Just for fun, I thought Segullah could host a little contest here. Read a Whitney-eligible book (these are books published in 2011 by LDS authors; find a list of eligible books here), nominate it for a Whitney (click here) and then leave a post in the comments telling me which book you’ve nominated. Leave a separate comment for each book you nominate–one entry per book. I will choose one winner to receive a copy of Variant, by Robison Wells. This is a great book, Kirkus starred review, about a boy trapped in a creepy boarding school, with a twist. Contest ends December 7, and I will pick a random winner from entries after that.

Because of my baby (poor baby; I blame everything that’s flaky about my life right now on him.) I haven’t read all the Whitney-eligible books I had planned to. So many books, so little time. But here’s what I’ve read so far this year:

The Lost Gate, Orson Scott Card
Variant, Robison Wells
Back When You Were Easier to Love, Emily Wing Smith
Sean Griswold’s Head, Lindsay Leavitt
I Don’t Want to Kill You, Dan Wells
Crossed, Ally Condie
The Alloy of Law, Brandon Sanderson
The Beyonders, Brandon Mull

All of these books deserve to be considered for a Whitney, in my opinion, and I will be nominating them, along with some others that I hope to read before the end of the year. But there are plenty of other genres that need some attention. And if you know of a self-published or independently published book that you think deserves a closer look, nominate it!

Disclaimer: While Segullah does have a vote on the Whitney Academy, no one asked us to run this contest. This is just an in-house idea because I thought it would be fun.

Related posts:

1. LDS Storymakers, Whitney Awards, Monsters and Mormons
2. Whitney 2010 Nominees and Almost-Nominees
3. Nominate Whitney Finalists

Grace hovered around me one washday, as I boiled water, grated lye soap, and scrubbed. Washday was a good day to be a ghost, I thought, watching other people rub their hands till they bled, knowing you’d never have to do it again yourself. I worked stains out of our clothes. She followed me into the yard, as far as her house-binding would allow, as if daring me to talk to her. Finally I said, “What?”
“You shouldn’t be so rude. You ought to know what I’ve guessed already.”
“What is it?”
“Haven’t you noticed the laundry? Or have you not been counting the weeks? If I’m right, you’re with child.”
Ah.
She was right. And I had lost track of weeks. “You’re the first person to know,” I said. “I didn’t realize.” And then I scrubbed at the washboard and cried a little. She had stolen my good news from me.
Her glee at being right dissipated when she saw me crying. “I thought you’d be happy,” she said.
“I wanted to know myself,” I told her. “You should have guessed that. Or haven’t you been pregnant before?”
“I was, once,” she said. “But the baby came early, and died, and I died too. Didn’t Nathaniel tell you?”
I shook my head. “But that’s how Agnes died.”
Grace nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“I had made all the clothes,” Grace said. “The little gowns, and the cloth hemmed for diapers, and tiny booties. Quilts, too. I’ll show you, if you want.”
“Let me finish the wash,” I said. She left me alone as I washed, wringing out the clothes in long twisted sticks, shaking the water out in a fine mist, hanging them on the line so the cold breeze would blow them dry. Sometimes I noticed the spirits watching me work, and I envied them their indolence, their clean, idle existence. Don’t wish away your work, the Holy Spirit told me. You don’t want their pale half-life.
Grace waited for me inside the door. “Upstairs,” she said. “In the left bedroom, beneath the bed, there’s a long flat box.” She followed me as I went up the stairs and into the bedroom, and pulled the box from beneath the bed. I opened it and it was as she said, only more so. Stacks of diapers, rows of gowns, two baby quilts. Each little gown embroidered with flowers. Baby quilts dotted with tiny, even stitches.
“I didn’t become pregnant for four years after we married,” she told me. “I had time to work. I worried that Nathaniel would give my things away, but he didn’t. He saved them.”
“To remember you? Or to give to his next child?”
“I don’t know.” She reached for a white gown, but her hand passed through it. “I’ll let you use them.”
“You will?” I could use her baby things without asking, but I wanted permission. These were too beautiful to poach.
“I’ll let you use them if you’ll talk to Nathaniel for me. Give him a message from me.”
Such a condition. “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can. You can tell him that Grace loves him as much as she ever did. Or no, tell him this. Tell him that he’s got the best darned socks in the world.”
“What?”
“It was our joke, what he always used to say when I mended his things.”
“And am I supposed to run messages between the two of you?”
“Not lots of messages. Just this one. Please.”
I picked up a tiny bootie, knit out of white yarn. Five pairs of booties, each slightly larger than the one before. Careful anticipation for an arrival that came too early. “I’ll think about it,” I said.
I folded the baby clothes, stacking them in even rows, making them look as perfect and tidy as they had before. If Grace’s baby had survived, she would have spent many hours scrubbing these clothes, removing yeasty yellow stains, doing wash more than once a week to keep up. A living, crying, messy baby, ruining and redeeming every stitch.

