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Good luck with the bell-ringing. I have been remembering what you said about the Salvation Army, and intend to seek out some bell-ringing buckets myself this season. Once I'm healthy and strong enough to be up-and-about and actually going to stores.

I expect you will need to wear a sweater. Brrr, got cold, didn't it? Up here in Fort Worth we've had snow today and it's 28. I read online someone ranting about the warm weather in Baltimore and insisting this meant global warming was taking over. If she was here, would she be insisting there was a new ice age coming? /rolls eyes

Laura
http://celticdragonfly.livejournal.com

I said Hi to the Salvation Army person today...and he looked shocked. Well, I will never look at them the same way. Good for you. Still love this site-- and your blogs...thanks again Gail

Hi Gordon,

I know that the signing thing is weird for you. Maybe have some fun with it; like maybe wear a halo. Can you imagine the looks of people as they approach you? :)

Oh Drat! I knew I should have waited to buy The Shepherds Story. Online v-chat and a signed copy too...darn, jumped the gun again.

Michael

Signings are weird. I never really got used them either. (Though I did like that somebody wanted me to do them.)

A writer friend said something that I think may help me next time around, if there is a next time around; she said her signings got easier when she got clear on the fact that they aren't for her. They're for her readers.

Have you gotten any collectors yet? People who get you to sign it and then slip it into a glassine bag and never read it?

*sigh*... I already ordered my copy of "The Shepherd's Story".. oh well, maybe next year :)

I'm intrigued by your decision to use the KJV language for the angel's proclamation. My recollection is that everywhere else in your writing you use your own idiom.

Care to comment?

Pascale's Wager

Yeah, I really enjoy Chuck's blog, too. Good writer, much humour. (We actually got more snow than they did... I mean, if anybody's got a reason to complain... ahem)
Mich

I have the opposite problem with titles. I always come up with the GREATEST titles for books and stories, but completely fall flat when I'm trying to flesh out the plot.

Short sleeves?!?
It was a blistering nine degrees here yesterday! (MN) I was at one store and they had pulled the Salvation Army bellringers and made them stay inside, since it was so cold. A couple of years ago someone was dropping solid gold coins in the S.A. buckets here. Maybe you'll luck out!

andrea

Okay, I know you probably have an email adress that I should be writing to you about this... and forgive me if this has nothing to do with your post but, maybe others have struggled with us so I write to you and your flock. Phew, okay. I am a "recovering evangelical". I am revitalized, attending a bible study at a mainstream church.. Things have been good for me spiritually as if late. I recently dusted off some old Zen and Buddhism books. I have been heavily reading the Zen book since, practicing mindfulness, and meditating. I felt that there was absolutely no conflict with Zen and Christianity. I am totally amused by reading about Buddha and his eight fold path because is you are a buddhist and walking that path of compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, kindness, and the like.....shoot, you are "acting" like Jesus. Here's the kicker. In my practice, I have become so aware of my thoughts, and my own manufactured reality that I feel the "self " collapsing. This is good in Zen. This is what you want, awareness. But crap I am too aware now. It's like someone took God away for awhile. The self is my channel, my link to Him. How can I go on practicing Zen which forgive me, is so attractive and liberating because it disintegrates the seperate me from this world and makes me see the love in others and practice more patience than I ever knew was possible. I dont know. It seemed like when I opened up this door it shed light to truth. Truth about me my fears, desires, ugliness, lovliness, etc. Now I gotta find God again. Can I find him and nurture my relationship with him and live in all this blinding light? Do I need the dark to see him? Is he distant because for the first time I feel not as lonely or insecute? Maybe just thrust a growth spurt upon myself and now spiritually and psychologically I need to push "reset". Im scared though my evangelical roots tell me "run away from that new age mumbo jumbo". I think God designed me with another thirst and a intellect for more philisophical living. So then what? What do I do? I feel like I'm breaking. Like Im stretching my mind and that God is just another construct that may chip off and fall away. I pray "God I want you back." God Im scared". I would just stop practicing Zen for awhile but I feel Im in too deep. I cant let go. It's truth here and now. How can I close that door? I thought that door would enhance my walk as Christian. Not challenge it.

I thought about you when I spoke to the bell ringer at the mall this week. He seemed passionless, beaten down, as if he was ringing for his life somehow. I looked at him, but he didn't seem to be able to look back. It made my heart hurt.

Peace,
Milton

The bell ringers I saw in the subway station this weekend were right next to the Scientology people. I was going by in the crowd and then heading up an escalator, so all I got were quick glances: Two bored Latino boys ringing bells, and a very sincere, skinny middle-aged white woman leaning forward in a chair by a table full of Dianetics, trying to save a heavyset black man in a threadbare dredlock hat.