific and even I was almost late in getting there. About 10-12 folks listened in and fortunately my Powerpoint worked well. More signings are scheduled in the coming months (will be posting those on my blog under a new 'book signings' tab) and I’m hoping for some good reviews. Have had no luck in getting on radio, but someone did contact me to ask for movie rights. That will be the day!