In the story I tried to find both the potential humor and the real pain of the Mormon doctrine that a man can be sealed to wives who are deceased at the same time as one living wife. We don’t practice polygamy anymore, but we do have men sealed to both deceased spouses and living wives. How do you feel about widowers remarrying? Do you want your spouse to remarry, and would you visit them if you could?

As for me, I would want my husband to remarry if I died. I wouldn’t want him to be alone. But if my mom died, even though I’d hate to see my dad lonely, I would also struggle mightily with having my father remarry. I would try very hard to be kind to her, but there’s no one like my mom, and I hope I never have to see her replaced.
I realize this can be a tender topic for many people, and I hope that I don’t open any wounds, but I’m interested in your opinions here.

And have an excellent Halloween, filled with cute kids and the best candy.

Related posts:

1. Art By Women, About Women
2. The Healing Power of Creativity
3. History of My Housewifery

Case in point: my story “The Living Wife” will appear in the upcoming Monsters and Mormons anthology. I had an idea about a woman who can see ghosts marrying a widower, a kind of ghostly take on polygamy. But I have never published fiction before, only a poem here or an essay there, so I wasn’t very confident about my ability to get something written. Still, I started working on it, and finally had a not-embarrassing draft ready a week before the deadline.

Then I found some excellent readers, who gave me wonderful feedback. One of them helped me cut out a lame extra character and brought focus to the whole thing. I incorporated their ideas and typed and typed up to the day of the deadline, only figuring out how to end the thing the day before.

Yeah, that’s probably not the best example of How You Are Supposed to Write. But it worked for me, and I believe that the deadline helped me keep going and actually finish instead of putting it off.

If you’re like me, you want to write a novel someday. Something big, something that feels permanent and has your name on the cover. But maybe if you’re also like me, you just can’t embark on that right now. Which is why I like essays. And poetry. And now, short fiction: it’s my small creation, small but real. You can do it too (and, if you do write novels already, take a break and write an essay for us!).

So, the Segullah essay, poetry, and fiction contest: deadline December 31. Please enter–get started thinking right now. Do some rush writing to get your ideas out. Read these blog posts with writing ideas. Get the raw material of your essay, poem, or story ready now, in October. Then in November you can shape it into a rough draft, find its structure and direction. In December you can show it to fellow writers who can help you polish it up. And December 31st, the deadline, you can click “send” and submit your work.

We can’t wait to read it.

Do you have any questions about the Segullah contest in the comments? How do deadlines help you in your writing, or the rest of your life? Or do they bug you and make you feel too pressured?

1-Genre fiction meets Mormons, which I think is a great premise. The book will be released October 31.

Related posts:

1. Want to write for Segullah? Read Segullah!
2. Share Your Story
3. Flex Your Writing Muscle!

“We’re doing the SNS,” I said. SNS meant Supplemental Nursing System, a bottle of breast milk around my neck, dripping down a tube taped to my chest, beneath a silicon nipple shield. The first time the lactation specialist showed it to me, untangling all the tiny tubes, demonstrating how it was supposed to work, I cried and cried. “Everyone cries when they see this,” she told me.

“You’ve got the SNS working well enough to go home? Really?” the therapist said. “Wow!”

“Why does everyone sound so surprised when I tell them that?”

“Because the SNS is a pain in the neck, and most people give up before now.”

“I’m used to nursing problems,” I said, and then I told her the same history I told the other lactation specialists (they were fabulous) who helped me in the NICU: how I never figured out nursing with my oldest two, and pumped my milk for them. And it took my two and a half months of pumping and trying to nurse till my third child finally caught on. He was the only one I nursed normally. “I’ve been cursed by the nursing gods,” I said. “But in a way, that kind of prepared me for the NICU experience, since premies have such a hard time nursing, and I had to pump anyway. I’m used to it. It’s the only nursing reality I have ever known.”

