The Author Mommy

Christmas Light Hunting!

As a family, we went hunting for Christmas lights.

SO MUCH FUN!

However, we had no luck finding a Christmas light show like we were hoping. But we did find some real jewels hidden in our little corner of the world!

Like this one!

The Grinch stealing this home’s Christmas!

I love this so much! It’s such a cute, clever, and fun idea!

We literally turned around to find this one!

A fun tradition we’ve had was going in search of fun decorations on people’s houses. This started the year that we saw a light tree in someone’s yard from across the highway.

We searched for a solid hour until we finally found what we have labeled as “The Green Tree.”

Every year, we have searched for the Green Tree. It disappeared for a few years and we joke about finding the people who put up the green tree and playfully demanding they put it back up. 😜

Their neighbors put up a tree similar to it and we like to joke saying that they demanded it as well. And when the owners of the green tree refused, they threw their arms in the air and said, “forget you! We’ll get our own green tree!”

We have no idea who the owners of the green tree actually are. Little do they know that their Christmas decoration one year started a family transition of searching for obscure Christmas lights in random neighborhoods for the Williamson family.

What are some weird traditions you have?

Love you all!

~ Chandler R. Williamson

Of Royalties and Reviews

Beyond The Archer’s Arrow comes out next week!

Realistically, the release date will likely be the 29th, since the 28th is a Sunday. But it’ll be the beginning of next week that it’ll be available on Amazon if all goes well!

Fun fact about being an author though.

When you buy our books through Amazon or any other retailer, we get what are called royalties.

You might be thinking, what are royalties?

It’s what is left over after the publisher, the editor, the seller, the dog, and the guinea pig are paid.

Authors are lucky if they get a fraction of the sale of their work.

So, I prefer when people buy directly through me. I don’t have a publisher, editor, cover designer, or anyone else to pay because I do all that myself. So I get all (excluding taxes) the payment on what my books are actually worth. That’s why I sell at such reasonable prices.

I’m extremely grateful that I don’t have to go through that whole line of people in order to get paid for putting my heart into words that I then share with the world.

My dreams have really come true in regards to being an author and I’m so, unbelievably blessed to have the opportunity to own my own work and receive payment for living my dreams.

That being said, when you give a book a good review, that bumps the novel up in Amazon’s list of what’s popular and what’s not, therefore, getting it more noticed. Same with Goodreads. If you put out a review, to my understanding, it’s still seen as good feedback to Amazon, even if it’s a bad review.

Bottom line of today’s topic, buy local. That’s helping out the artist or author more than if you were to buy online. And review on Amazon! Good reviews help get our work noticed and shares goodness!

See you on release day!

Love you guys!

~ Chandler R. Williamson

Getting Comfortable with Discomfort

My thought for today is on discomfort. Often we find ourselves at cross roads in our lives. One path usually will be to carry on as we have been, the road is familiar and we can see where it’ll take us. The other path holds more uncertainty for us, will it be as good? Whatever the case may be the unknown path will most certainly bring us discomfort.

Discomfort simply is, wherever there is uncertainty, wherever there is a stretching of ourselves it will bring us discomfort. Yet, we often let the fear of discomfort, the fear of the unknown stop us from making decisions and taking paths that at least could be good for us or even we know for certain would be good for us. My message today is not some magic solution to avoiding the feeling of discomfort while still taking those unknown paths but rather some encouragement and advice for breaking past those self-imposed limits.

First, do it for someone else. Hopefully you’ve had the experience of receiving praise from your parents or a loved one. That feeling of satisfaction when you did something hard and made your parents proud can be a good motivator for a child and it can still help motivate today. I remember my first year in band I was asked to perform in a trio in front of an auditorium full of people. Being extremely shy at the time, I was terrified at the thought but I eventually warmed up to the idea because I thought of the surprise from my parents who never expected it from me. Share your opportunities with loved ones, you may be surprised at the motivation it gives you to face your discomfort.

Second, focus on what you may gain rather than what you may lose. One thing is just about certain, without change, there is no growth. I imagine most of us want to grow and reach our potential so focus on that. If things go well you will be grateful you took that leap of faith, if they don’t, you still walk away with greater experience and knowledge. You can say, “that wasn’t the right direction for me”, which will always be better than saying “I wonder if”.

