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Inside GuidepostsBooks

2010-03-03T08:46:54-06:00

Upon starting at GuidepostsBooks last year, my first task was spearheading the development of our newest original fiction series, Stories from Hope Haven, which follows the lives and families of four very special nurses in the fictional small town of Deerford, Illinois.

At that time, the prospect of holding the finished product in my hands seemed so far away. Yet here I am today, less than a year later, able to flip through the pages of book one, The Best Medicine by Anne Marie Rodgers.

Holding the first copy of a book has to be one of the greatest joys for an editor. The long hours the author spent writing and revising, the long hours I spent reading and rereading, the long hours our production team spent copyediting and proofing resulted in something we can all be very proud of.

I’m not a mother yet, but I imagine there are parallels between raising a child and fostering a project from infancy, sending it off into the world, and praying people will come to love this “baby” as much as we do. Just picture the author, editor, and production team standing on a porch, clutching tissues, waving to the book as it takes one last look back before heading to its new life in the real world. That’s where we stand now, on the porch waving to Stories from Hope Haven, praying we’ve done everything we could to prepare it for success.

As with GUIDEPOSTS' other fiction series, we have several authors writing for the same series here. It has been fascinating watching the talented authors of Hope Haven collaborate. Each author has brought boundless creativity and enthusiasm to the table. They’ve taken what was a blurb of an idea and crafted a fully textured world filled with genuine and warm characters. The four nurses are particularly endearing: there’s Candace Crenshaw, a young widow trying to heal her broken heart, Anabelle Scott, the wise older nurse coping with her newfound empty nest, Elena Rodriguez, who recently returned to the church which causes tension with her husband, and James Bell, whose wife struggles with multiple sclerosis.

I don’t want to gush too much in front of my other books (of course I love all of my projects equally…), but Stories from Hope Haven is truly wonderful, filled with so much heart, tenderness and emotion. We hope you enjoy.

Lindsay Guzzardo
Editor
GuidepostsBooks

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2010-02-23T10:24:58-06:00

Recently, GuidepostsBooks had a party. Not a gather-in-the-conference-room and eat a homemade cake kind of party (though we do enjoy those as well). This was a full-out gala to celebrate the publication of our new book Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart, by Beth Pattillo.

We had amazing food. The space—the Morgan Library on Madison Avenue—was gorgeous. The company was excellent (when asked who would be there, Carl, our marketing director answered “New York”). We were blessed to have the charming Jane Seymour (check out her cover story in GUIDEPOSTS magazine here) in attendance.

It was a wonderful evening.

The highlight, for me, was watching Beth Pattillo read from her book. And not just because we both slaved over that manuscript. It was magnificent. She stood on a platform in front of this enormous, elaborate fireplace, bravely faced the crowd of 150 people, and read from one of the opening scenes in the novel.

In the scene she chose, Claire, the novel’s main character, comes across a woman who claims to have the lost original draft of Jane Austen’s masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. Claire doesn’t think there’s any way the brittle old hand-written manuscript the woman hands her could actually be pages from the novel, but something in her holds onto the hope that it might be:

“I was left with a pile of paper that looked very old indeed. Old enough to actually be—No, that was ridiculous. She’d probably written it herself. A flight of fancy... At the moment, though, fancy appealed to me far more than reality did.”

Something about hearing those words in that grand setting resonated with me. That party was a wonderful aberration—a flight of fancy. It wasn’t what working for GUIDEPOSTS is like everyday. Most times, our days are made up of meetings and budgets and unending piles of manuscripts. But sometimes, a flight of fancy is exactly what you need. And this was one I’ll never forget.

Beth Adams
Editor
GuidepostsBooks

Watch our video footage of the event!

Inside GuidepostsBooks

2010-02-22T09:30:40-06:00

One of the interesting things about working at GUIDEPOSTS is that the unusual is often part of the day-to-day job. The most popular column in our magazine is Mysterious Ways—inexplicable true accounts of events in people’s lives. We investigate each and every one—and indeed, they are true and miraculous.

Recently, I had the opportunity to compile a decade’s worth of Mysterious Ways and put them into a volume called (appropriately) His Mysterious Ways. One of the side effects of working with these stories is that I’ve recognized quiet moments in my own life that seem divinely inspired only in retrospect. There are moments when I received a phone call at exactly the right moment to calm my spirit—or when I made a call to a person who was thinking of me. Sometimes it is a feeling of peace that comes over me as if I were being cared for by a loving hand.

Of course many of the stories in this volume are more exciting—people saved in life-threatening situations, angels who appear in many forms, inexplicable meetings that change the course of a person’s life.

