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Book, Love Amy

Blog Tour—All Aboard

I have been me for . . . all my life. So, why am I still surprised surprise myself?

I am a consistent under-estimater of how much time a new endeavor involves. I had heard of “blog tours,” but in reality knew little of them. Last November I reached out to Celebrate Lit to see if Love, Amy would be a good fit for a blog tour. Turns out LA was! And thus began my education on blog tours.

In essence, by hiring Celebrate Lit to host a tour, they would set up a certain number of bloggers who would review Love, Amy and agree to write a blog post on a given day, thus helping new readers learn about books. Part of my responsibility was to provide a fun prize for the tour. Coming up with a good prize was the tricky part for me. But since the book is a series of letters, I decided on a letter writing gift basket complete with gift cards, an Amazon gift card, and a page of Love, Amy stamps. (The cover is on a stamp!).

If you know of authors who are looking for a way to promote their book, I highly recommend Celebrate Lit. Sandra has been a dream to work with and the level of professionally has exceeded all expectations. Yesterday was the first day of the tour, it runs from April 19th to May 2nd and you can also enter to win the gift basket!

My responsibilities:

  1. Write the launch post
  2. Provide all of my author info and social media links
  3. Provide the book to reviewers. I mailed physical books to those who wanted them and got the mobi or PDF files to those who wanted to read it electronically
  4. Come up with a compelling gift
  5. During the tour, reply to comments on the blogs each day
  6. After the tour, mail the gift basket to the winner

Here are the stops along the tour:

Blog Stops

Reading Is My SuperPower, April 19

Inklings and notions , April 20

Eat, Read, Teach, Blog, April 20

Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, April 21

Mary Hake, April 21

Texas Book-aholic, April 22

Carpe Diem, April 23

A Baker’s Perspective, April 24

Simple Harvest Reads, April 25 (Guest post from Mindy Houng)

All-of-a-kind Mom, April 26

Artistic Nobody, April 27 (Spotlight)

Lots of Helpers, April 27

Bibliophile Reviews, April 28

proud to be an autism mom, April 29

A Greater Yes, April 29

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, April 30

Janices book reviews, April 30

Jeanette’s Thoughts, May 1

Bigreadersite, May 2

margaret kazmierczak, May 2 (Interview)

Doesn’t that kind of blow your mind? I have only read the post at Reading Is My SuperPower. written by Carrie. She normally reads fiction but is an TESOL teacher so decided to read Love, Amy. Fun to heard why someone was drawn to a book.

Below is the post I wrote for the launch.

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The tug for a life that is “Anything but Boring”

When I was in college the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie Sarah Plain and Tall changed my life. You’ve probably seen it and been moved too. Sarah, a spinster by the standard of her day, moves from Boston to the fields of Kansas to consider marrying a widower and help him raise his children and work his farm. Her brother could not understand why Sarah would move from so-called civilization to the middle of nowhere. But the longing she felt for her life to matter resonated deeply with me.

I was in the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood. Like Sarah, I knew I could stay where I was and live a good life, but I wanted more. And so I moved to China.

Our world is one that loves big, change-the-world stories. I love them too. I remember reading The End of the Spear, the story of Jim Elliott and his friends who were martyred for their faith. I also lost myself in the stories of Gladys Aylward, William Carey, Lottie Moon, and Amy Carmichael. I remember reading about a missionary that had some worm pulled out of his stomach that was the size of a large snake. Disgusting! Fascinating! All for the gospel!

The life of faith was exciting and God was on the move all the time! While it is true, the life of faith is exciting and God is on the move, it is also ordinary, boring, disappointing, and confusing. When I started compiling the letters I wrote from my days in China, I was embarrassed by what “first year Amy” said. She was so clueless, so uninformed, so willing to display her lack of cultural knowledge. I wanted to put my hand over her mouth and ask her to please pipe down because she did not really believe what she was saying. But she did, “first year Amy” could not know what “fifteen year in China Amy” knew.

These change the world stories I love? Turns out they have been more sanitized than I realized without showing the cultural and ministry progression that must have taken place.