Lastly, remember that discomfort is a normal and healthy part of life. Simple but it’s surprising how comforting it can be to simply acknowledge that discomfort is normal. You’re not alone. Discomfort has been around since the Fall. Adam and Eve could have stayed in that Garden forever and they would not have progressed or reached their potential. It was by taking a bite of knowledge of good and evil that they were then able to discern what was good and what was not good for them. Despite the discomfort it brought, that fruit was good for them.

I offer my personal encouragement, take a leap of faith. Do that thing you’ve wanted to but have been afraid to. Discomfort can become a sign to us that we should do something. Yes it’ll be difficult, new is always difficult but it’ll be okay, you can do difficult things.

Watching Frosty the Snowman

Garrett wanted to watch Frosty the Snowman today. This was one of my favorite christmas shows as a kid. It makes me happy to share that with my kiddo.

Christlike Qualities

I worked as a daycare teacher several years ago. That job taught me more about being a mother than any other I’ve ever had. I’d also babysat numerous children for most of my life.

If I wasn’t a mommy and author, I’d be a daycare teacher.

But do you know why I loved that job so much?

I got to spend every day being taught by kids from newborn to eleven-years-old about how God and Jesus Christ think.

I didn’t used to think I had many Christlike qualities. Christ always seemed like an ideal I couldn’t live up to. I loved my Savior, but I didn’t think I could ever be like Him.

Until I watched this episode of The Chosen, I didn’t see my potential in the Christlike quality I possessed.

The Chosen, Season 1: episode 3. Credit to the original creators.

I watched this and I saw myself. I say this reverently, of course, I’m not saying I’m Him or anything like that. I simply mean, through this scene, I saw that Heavenly Father has given me the gift to speak to children the way His Son, Jesus Christ, would.

This is one of my favorite videos that our church has put out.

I’ve always loved this video, but after the experience I had with watching The Chosen with Ryan, I see myself in how Jesus interacts with the kids. He plays with them, gets down onto their levels, and talks to them with a smile. I never realized that when I did those things with children, it was pleasing to my Father in Heaven because I was acting as Jesus would.

Thank you for reading!

~ Chandler R. Williamson

Respecting Choices

Choices have been on my mind lately. Choices can range from the mundane to the life changing, they can be easy or painfully difficult. When it comes to your own choices, the difficult ones, how do you come to our decisions? Do you seek a lot of advice? Do you make them on a whim? Perhaps you do a lot of research or seek answers through prayer. Regardless of approaches you may have made in the past you ultimately made a choice. What was the reaction?

Making a choice kind of means we reached a decision, we weighed our options and picked one. Deciding has past. How often though when we share our decisions with those close to us are we met with disappointment, judgement, and in the worse cases shunning? How often do those individuals try to have us reconsider? My message today is “stop it”.

Stop it - Unimpressed Uchtdorf | Meme Generator

Have you had the experience of making a difficult decision, one you were not certain of but made nonetheless? Have you experienced friends, family, coworkers consistently hinting, implying, or outright telling you that your decision was bad? It is heart wrenching to think you’ve moved past a difficult moment of decision only to be dragged back by others and told you were deceived, or naïve, or a hundred other things. If we find ourselves doing this in response to another’s decision doesn’t this imply we believe ourselves more wise than they? Are we?

Everyone has different life experiences. Not one of us will view things exactly the same way as another and that is something we should celebrate! The world is a better place when there is diversity of thought and respect for each other. I hope that when we have come to make difficult decisions that those close to us have remained close, I hope that we have felt more tenderness than rudeness. I hope we’ve had that friend who has in essence said, “wherever this path takes you, I’m here for you”.

The judgment or criticism we receive doesn’t change our mind, it usually has the opposite effect or if it does change our mind we often end up bitter for it. I have had the misfortune of losing friends due to disagreements and a lack of respect for decisions, it is heartbreaking. Maybe those decisions did bring difficulty and appeared to have been bad ones at first but in the end it was alright. This brings me to my final point.

At the end of the day whatever decisions we make whether they turn out good or bad can be made good. We can learn from those decisions and become better for it. If we are religious we can be brought closer to God. We can have our hearts changed and made more tender toward others. How do I know this? I experienced it. To those of you who are distressed by the decisions you’ve made and the negative reception of them, hold on. I am proud of you that you chose to act. Don’t doubt yourself, move forward, not backward. I respect your decision.