“You could be a motivational speaker,” she said. “All that pumping to give milk to your babies. Plus the SNS now.”

“Not me,” I told her. “Because it was too hard for me to ever impose that decision on anyone else. I could never, ever stand up in front of someone and tell them that they ought to do what I did. I chose it, but I wouldn’t give anyone a guilt trip for not doing the same thing.”

I brought my baby home with the SNS and the nipple shield and spent the next several weeks holed up in my bedroom, trying to get him to eat enough from it so that he could grow. It’s impossible to nurse discreetly with the SNS, and I didn’t want my older kids to watch everything, so I hunkered in the back room, listening to the sounds of bickering with one ear and the ipad earbud in the other. It took about an hour to get him to eat enough to sleep for two hours, and after that I still had to pump. And maybe shower. And maybe acknowledge the existence of my other children, and my husband.

When he reached 40 weeks gestational age, I went to see a lactation specialist for SNS weaning advice. She was a sweet lady but not too helpful; everything she told me I had already tried. And it was just. so. time-consuming. I needed to get ready for school to start, I needed to attack my laundry mountain, I needed to care for my entire family better than the SNS’s time commitment allowed. So I broke out the bottles for daytime feeding so I could feed the baby in fifteen minutes instead of sixty, and I still did the SNS at night. And still pumped 5-6 times a day, but this system worked better for me.

Until one night when I was so dizzy with fatigue that I used a bottle instead of the SNS, and since then it’s been all pumped milk bottles. But eventually the milk supply will run low, and we’ll be doing formula. I know how it goes; I’ve been here before.

I’m not really at peace with giving up on real nursing. I wish I were. I wish I could just pat myself on the back for all past and future pumping. There’s something primal and core for me about nursing, and I have felt the loss of that relationship with my two oldest children. It was incredibly validating as a mother to finally, finally be able to nurse my third child, and I was hoping I could make it work with this baby.

And yet, I’m also not ready to go back to being holed up in my bedroom all day long as I try to get my baby to nurse the right way. I just can’t do that anymore. I feel stuck and frustrated by the whole thing.

So this post may be the essence of Too Much Information, more than you ever wanted to know about my nursing experience. But I’m curious about all of yours. You NICU moms, did you pump? For how long? Did nursing ever magically start working for you three or four months out? Has anyone else been cursed by the nursing gods?

I will state up front that I really want stories–what did you do, what worked for you personally–but I’d prefer that you avoid saying “you should do this” or “have you tried that.” Because I’m pretty fragile and defensive about the whole situation, and I just can’t handle advice very well right now, even when it’s well-meant. I have been to the websites, I have read the books, I have visited the lactation specialists. I’m going to muddle through somehow.

And I will also say that I respect the feeding choices of any mother who feeds her baby in any way, breastfed, formula fed, whatever works for you and your family, and I hope that all comments also reflect that respect for different feeding choices. A breastfeeding motivational speaker I am not. I’m just a mom trying to feed her baby.

Related posts:

1. NICU Stories
2. Held Close
3. Nursing

I didn’t ask her about her story, and I didn’t ask any of the women I rode the elevator with, except to say occasionally, in a friendly way, “We wear the same bracelet.” They smiled tired smiles back.

Every time I saw someone wearing that bracelet, I wanted to know their story. How early was your baby? Mine was thirty-four weeks, five days. And yours? And is he breathing all right now? Yes, we’re on room air. He was on CPAP at first, but only for a day and a half, so that was pretty good. Have you started to nurse? How’s that going? How’s all that pumping? Eight times a day, more if I can fit it in. Yeah, I get up in the middle of the night and pump too. I’ve never had milk supply issues before, but it’s been harder this time around for some reason. Does it frustrate you too that no one gives you a straight answer about when your baby can come home? Except that would be terrible, to have them say “three weeks” or “two weeks” and have it drag out to four or five. To have something else go wrong.

I would have liked to ask those other women, but I did not. Partly because I was shy, and partly because it was such a personal experience. Yes, I had a premature baby, but he was born at nearly thirty-five weeks, which is a whole different league than a baby born at thirty-two, or thirty, or earlier. I’m in the NICU mom club, and I’m not saying it was easy, but I felt like I was still not… worthy, I guess, to share my story with someone whose story could be much more intense than mine was.