One of my favorite stories is very practical. A woman’s washing machine quits in the middle of a wash. She was planning to go on vacation and tried to get a repairman to come that day. Here’s what she says:

If only Dad were here now. He could fix anything. But my father had passed away recently. Lord, help me get along without him, I prayed. I then tried one last number.

“I’ll be right over,” the repairman said, once I explained to him how dire my predicament was.

True to his word, he showed up half an hour later. I couldn’t thank him enough for bailing me out.

“I know what it’s like,” he said. “Once, I’d been laid off and we were down to our last dime, with nothing to feed the kids. All morning I drove around town looking for a job. Finally I saw a man working on a fence. He said, ‘If you help me finish this, I’ll give you half the pay.’ Thanks to him, my kids had a good meal that night.”

After the repairman finished his work and the washing machine was running again, he mused, “I always wanted to be able to do something for that man, T. E. Cox.”

“You just did,” I said, amazed. “I’m his daughter.”

Why do I like this one so much? The chances that that repairman would be the one called are pretty unlikely. And then—what are the chances T. E. Cox would come up in the conversation? For me the best thing about this story is it shows a life-changing moment can happen at any time and I can be part of it. God will take care of the rest.

Elizabeth Gold
Editor
GuidepostsBooks

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Inside GuidepostsBooks

2010-01-27T13:51:27-06:00

I remember the first time I saw the hit reality-television show The Biggest Loser—I was in South Carolina, visiting my in-laws.

When my father-in-law (flipping channels, as men everywhere like to do) landed upon it, I immediately made my enjoyment known. I didn’t even really know the show at all, but I knew it would definitely be better than two hours of football.

And I was right. I remember being amazed, like all of the viewers are, by the drastic changes the contestants make over the course of even one episode, and of loving their excitement when their weigh-in number matched their expectations.

So it was with true excitement that I began editing Fat Chance, Julie Hadden’s story of her time on The Biggest Loser and the subsequent changes she made to her life.

I knew, from the start, that I wanted to be involved in the project. And I loved editing Julie’s book and getting to know her. I always believed in the strength of her message; I knew that it was powerful and transformative and exactly what women needed to hear. That if she could do it, she could also inspire a nation of women to do it, to care for themselves, to believe they were worthy of the life they wanted to live, to put themselves on their own priority lists.

But before last week, I had never seen Julie’s effect firsthand. And it was amazing. She came into town from Florida to do some interviews and media appearances, and I got the privilege of attending a book signing in New Jersey with her. I watched with a great degree of heart-swelling pride and happiness as many women came out to see her, their faces hopeful and their questions honest. There was laughing and crying, and at the end of the night, I knew that one woman had just changed a few lives.

Rebecca Maker
GuidepostsBooks

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2010-01-22T13:10:14-06:00

What’s fun about book publishing is the same thing that was fun about reading when I was a kid: the way books can transport you to different worlds, teach you something fascinating, open a window into a totally new way of life or experience.

And it’s the same at GUIDEPOSTS: the viewpoints, stories and worlds I am exposed to on a daily basis fuel my love of life and knowledge.

One world I’ve been immersed in lately is aging. Not the prescriptive, what-kind-of-face-cream-should-you-use-to-prevent-wrinkles kind, but the funny kind, the inspiring kind, the kind that dashes your hopes as it says you, a) you WILL absolutely have wrinkles (and can’t do much at all to prevent them) but that b) you should (and can) laugh about them—and everything else that happens to your body and mind after 50—and that c) the secret to staying young forever is to follow your dreams, leave a legacy, make a difference, try new things, experience joy and love.

What’s ironic about me editing If a Woman’s Hair is Her Glory, Why Am I Tweezing My Chin? by Martha Bolton is that I am the youngest editor in the office, still in my (gasp!) fresh-faced 20s. Well, for a few more months, at least. But my age hasn’t seemed to matter as I edit this book, for I’ve found out that what is universal is our desire for our lives to matter, whether we’re 32 or 82. And that is definitely ageless.

Rebecca Maker
Associate Editor
GuidepostsBooks

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2010-01-12T12:45:11-06:00

Last week, a group of us here at GUIDEPOSTS spent a couple of days learning about the role of inspiration in people’s lives. There were many interesting facts presented about the times and circumstances in which we look for inspiration, the kinds of things that we find inspiring and how our search for inspiration reflects who we are and the way we live our lives.

The presentations were fascinating and the discussions were stimulating, but by the end of the meeting, all I could think of was a line from the Confessions of St. Augustine: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”

No matter where we live or what kind of personality we have, whether we’re struggling with life’s stresses or “living large,” there’s something in us that yearns for more, that yearns for a connection with our Creator, and in Him, with each other.