Even now, knowing what I know, part of me wishes my newsletters contained miracles and throngs coming to Christ because of my work. I thought throngs and miracles were what a “real” cross-cultural worker would do. I thought that would show that my life mattered, like Sarah’s when she moved to Kansas. Don’t we all want our lives to matter? I believed that mattering was measurable. By compiling and writing this book the lesson Love, Amy has taught me is that too often we confuse size with significance. I still hear the whisper that says, “Amy, really? You wrote about the cultural beliefs that influence standing in line and you think that is worth people giving of their prayer, money, and time?” Part of me is reluctant even now to publish these letters because they are common. In truth, I am happy with my life and the contributions I have made. Of course I have regrets and wish I’d handled certain situations differently. But if all we hear are the spectacular stories, we can miss the gift our beautifully ordinary lives can be.

Who made it into the Gospels? A widow and her two mites. A boy and his few fish. She is described as offering out of her poverty. His common lunch was used to feed more than he could have imagined. Jesus did not tend to elevate those in power or those who seemed impressive.

My first year, a fellow teacher in China told me, “You’re lucky you’re still in your first year. Wait until your second year and you have told all your stories. You’ll have nothing to say in your newsletters.” Isn’t that the heart of what we fear—that we will have nothing to say with our lives? The secret to combating this fear is not that secretive. Show up and be present. Taken individually, these letters don’t add up to much, but put them together and much to my surprise, month after month I wrote an accidental memoir.

As ordinary as it is, I do have to say, life in China was anything but boring! If you love memoirs and want to hear stories that will make you laugh or cringe (and sometimes both), join me on a college campus in China.

///

Had you heard of blog tours? Are you like me and underestimate how much time is involved in something new (like a blog tour? Though, totally worth it! Just classic Amy)?

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2 Comments April 19, 2018

Book, Love Amy

Grace and peace and zombies

We had a couple of days to kill after a conference ended  and before we needed to head back home—me to Beijing, and my friend Sherri to Hefei, Anhui, China—and had decided to spend it reading by the hotel pool.

Glorious!

I tend to be one of those readers that has several books going at once and jumps around in my reading.  Now, don’t think me overly spiritual, but I pulled out my bible to get a bit of a head start reviewing Revelation since my small group was going to study it. Seeing as Revelation is near one of my favorite books, I got distracted and read Philemon first.

“Grace to you and peace from God.” Familiar enough. So familiar I missed it. Until I read a variation in Revelation.

That night at dinner I struck up the stimulating dinner conversation on the phrase grace to you and peace from God with particular interest in the prepositions to and from, emphasizing them like that as I spoke . Yes, I even pulled out my bible and started flipping to different books wondering on the variations of the greeting.

Is it any surprise Sherri switched the subject to zombies?

Problem is, I have as much interest in zombies as she does in Pauline greetings. We ended up having the most bizarre, yet satisfying conversation in which I talked about prepositions, greetings, and the frequency in scripture and Sherri talked about zombies.

I don’t come from a tradition that “passes the peace” and though I’d read and studied many of Paul’s letters, I tend to skip over the introduction to get to the meatier stuff, viewing them more as a perfunctory version of “Dear Grandma and Grandpa, how are you? I’m fine.”

Grace to you and peace from God.

I’m ashamed to admit that this phrase has almost become like the teacher in Charlie Brown, “Wanh, wanh, wanh,wuh-wahn, wahn.”

Appearing 18 times in the New Testament, in one form or another, it’s easy to tune it out, rushing on to the good stuff. Turns out, it is the good stuff. The most common rendition is Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The simplest is in 1 Thessalonians and simply Grace and peace to you. To Timothy, Paul includes “mercy” and Peter in his two letters adds “abundance,” reminding me that they too lived real lives with annoying people, financial pressures, and their own failings.

Paul, in his “I will not play one side against the other and we have got to figure this out. Like NOW” incorporates both Greek/gentile culture (grace) and Hebrew (peace). He refuses to use a separate greeting to each group, and enriches the tradition with a uniting and expanded greeting: both groups, all people really, need grace and peace.

Grace to you and peace from God.

I assumed this is the peace that passes all understanding and lands on us from God allowing us to be zombie-like in our interactions with people. Tra-la-la I can put up with you because I’m in my happy place. Maybe Sherri and I weren’t as far off in our conversation as it appeared.

Simply put, no. It’s not a zombie like attribute to be able to deal with those we encounter, be it friends, family members, foes, or strangers. Ours is a God not of escape, but of engagement.