And I know the feeling of having someone pry when you’re not ready to open up. The week after I went home, when my baby was still in the hospital, I had to go nursing bra shopping–it was something I’d left for the end of my pregnancy, and then bed rest prevented me from going. The sales girl was helpful and chatty, but I did not want to chat. “Did you have your baby yet?” she chirped. “Uh-huh,” I said.

“And what did you have?”

“A boy,” I said. “And can I try that other one on too?” She wanted a birth story, but I wasn’t ready to tell her. Weepy with postpartum hormones, I did not want to share my story with a stranger, even a kind one.

But eventually my deflections did not work, and as she rang up my purchase she asked the question that sent me over, “And when were you due?”

“July 28th,” I said.

“Oh.” Now she understood, and seeing the understanding on her face made me lose everything I had been holding in. “So he was early. Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. Even knowing that he was going to be okay, it was still hard to stand there in Motherhood Maternity, passing over my credit card, signing the receipt, weeping to a stranger.

So I thought about that when I saw the girl in the wheelchair, the girl who was me a few weeks ago. I did not want to ask questions she wasn’t ready to answer to a stranger. But I hoped for her that her baby was like mine: off of his IV, starting to wake up to feed, and comforted enough in her presence to sleep. I hoped she was doing all right, that her husband was taking care of things at home, that someone was praying for her and that she could feel those prayers as intensely as I have felt the ones of family and friends in the last month.

My baby is home now, and he’s doing fine. He was born at thirty-four weeks and five days, because my amniotic fluid was too low. I had a c-section, and my recovery from that was excellent. We are still trying to figure out nursing, but he’s eating well and gaining weight with our current system. Those are the more mundane details. But the heart of this whole experience is much harder to articulate. I have, as I said, felt divine help and prayers strengthening me and my family. I have been blessed by many, many friends and family members who have sacrificed time and energy to care for me and my family. I have realized, more than with my previous children, the way my whole world can revolve around giving birth. There are thousands of women like me, with stories of their baby’s stormy transition from heaven to earth.

Do you have a NICU story you’d like to share? No pressure, though, if you don’t want to. I will enjoy whatever you’ve got to say. I can’t promise to comment much, because I’m working on very little sleep, but I will read them all. And thank you.

Related posts:

1. Why Would You . . .
2. Auction item #8: baby legwarmers
3. The Prayer I Haven’t Been Ready To Pray

But I went beyond the magazines. I bought my own stash of pregnancy and baby books: the venerable What to Expect series, Your Pregnancy Week by Week, the slightly naughty Girlfriend’s Guide books, a breastfeeding tome entitled So That’s What They’re For. In the course of my parenting I have purchased books on coping with picky eaters, getting my child to sleep, disciplining preschoolers, making your own Super Baby Food, and no less than four books on How To Potty Train.

Sometimes I think I’ve tried to find validation in my shelf of parenting books, as if knowing that I followed this method for sleep or that method for potty training made me a better mother. Like writing a research paper and having a large Works Cited pages: proof I did my parenting homework and was well qualified.

But no book I’ve ever read has really made me feel qualified and knowledgable. I haven’t opened most of the books on my parenting shelf in years. There are a couple I plan to refer to for specific things: the Love and Logic discipline series, or my favorite baby sleep book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. But there’s just too much information for my little brain to process and apply. And ultimately I have to strike out on my own, making choices for my family and owning my decisions. I need to make my own Works Cited page, composed not of Experts, but of life experience.

Part of me is always wondering, though, if that shiny new parenting book will have the magic key that makes everything run smoothly in our home. I have not, for instance, read any book that talks extensively about how to integrate a fourth baby into your family (it’s always “what to do when baby number two comes along.” Possibly three. Do they think we’ve got it all figured out by four, or am I in a rare enough demographic that no one writes articles for us?).

Is there a magic method that fixes everything? How do you feel about parenting books and advice articles? What’s on your parenting Works Cited list?

Related posts:

1. A Living Sacrifice, part V: Adoption
2. Parenting and Happiness
3. Another One (Bites My Bust?)

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

The point of the verse is that we can become too familiar with evil, so that it doesn’t seem evil to us anymore, but good. We go from hating vice on sight, to enduring it, to pitying it, to embracing it.

The use of the word “vice” is interesting here. It makes me think of the Seven Deadly Sins, also known as the Capitol Vices or Cardinal Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

So according to Pope, we need to be on guard, watchful, lest we become complacent and permit the beginnings of wrath, or greed, or gluttony to turn into full-fledged indulgence.