I’ve spent the last few weeks struggling with deadlines in preparing Daily Guideposts 2011 (and I’m not quite through yet!), and in the midst of all that, it’s all too easy for me to lose track of why I’m doing what I do.

I hope that, in some small way, each day’s Scripture, story and prayer will our readers to be more aware of that need for God that we all have, and of the ways that He offers Himself to us in the ordinary happenings of our daily lives. If we here at GUIDEPOSTS can do that, then the deadlines and the days of meetings will have been worthwhile.

As for me, I’ve been up early this week to see the kids off to school. When my son John has gone downstairs to wait for his bus, I’ve taken down an old prayer book, opened it at the kitchen table, and taken 15 minutes to reconnect with God. When I’ve been lost in work or in our household routine, my heart grows restless, too.

Andrew Attaway
Senior Editor
GuidepostsBooks

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Inside GuidepostsBooks

2009-12-22T12:52:58-06:00

Faith is often presented as a matter of the head, a philosophical leap, a decision that’s settled once and for all.

As an editor at GuidepostsBooks, however, I’ve found that it’s so much more. Faith is also a matter of the heart, of real-life living, and of being open to the unexpected.

One of the things I do is work on Extraordinary Answers to Prayer, a book series that compiles true stories of everyday experiences in prayer.

We’ve received hundreds and hundreds of stories from all over the country about the extraordinary ways prayers have been answered. They range from action-packed thrillers and accounts of astonishing healings, to testimonies to God’s provision and quiet revelations of lessons in prayer.

When you read these stories, what you find inspiring isn’t so much the circumstances or events that happened, but rather the way people are changed by faith. And it’s always something unexpected.

One story that comes to mind is about a woman who joins a round-the-clock prayer vigil for a church member fighting cancer. Taking the 30-minute slot 4:30 am each day, this woman falls into a regular routine of praying for healing.

Oddly, after several days, she finds that she’s no longer sure who she’s praying for. In other words, she’s not sure who’s getting more out of the practice of prayer, herself or the other person. The experience is unexpected, and it changes her.

I love working on books that share these experiences. It’s like all the writers and readers are linked in real life, and in something that if only they keep turning their attention to how God works in that life, they’ll find something they’d never have dreamed would happen: a change within.

Would you like to share your story too? Please send it to me at dmorris@guideposts.org.

David Morris
GuidepostsBooks

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2009-12-14T13:08:13-06:00

Last night, I bought a ticket to Arizona for my grandfather’s funeral. For obvious reasons, I’ve been thinking about my grandfather a lot in the past few days.

The day after he passed away, I sat down at my desk and pulled out the notes he had recently sent me for a memoir that he wanted to write. He had asked me to help him pull his life story together.

I looked back over the fragments of his life—some handwritten, some typed (no doubt by his wife—Pop Pop wasn’t very up on technology).

His story, as he’s written it, is surprising. He focuses not on the things I was most interested in reading about—like how he met my grandmother and what my mom was like when she was young—but about his experiences in the military.

He was a Navy man through and through, and a proud veteran of World War II. The stories he shares about his early days in the military are harrowing. He writes about being on leave after basic training, and rushing back to his base upon hearing the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

He writes about rescuing some of his fellow soldiers when the aircraft carrier they all worked on was attacked and sinking. It’s clear that these are some of the proudest moments of his life.

One of the bigger regrets of my life is that I didn’t make the time to help him get his book published before he died. I had planned to help him publish it himself so he had copies to give out to his friends and family.

It wasn’t an earth-shattering story, and it wasn’t especially well-written (he couldn’t afford college, but he was proud of the fact that he did make it through high school), and it wasn’t going to shoot to the top of any bestseller lists. But it was his story, and his story mattered. It mattered to him, and to all of us who cared about him.

It was a life of hard knocks and sad truths, but he lived 88 years, and he had wisdom and insight that most of us will never approach. He was a faithful man, and his spiritual counsel was priceless. He was compassionate and caring. His life touched thousands of others, and that’s what makes me so certain that though he never got to hold his book in his hands, his story will live on.

Beth Adams
GuidepostsBooks

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2009-12-09T09:42:38-06:00

I have been debating getting a Kindle. I work with books everyday—I feel as if I would be cheating on them. What if they found out? And my son works in a publishing company in which he’s responsible for getting books printed. If I were to buy a Kindle, would he be out of a job?

I got an e-mail from a Guideposts reader about five months ago—she wanted to know if Daily Guideposts was available in a Kindle version. She is vision impaired and loves her Kindle because she can control the size of the typeface.