Since that initial conversation I’ve researched and mulled over grace and peace. The order is significant. Grace and then peace. Grace given by God so that as we interact with one another, it’s not based on our own merit or goodness (Whew! Because if you’re anything like me, we’d be playing Russian roulette with what might come out me when left to my own). But if we leave it at grace, it’s easy to slip into the focus being on ourselves and experiences; adding “peace” brings the relational aspect into the mix as well.

Grace from God so that I can have peaceful interactions with others, with creation, with my possessions. Grace for the days my fuse is short or the internet is slow or someone is sick or someone says something annoying or doesn’t want to talk about what I want to talk about at dinner, wink. Peace in my response to that which God has invited me into.

Almost a year and half have passed since the grace, peace, and zombie’s dinner. Like a good zombie waking from the dead, this phrase is now alive for me, no longer a phrase to skim past, it bounces around in my soul and off my lips.

Grace to you and peace from God.

This post first appeared on Micha Boyett’s “One phrase” series. Love, Amy is a series of letters. While I”m no Paul in my letter writing ability, I am a fan of receiving letters.

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2 Comments June 23, 2017

Love Amy

Love, Amy: Behind the Scenes

Where does the story of a book actually begin? Does Love, Amy’s story start in 1992 when I wrote my first newsletter, raising funds for a summer in China? Or did she start in 1995, when I moved to China full-time and started writing monthly letters? Or did the book begin last May when I decided the time had come to put the letters into a book form? Or, final option, when I realized in November that Love, Amy would not be all my years on the field, instead, the book needed to end after nine years instead of containing all my years in China?

On this we can agree: Love, Amy did begin at some point. Because every book is different, her “coming to life” story is unlike Looming Transitions. I now see how “easy” Looming Transitions was and why she was a perfect first book for me. You might recall that LT is based on a seminar I designed and presented about six years in a row. Having taught on the content and gathered examples for years, she was a familiar friend. We went way back and were comfortable with each other. Though she contained bits of my story, she didn’t demand too much of me personally.

She let me sleep at night and wasn’t an unruly child. She gave me face and played nice with others. If this is what book writing is like, sign me up!

I thought. No scratch that, I assumed that because Love, Amy was mostly a combining of already written newsletters, she was practically written. The angels laughed and put their arms around me, knowing that I would need to be held in the ways of the well-meaning, delusional fools who walk head long into the ocean and wonder how long until they get to the other side.

Ignorance is bliss.

So, blissfully I pulled out the notebook that held my newsletters.

Okay, first problem, until maybe year six I had no digital copy of any letter. And starting in year six, I had about half of the letters in digital form. Not one year did I have a complete set of digital copies.

What’s that you say? I can’t hear you from the shoreline, asking if that might not be a sign of the choppy waters to come. Nope, I’ve got my back to you and am excited to learn about a dictation service — Rev.com. I love Rev.com. What it turns out I don’t love so much is the process of dictation :).

Starting last May, but really taking off last June, I dictated two or three letters a day. Every day I recorded the letters in a voice memo on my phone, emailed the memo to myself, uploaded it to Rev.com, paid based on how long the recording was, gave a few specific instructions (like “It is ‘Erin’ not ‘Aaron.'” Or “You spell it ‘Chengdu.'”) and waited. Often within a few short hours the transcript came back and I would read and clean up transcription errors. (Side note: cleaning up transcription errors is not my strong point.)

It was through this process that I came to see, “Wait, these aren’t just newsletters, Amy, you kind of wrote this like an unfolding saga. This is more like a memoir than I realized.”

I got excited. Again.

As I went along, I compiled the letters in years and then stepped back, asking what I needed for the book. I wanted the book to be both my story and a resource for others who write newsletters. I truly believe that more information ABOUT newsletters was not the missing piece for those who don’t like to write newsletters. Instead of more information, what they needed was hope and excitement that writing newsletters can be fun.

So, I needed an introduction, conclusion, and short articles for those who write newsletters. I contacted my friend Davita who works with many who write newsletters. Would she share from her experience? She would! Yay! Street cred that Love, Amy wouldn’t just have my ideas, but someone who has read hundreds and hundreds of letters. The intro wasn’t hard to write, but the conclusion?!