I get what he’s saying, and I agree with it as it stands, treating vice as abstraction. The problem is the way that vice manifests itself in people, and this is where Pope’s lines get tricky: how often have I seen someone who manifests sloth, or lust, or greed, and felt Pope’s initial hatred and contempt? It seems to me that what we are actually called upon to do when interacting with others, as disciples of Christ, is just the opposite of what Pope says. If I notice that someone around me struggles with a particular vice, I need to say “Lord, remember my brethren in mercy, and have mercy on me, a sinner.” If it’s my job to minister to them, I need to do so without hatred (obviously) but also without contempt or even pity. I need to master the seeing eye-to-eye of charity, the embrace.

Case in point: On Facebook a couple of weeks ago someone mentioned seeing an obese person overindulging. There was some contempt (later tempered with pity) in the original comment, as well as in the following comments.

I was bothered by the level of contempt expressed. I look at someone who is more overweight than me and see myself, if I’m not more careful. I’m past hatred and endurance and pity; for me, there’s the embrace of knowing that I am capable of turning into that person, too. It’s within me. The fact that I am not there does not give me the right to feel contemptuous towards someone who is.

I can say that about gluttony; it’s a vice that hits home. But there are other sins I find far more despicable, and it’s harder for me to hold the dual perspective in my head: simultaneous revulsion towards the sin itself and also deep, honest charity for anyone who also faces that particular temptation. And yet no one, no one, changes when they feel defensive, and the best way to help people lose that defensiveness is to let them feel completely loved and accepted, and also give them a vision of who they are capable of becoming.

My stake president talks about the “smoke test:” when someone comes to Sacrament Meeting smelling of cigarette smoke, what’s your first response? “I’m so happy to see this person at church” is appropriate, as opposed to “What are they doing here?” I confess here that for me, this takes work: I need to override my first impressions to respond with charity and not contempt. I don’t have instant charity for people who struggle with different vices than I do. But I’m working on it. I’m realizing, more and more, that all of us are on the same path towards God, and it is our job to help those around us, to honor where they are at and help them with genuine, Christlike love.

Hate sin, absolutely. Go Alex Pope! But let go of disdain towards sinners; there is no place for contempt among those of one heart and one mind in Zion.

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1. Dark Glass, Energy of Heart
2. Double Consciousness
3. Sarah Palin. Yeah, I’m going there.

For Best Novel: Wolves, Boys, and Other Things that Might Kill Me, by Kristen Chandler
Best Novel by a New Author: Wolves, Boys, and Other Things that Might Kill Me
YA General: Wolves, Boys, and Other Things that Might Kill Me; also Glimpse, by Carol Lynch Williams
Speculative Fiction: The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
Mystery: Murder by Design, Betsey Brannon Green
Romance: Cross My Heart by Julie Wright

We had not yet chosen our favorites in General, Historical, or Youth Speculative. So, here they are:

General: The Segullah vote went to Lucky Change; it was a tough call, essentially a toss-up between Lucky Change, by Susan Law Corpany, and Band of Sisters, by Annette Lyon. Lucky Change is the story of a working-class woman who wins the lottery and changes the hearts of her snooty ward. At first I wondered if the lottery-winning protagonist was just a little too good, too kind, too forgiving. But as the book progressed I also came to believe in her great-spirited heart. Band of Sisters tells about the friendship of five women whose husbands are deployed to Afghanistan, and the moral/emotional support they give each other. I especially liked the way Lyon portrays the boundaries each woman had towards being real, really showing their lives and problems, and the way the women grew closer through gradually sharing more of themselves with each other.

I should also mention that all of us were disappointed that Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist was not a finalist in the General Fiction category. In the comments of this thread, Josi Kilpack, Whitney President, discusses the process of choosing finalists and possible reasons why the Lonely Polygamist was not ultimately selected. It’s a great conversation and I appreciate the openness of the Whitney leadership in explaining how things were.

Historical: The Sheen on the Silk, by Anne Perry. Perry’s book, set in Byzantium, combines a great mystery, romance, and vivid historical detail to great effect. Anna Zarides pretends to be a eunuch doctor and treats high-level religious and government officials in order to clear her brother of murder charges. Perry does a fantastic job of allowing the reader to enter the Byzantine world while still keeping the story tightly paced.

Youth Speculative: Matched, by Allyson Condie. In Matched, Cassia lives in a perfect society, where her spouse and job and life are planned by a perfect government. From Shelah’s review on her blog:

…Ally Condie’s Matched is the most highly-anticipated, most hyped YA novel of the year… Having said that, does the book live up to the hype?