As a reader and an editor, I knew I would have to swing into action. To remedy her immediate problem, I e-mailed her files that she could download into her Kindle.

Then I figured out what to do to make more books available for our readers. It’s not as seamless as it would be if I were savvy, but with a little help from many friends, Daily Guideposts 2010 is now available as a download from Amazon. And to make me even happier, I got an e-mail from a different reader asking if it were available in Kindle and I was able to say yes!

And now I’m on a mission to make as many of our titles available to all those readers who have a Kindle. More books in more hands is my motto.

And I’m pretty sure I’m getting a Kindle for Christmas. Have a great holiday and a wonderful reading New Year!

Elizabeth Gold
Managing Editor
GuidepostsBooks

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2009-11-30T13:27:08-06:00

I hold a romanticized image of what people do when they sit down to read: wrapped in blankets with piping hot cups of tea nearby, they curl up and are swept away on grand adventures, perhaps even reading by the flicker of candlelight. It’s true that my romanticized vision hasn’t quite evolved into the 21st-century yet.

This will be my first Christmas at GuidepostsBooks, and in a lead up to the season, my office became progressively colder and colder (I have only a single windowpane separating me from 34th Street), to the point where my colleagues commented on how chilly it was when they dropped by.

It certainly didn’t constitute ideal reading conditions. Then Elizabeth Gold found a portable heater in one of the closets and I’ve been working in toasty bliss ever since, setting up the closest thing I can to that romanticized image—I have my trusty heater, a cup of steaming coffee, and the promise of a good story (the only thing missing is a couch, though I’m not sure how that would look to the higher-ups!)

When considering a manuscript for publication, I ask myself: is this a story people will want to curl up with? What am I feeling? Am I escaping into this world, falling in love with these characters, and experiencing their joys and heartaches along with them? Because at the end of the day, I’m a trial audience for the story. If I love it, chances are others will, too.

There’s a great deal more to being an editor, much of it unglamorous, than considering manuscripts. But it’s the moment when I can finally turn all of my attention to reading, to the possibility of discovering a special gem, that I first wanted to get into this business.

In fact, I just read a beautiful and profound story that we’ve added to our spring 2011 list, one I imagine many people curling up with. I’m so excited to be on the team that will help a wider audience discover it—more to come!

Till then, a very merry Christmas.

Lindsay Guzzardo
Associate Editor

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2009-11-23T13:55:48-06:00

About 10 years ago, GUIDEPOSTS embarked on its first attempt at an original fiction continuity, Church Choir Mysteries, a series of books with the same characters who have different adventures.

We felt there was a need in the marketplace for entertaining, inspiring fiction. It was quite a learning experience for us—we made some mistakes and had trouble meeting those deadlines.

The best thing about that series is my Aunt Gladys loved them. She told me how she couldn’t wait till the next one so she could spend more time with Gracie Parks—the 60-something sleuth in a small Midwestern town.

We had succeeded—that’s what we wanted—in engaging and entertaining the reader. On a cold day when Aunt Gladys couldn’t get out, I knew she could curl up with a book and spend some time with Gracie.

When we stopped the series after 24 volumes, I dreaded telling my aunt. Fortunately, we had embarked on our second series.

Now we’re reoffering the series in large print. Because there’s nothing I like more than making readers happy, I’m hoping there are more people out there like Aunt Gladys who will love the books. Maybe they need a little larger typeface (or, like me, find larger more comfortable), so they can enjoy the books even more.

I think about the readers opening their books and hope they can’t wait to sit down and spend some time with Gracie. I feel as if I know them.

Elizabeth Kramer Gold
Managing Editor
GuidepostsBooks

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2009-11-17T08:57:19-06:00

The Ultimate Relaxation Music Collection

Mornings are my most hectic time. I have two elementary school-age children and both of their buses come at 7:30 a.m.

Before that there’s breakfast, packing lunches, help untying yesterday’s double knotted sneakers, feeding the cats, giving the chicken water and corn, making sure one child has their recorder and the other has her spelling binder…you know what I mean.

Today, Lisbet wanted beef burritos for lunch and so I got up a bit earlier than the rest of my family to get the ingredients for those ready. While the meat was cooking, I put one the CDs of The Ultimate Relaxation Music Collection into my laptop and began to listen. This is a 4-CD instrumental music collection GUIDEPOSTS is releasing in February 2010. One of my jobs, as the music editor for GuidepostsBooks and Inspirational Media, is to make sure the song selection is just right.