The angels saw me flailing around in the water and kindly helped me focus by asking one question. “Amy, why did you write this book? What do you want the read to know when he is finished? What is the message of this book?” I pointed out that they had asked three questions and they gently reminded me I wasn’t really in a good position to split hairs. Did I want to get to the other side or not?

About this time, this was last November, I started freaking out about the cover. Why not? The book wasn’t even done, so instead of focusing on the problem before me (writing the conclusion), I decided to add to my angst by wondering if I could ever, ever, ever love another cover as much I had loved Looming Transitions. Hitting it out of the book cover ballpark, instead of feeling confident when I stepped up to the plate, I was pretty sure I had used up all of my “luck.”

Where does this idea of luck even come from? I believe in the generosity of God! I believe in abundance.

But still I fretted, would my next cover be ugly? Would I love her less? LT’s cover designer was busy so I asked my friend Lynn from Writers on the Rock who she used. She told me about Vanessa in England. I emailed Vanessa and assumed (notice a theme?!) that the process would be long based on the process for Looming Transitions. Within just a few days she emailed four or five potential options.

What?! I wasn’t emotionally prepared for this! I needed time to love another cover. I had only contacted her to “get the ball rolling,” not to have it thrown at me like we were playing dodge ball. I’m pretty sure Vanessa wondered if I was for real, because she asked how many pages the book was and when it was to be published. “Um, it hasn’t even been edited yet.”

But the front cover was done and paid for and I highly recommend Vanessa to anyone.

With the cover in mind, I finished the conclusion and got a draft to my incredibly talented editor Deb Hall. The letters were finally going to be read by someone who had never read them. Up to this point, those who knew about the book had read my letters and thought it was a “great idea.”

What made this a challenge was that my newsletters often contained pictures and in the draft I got to Deb, contained this tension. What do you do with writing that relies heavily on images but you will use no images? You edit, edit, edit, and work on creating a smooth reading experience.

Deb and I wrestled with how much I grew as a writer. I was committed to showing the process of development, even if it cost me in reviews. It was obvious that I went through phases—hello year seven and eight, my subtitle phase—and the first few years have no newsletter titles. How much to alter? How much to leave as is? Where is the “this is supposed to be easy” button?!

I got back the edited draft in January and then spent several months fixing and editing. And editing. And editing.

And then it came time for Andy Bruner to take a word doc that was nearly 100K words long and make it look amazing. He did it. I did not make it easy for him. Love, Amy contains chapters. There are letters within chapters. Sometimes letters have subtitles. Some letters have titles. There are short articles. There are both footnotes and endnotes (because I love notes! I love them!). But he is a saint and a book wizard and anything beautiful in the book is because of Andy.

This is the sexy world of editing, two complete versions and two proof copies:

Finally, Love, Amy was done. I got it to those who had agreed to read it ahead of time and then held my breathe and felt nauseous at the same time. Secretly I wondered if I was asking too much of a book: be both a memoir and an infuser-of-newsletter-hope. But for me, I couldn’t do one without the other.

As I stumble out of the water, exhausted but proud, I have learned so much from writing this book. If Looming Transitions was an “easy” first book, Love, Amy is the second child I was too ignorant to know to be scared of and love her all the more for it.

These letters were not written in isolation. Nor was the book! Thank you for caring about the process, for asking questions, writing reviews, and cheering me on.

Love, Amy

P.S. I want you to be the first to know that Looming Transitions (Kindle) will be on sale for $.99 tomorrow. The winner of Love, Amy has been notified. xxoo

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5 Comments June 15, 2017

Book, China, Love Amy

Love, Amy is HERE {6 ways you can help}

“When will your book be done?”

I have a love/squirm relationship with that question. After sharing a project, the upside is all of the cheerleaders and people who genuinely are excited. On the downside, if you don’t have a definite date to publish, you get to be shifty again and again with, “Oh, I’m working on it.”

Publishing a book can be a lot like having a baby. You know it will happen, you just don’t know exactly when or how the birth process for that baby will be. (Famous line in our family comes from my Grandpa Farley as he was having to reschedule a flight back to Michigan because I was not entering the world at the predicted time. “Now, when don’t know when the baby will be born, do we?” Eternal scream from pregnant woman ensues.)

“Now, we don’t know when the book will be published, do we?” Eternal, oh you get it. But today?

Go ahead, ask me. “When can I buy Love, Amy: An Accidental Memoir Told in Newsletters from China?”