The story is a dystopian romance in which seventeen-year-old Cassia is matched with Xander, the boy next door, but before their first date, she finds out that she’s actually also matched with Ky. Xander represents safety and status quo. Ky represents taking chances. Cassia loves them both, and ultimately has to choose what kind of life she’d rather live. I’d say that Matched does what it sets out to do, and does it well.

Final Thoughts:
Emily M.: This is the third year I’ve read all the Whitney finalists and voted for the winners. Maybe it’s a factor of being more aware of what’s going on in LDS publishing than before, but what I missed this year was a surprise, something I had never heard of before and then fell in love with. In 2008 it was The Reckoning, Waiting for the Light to Change, and Keeping Keller. (I would say Bound on Earth, but I had already heard of it.) In 2009 it was In the Company of Angels, Counting the Cost, Gravity vs. the Girl, and No Going Back. And this year, I missed those smaller-press or independently published gems.

In the time I’ve read the Whitney finalists, for me the locally published books have improved a lot. This is especially noticeable if you track individual authors, as I do. There are a couple of authors whose finalist books from 2010 are dramatically, delightfully better than their 2008 finalist books. This is a great thing: to me it shows that editors and authors are working to improve the writing and storytelling. This is not to say that there were not books I disliked, but overall I think the quality is improving. The exception to this for the 2010 finalists has also happened in past years: more well-known authors seem to get a pass as far as writing and story quality goes. It seems that if the publisher believes it will sell well no matter what, it’s not edited as heavily. Perhaps that is cynical of me, but that has been my observation.

The Mystery category was my favorite as far as locally published books go. My top three favorites (Cold as Ice, A Time to Die, and Murder by Design) were all great reads, and it wouldn’t surprise or disappoint me to see any of them win.

Finally, it tickles me to have categories dominated by nationally published books. Not because I want to edge out the locally published authors, but because I’m proud of what LDS writers have also accomplished on the national scene. Speculative, Youth Speculative, and Youth General, all dominated by nationally published books. That’s impressive to me, and it makes me happy that we are blessed with talented writers.
*
Shelah: I feel a little bit like an interloper in this discussion, because I this year I only read 21 of the 35 books. So I can’t contribute to the discussion of the historical novels, the speculative fiction, or the YA speculative fiction. This year the biggest surprise, and perhaps the biggest disappointment, was that the general category didn’t have stronger offerings. I know I’m biased, but I tend to think of contemporary realistic fiction as the heart and soul of fiction, and the general category is essentially contemporary realistic fiction. It’s the category I look forward to reading– I save these books until the end as a reward to myself. In last year’s competition, three of the general fiction finalists, The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, No Going Back, and Gravity vs. the Girl, were all strong contenders– all books with interesting themes, well-developed characters, and good writing. I felt that each book challenged me in some way as a reader. This year, all five of the books were problematic in one way or another, and a couple of them were downright dreadful. I know, I sound like a jerk, but Emily, Mara and I want you to be able to see that we’re giving you our unvarnished opinions.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the strength of some of the genre categories I read. This year the mysteries were great, and Whitney president Josi Kilpack published several more good mysteries in 2010 that were exempt from the competition. The YA category has been so strong in past years that this year the Academy decided to split it into two separate categories, and nine of the ten books were targeted to a national market. I never thought I’d say it, but I’ve even found a soft spot in my heart for the romances.

*
Good luck to the finalists–I’m sure they will post the winners here. You can go here to find a list of 2011 fiction from LDS authors and get a head start on reading and nominating books for next year’s Whitney Awards.

Related posts:

1. Mother in Me on Whitney Awards Auction
2. Wolves, Boys, and the Whitneys
3. Whitney Award Predictions

Or maybe it’s because I put it off for so long, till the piles spill all over my bedroom floor, and the Spirit approves of my finally bending to reality and getting the laundry done.

I don’t get the same feeling from dishes, or mopping, or vacuuming. Perhaps the irritation inherent in ironing makes it hard for me to feel the Spirit then. Lately I have also been feeling some kind of blessed state when I make dinner. I think it’s because I get cooking fatigue (dinner. again.) and God nudges me along and reminds me that it is a good thing to feed my family. It is a good thing to submit to the demands of taking care of my home, instead of chafing against them.