“Near to the Heart of God”… “Abide with Me”… “Shenandoah”… Pachebel’s “Canon”… My morning rush slowed as I remembered my mother playing some of these songs on the piano when I was young.

Eight-year-old Kalle came down in her nightgown and immediately started humming along to “Morning Has Broken.” “I know this song from church,” she said happily playing with the volume control.

“Ah, my people’s song,” said my husband Dave, listening to next song, “Be Still, My Soul,” with the wonderful, stirring melody by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.

Lisbet, my violin-playing daughter, brushed her hair quietly to a Vivaldi violin concerto, blew a kiss and went out the door.

There was peace in the kitchen this morning, a restful calm that has stayed with me all day.

Lenore Person
GuidepostsBooks

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2009-11-02T12:09:07-06:00

A Ham’s Impact

Right now, I’m working on the ham. Or at least, that’s what I call it. The ham is really 500-plus pages of really wonderful writings and insights about Jesus. It’s a sequel to our popular book Know the Bible in 30 Days by bestselling author J. Stephen Lang (this one’s called Know the Words of Jesus in 30 Days).

I couldn’t believe the size of it when it came in—five hundred book pages is different than five hundred manuscript pages—and it was well on its way to one thousand manuscript pages. Sitting on my desk earlier this fall, I bemoaned its heft by muttering to myself, “This manuscript is as big as a…HAM!” And a nickname was born.

I don’t think I realized just how much I would fall in love with the ham, over time. Of course I enjoyed Stephen’s last book, the prequel, and knew this one would be just as delightful. (He’s a first-rate writer and has a wonderful sense of humor.) But I didn’t realize how much it would touch me spiritually and emotionally, or just how powerfully he would paint the picture of Jesus, the man and Savior.

As I was editing this, I would have goosebump moments. Moments when the Sunday School image (that I admit I still rely on) of the one-dimensional, felt-board Jesus would be torn away, and I would see a peek of the real Jesus, the actual man who said harsh and true things, who challenged even righteous people, and whose compassion astounds me. Moments that changed me.

Rebecca Maker
GuidepostsBooks

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2009-10-26T08:40:36-05:00

Back to the Future

I’ve always been the kind of person who voids a dozen checks in January and February before he gets used to writing the new year. But since I’ve been at GUIDEPOSTS, my sense of time confusion has gotten even more confused.

Right now, I’m working on Daily Guideposts 2011, so when somebody says “this year,” my mind jumps two years ahead. “Last year” is 2010, which went to the printer last June. As for 2009, don’t ask.

I’m not sure what day of the week this Christmas will fall on, but I know when it falls in 2011 (on Sunday, if you’re planning ahead). The stories my wife Julia is writing about our five-year-old Stephen you’ll read when he’s seven.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m quite literally living in the future: I get letters from readers who tell me that devotional I assigned to a particular day 18 months before spoke directly to a situation in their lives that no one, least of all me, could have foreseen.

In February 2006, I sat in our conference room putting Daily Guideposts 2007 together. I slotted a devotional by Phyllis Hobe for July 2. In it, she told how, as a college student finding her way home in an electrical blackout, she had been met at the bus stop by her father carrying a light. On July 2, 2007, Phyllis Hobe died.

No matter how mysterious I may find the future or how anxious I may be about how things will turn out, this I know: all times are in the hands of God, and whatever day my body or my mind inhabit (even if they’re not the same) is filled with His presence and His love.

Andrew Attaway
GuidepostsBooks

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2009-10-19T13:13:24-05:00

Books Bring People Together

I’ve been an editor for more than 30 years—where did the years go? I read books for living—it’s the best job in the world as far as I’m concerned.

I’m always surprised when I meet people who struggle through a book or hated English in high school. Those are the same people who can’t believe I can’t fix anything in the house (although I buy books about home repair), hate to deal with numbers, and find sports confusing.

I can read about people who can do all the things I can’t. Although I’ve lived in New York all my life, I read about people in small towns, on farms, or in distant lands. I’ve learned to trust authors to describe life in these places as they’ve often drawn on their own experiences. I’ve worked with authors to help them create a world for the reader that is at once entertaining and informative.

What I’ve learned through the hundreds of books I’ve read and edited is that people are more alike than different. There are types of people I encounter every day whom I’ve also encountered in books.

So many women editors I meet were first captured by Jo in Little Women—a book loving, tomboy—like so many of us. I’ve seen hints of Huckleberry Finn in many grown men as well as men who strive to be Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird.

I can understand people who are different from me because I’ve encountered them in books. Books change the lives of people who read them—they bring people together. It’s just one of the reasons I love being an editor.

Elizabeth Kramer Gold
GuidepostsBooks

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