I’ll try not to smile too big when I say, “Today!!!!!!!”

Love, Amy is on Amazon (both Kindle and print) and at Createspace. I earn slightly more if you buy a print copy at createspace, but if you’ve got a good gig going on with Amazon, guilt free buy from Amazon.

This is the second time I’ve launched and again I feel a bit like I’m saying to you, “Do you like my baby? Will you, my people help raise her? Will you stand with me in the good times and hard? Will you still like me even when she disappoints or does stupid things?”

And all the people said, “We will!”

You might wonder, That’s great, but I’m not sure what to do. What can I do? Here are six ways you can help with this raising of Love, Amy:

1. Celebrate! Of course I hope this book sells decently because I truly believe that too often we believe that our stories don’t matter. They do. Love, Amy shows the power of a life story unfolding over time and helps those who write newsletters.

But if this books sells and I have no one to share it with, what have I gained? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What is worse than watching sports by yourself and having no one to high-five? Nothing. Okay, there are worse things, but in that moment, it’s pretty low.

I’m high-fiving you! Woot, woot! If you weren’t here, there would be no book. I did it. You encouraged me. We did it. Let’s enjoy this moment.

2. May I boldly suggest, buy a copy of Love, Amy. Purchased copies through Amazon are the only way that Amazon will start to recommend Love, Amy as an “also bought.”

3. But here is a simple way that won’t cost you a dime. This week it is annoyingly important to train the Amazon search engine—the second most powerful search engine right now. So, instead of clicking on the hyperlinked title, go to Amazon and in the search bar type in “love amy.” FYI, Amazon only lets your device count once for searching for an item. So, thank you in advance to those of you just got the idea to pull up something on Netflix and hit the refresh button on Amazon and keep typing “love amy.” You can still do it, but Amazon will never know.

If you really want to help? Ask friends and strangers if you can use their phone to call someone and then quickly go to Amazon, search “love amy” and put the phone up to your ear. After thirty seconds say, “I guess they’re not there. Thanks!” Just kidding.

Mostly :).

4. Suggest or give Love, Amy to someone you know who loves memoirs or writes newsletters. The best way a book sells is through word of mouth. If you tell them and they know you, they are much more likely to buy it.

5. Leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. It does not need to be five stars (though if that’s what your heart is saying, go with your heart!). Amazon is funny, she just likes to see the amount of reviews. The more reviews (even three or four star), the more she will say, “Hey, maybe I should tell other people about this book.” The goal is 75. Have you left one for Looming Transitions?

6. Tell someone about Love, Amy. You know tons of people I don’t know. You know people living in Sweden or working at this church or for that organization. You know you neighbor’s cousin who is moving to Brazil or your former coworker who writes boring newsletters. You know mission committee members and pastors and counselors.

This includes sharing on social media. Thanks for all of the shout outs!

Here is an image for Instagram:

You might be a blogger who would like to interview me or write a review of Love, Amy (I can offer a copy as a giveaway). Who could you tell about this book?

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Three final thoughts:

  • If you want to buy Love, Amy in bulk, use the contact form below and I can work with you on a discounted rate.
  • I find authors who only talk about their books tedious. We get it, you wrote a book. How about living a life too?! My bias, I know. Later I’ll share a bit of the journey of this book and wanted to warn you incase you fear that every post is going to be about this book. It’s not.
  • Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If any book is a communal one, this one is. If these letters had not been read for years, there would be no book. If you had not read these words and said, “Hey, you’re not half bad,” there would be no book. And starting with you, if you the word about Looming Transitions had not gotten out, I would never have spent the last year “birthing another baby.”

This is not my contribution to the world. It is ours. Look what we’ve done.

Because today is a day of celebration! Leave a comment and I’ll draw one of your names and you can give this book to someone you know—yourself included :).

The Office GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

As we launch this book and wait to see how God will use it, I want to end with the benediction I gave at the end of the acknowledgments:

I thank my God every time I remember you. Philippians 1:3

Love,

Amy

Contact form for inquiries as to me speaking to your group about China or newsletters, buying bulk orders, or your thoughts on the Broncos’ chances next year.

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20 Comments June 2, 2017

Meet Amy Young

My name is Amy and I live in the messy middle of life. I have been Redeemed from permanent muck and live with the tension of the Already and Not Yet. Read More…

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