And this reminds me of a hymn, not included in our hymnbook, but I wish it were: Take My Life and Let It Be.

In the stack of sheet music I packed for my mission I kept a choral arrangement of “Take My Life.” My high school voice teacher gave it to me, and I’ve sung it through many times, on my mission (sorry, long-suffering companions) and since then too.

Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in endless praise.

As a missionary it felt obvious to me that every moment was consecrated to the Lord. Of course that was true–why else had I traveled across the world, except to serve? Every moment was intended to serve Him, and the ways seemed clear too.

As a mother I find it much more difficult to infuse every action with meaning. I love the insight that motherhood can count as feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Where I struggle, though, is in the daily fulfillment of the lyricist Frances R. Havergal’s words. When he says “Take my life and let it be” mentally I put the emphasis on life. And maybe that’s what makes me chafe at the laundry pile, at the constant need to feed people, at the way clutter breeds and grows and I am never done.

I sometimes think of consecrating one’s life to God as exemplified by missionary work, by leadership callings, by walking barefoot to Zion. I do not wish to minimize in any way those examples of consecration. But that’s not where I’m at right now, and yet I’m still part of the covenant of consecration. Take my life, my life right now, as it is, and let it be made sacred to God.

I am still learning this, how to infuse a sense of purpose into chores that I mostly dislike. But every so often I will shake out a shirt, or a pair of hole-kneed jeans, fold them into neat piles, and find in my submission to the laundry a small piece of grace.

I’m wondering if I’m alone here–is there anyone else who feels the Spirit as they clean? Am I the only one who requires divine help to keep basic order?

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1. You May Already Be A Winner
2. Male’ yad
3. Calling All Writers

This year’s Whitneys have a couple of changes. Because of the strength of the LDS YA writers, the Whitney committee created two categories instead of just one: YA General and YA Speculative. This is a great move, in my opinion, because the YA books do divide easily along those lines and both categories are delightfully strong. The other major change is the possibility of a book sweeping three categories. Before this, in order to honor as many individual authors as possible, a book could only win in one category, even if it qualified by number of votes to win in three. So last year’s In the Company of Angels won Best Novel and was therefore ineligible to win Best Historical. This year we could have one author sweep several categories.

And if we at Segullah could choose that one author to sweep several categories, based on our reading so far it would have to be Kristen Chandler, author of Wolves, Boys, and Other Things That Might Kill Me. This is a fantastic book. KJ Carson’s insecure and snarky voice drew me in, and I loved the nuanced portrayal of issues surrounding the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone. And it’s a got a nice romantic zing to it as well. Theoretically it could win Best Novel, Best Novel by a New Author, and Best YA General.

Best YA General could also easily go to Carol Lynch Williams’ novel-in-poems Glimpse, the story of two sisters and their abusive mother. The writing is spare and beautiful, and the poetic form lends itself well to showing as much of their story as we can bear to understand. Williams is a powerful writer.

In Speculative Fiction, Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings was our favorite. The Way of Kings is the first of Sanderson’s new Stormlight Archive series, and it’s an impressive start. I confess that I’m not that into the battle scenes, and there are quite a few. And while Sanderson’s magic systems are cool, what I really love are his immensely satisfying endings. The ending of this book was so perfect. There’s a bit of a learning curve if epic fantasy is not your genre, but the final payoff is worth it.

Best Mystery goes to Betsey Brannon Green’s Murder by Design for Best Mystery. Murder by Design has this great Southern voice, probably the best example of clear character voice in a locally published finalist. There’s a great sense of place, a satisfying continuation of librarian Kennedy Killingsworth’s love life, and a good mystery to boot.

For Best Romance, we like Julie Wright’s Cross My Heart, a romantic comedy about Jillian Belle, who’s looking for love but still healing from a broken heart. From Shelah’s review on her blog:

I liked Jillian’s character quite a bit. She was prickly, which gave her some depth…. I think Wright does a great job with the setting of the book too. The LDS singles scene in Boston came alive for me, and I thought Boston itself was one of the most interesting characters in the book.

We still haven’t finished and decided on the General, Historical, or Youth Speculative categories, but we will post a final list of all favorites in a couple of weeks when we’ve finished reading. In the meantime, comment and let us know which of these you’ve read or are looking forward to reading. Good luck to all the finalists!

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1. Whitney Award Predictions
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3. LDS Storymakers, Whitney Awards, Monsters and Mormons