The Day of Coincidences

The Day of Coincidences

March 18, 2022

It’s 4am, I’m jumping out of bed to the not alarm because one of the youngers turned the phone (aka alarm) on silent, and racing to start a cup of coffee. Ran the water through yesterday’s grounds to get slightly colored water – oops. Christina had to catch a flight out of JAX at 6am (Actually, 6:15, but you know) for her Women-In-Aviation conference in Nashville. Louis goes, “it’s only a 45 minute drive, you only need 30 minutes at the airport, not an hour.”

All my ECO-Ride experience and I’ve never left less than an hour of time from airport drop-off to plane departure, but you know, he drives now, not me.

New, real, coffee to make my shakeology.

Grandma, Christina, and I load up, ride to JAX, and she’s there before 5:10am. Sweet.

Not.

TSA stopped her for a box of business cards. Released from that line five minutes after her flight left.

She’s now on standby for the next flight to Baltimore because there she could possibly catch a standby for Nashville (the next direct to Nashville was at 9pm). Next possible to Baltimore is after 10am.

I go to leave for gym and Grandma sees Christina’s CAP cover in the yard. I start check-in, tell my boss we have to go back to JAX, wait til Grandma cleans said cover and loads the youngest two passengers, transfer everyone to the 4Runner, and we drive the CAP cover up to Christina with Thea singing in the backseat, “no job too big, no Thea too small.”

Two adults in the car allows for Grandma to race the cap to Christina and I’m not leaving the car unattended for a few seconds in the departing lane… Christina gets back into the airport.

Flight time comes, TSA says “we don’t like your lotion.” (It passed through inspection 4 hours ago??)

She misses this standby by 12 minutes.

Third standby… oops, we forgot to deep check your foot powder that passed inspection at 6am and at 10am… so TSA pulls her out of line again!… but for this one, she makes the plane with 1 minute to spare.

Thank you, Jesus!

She’s in Baltimore, next possible to Nashville leaves at 1645. Take a breath. A nice lady there helps her, upgrades her from standby to boarding and makes sure she gets on the plane.

Finally, I get a text at 1917. She’s in Nashville and has to find her luggage that arrived at her original arrival time of 0635.

Delays and coincidences? I don’t believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe it was just to make sure that my CAP pilot had her cover so she was in full regs… maybe it was to teach her patience… to teach us not to worry… to show my fully independent young woman how capable she is… for whatever reason, through more than a long workday at Jacksonville International Airport and a short shift at Baltimore, she made it to her destination intact.

Originally, I was very upset with myself because, even with the TSA delays, she would have made the first plane if I hadn’t taken the extra time to brew a real cup of coffee… but then how would we have gotten her cover to her?

First passenger I’d ever driven to the airport who had missed their flight – I’d even had a woman who had to have a potty break every exit and we got turned around in GA headed for the JAX airport and she still made her flight. My brain screamed at me about that…

God’s timing. He knew the cover didn’t make it in her carry-on. He knew it was important. He knew who would be watching, who would be encouraged, by this story both as it unfolded and as you read it now.

I take a breath, remind myself to always move forward and never beat myself up for the past – If we can trust God to keep the world spinning what is hard about trusting for tiny things like airport timing and CAP covers? (oh, and my books showed up in person while we were out!)

Thank you, Jesus, for little adventures like this that remind me how everything always works out just as it should when we keep calm, move forward, and trust.

Hope you have a lovely day!

Type at you later!

~Nancy Tart

You Can’t Rush Art

“You Can’t Rush Art” say my illustrators while I’m waiting on cover art for two new releases!

July 24, 2018

You Can’t Rush Art

I love finishing a new book!  I actually have two (One is the pilot in a new young adult series, the other is the second in the Landmark Tribe Books) that are finished.

Now comes the part I’m always excited about… illustrations!

I never know exactly what my illustrators are going to come up with for covers.  Rebeccah is designing the one for the Landmark Tribe book because she loves drawing animals – and I love her furry squirrels!

She was discussing how to make a “quirky” Crunchie (aka teenage boy squirrel) but still keep the soft style she did with Granny Pecan for the “Busting Berry Bath” cover.  I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

For the new series book, my illustrators get to come up with a whole theme!  With no pre-set design constraints, I’ve already seen a pastel sunset background, a sharper, darker, hard pencil background, and an oil-paint-style grid.  They haven’t decided on a “perfect” theme yet, but watching their imaginations run while they figure it out is amazing!

For now, I have to wait (trying to be patient – because “you can’t rush art!”) as they do the artistry part of my story.  Regardless of what people say, audiences DO judge a book by its cover.  This is why my illustrators make commissions off of their work!

I can’t wait to release these stories for ya’ll to enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

My Civil Air Patrol Cadet

July 12, 2018

My Civil Air Patrol Cadet

One day Louis was driving past the Saint Augustine Civil Air Patrol building and saw cadets marching around in uniform.  He stopped, asked them what they were, and raced home to tell Christina that he found the perfect activity for her.

She is my flying nut.  She loves planes.  Just like Lucas loves anything with wheels – she loves anything that flies (except mosquitoes and no-see-ums).  Better said; Christina loves anything mechanical that flies.

She’d studied famous flying people, physics, beat her way through math, and taken a helicopter tour for her birthday.  She’d talked with pilots as Louis shuttled them to the airport from their hotels.

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She had the time of her life when some friends took her to the Jacksonville Air Show! (Photo credit above & below – Hannah Clark & crew)

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The poster from that day was the first one tacked to her wall.

So, she “visited” the CAP meetings with Louis for three weeks – but Wednesday morning after her first meeting, she was like, “Mom, I’m going to join Civil Air Patrol.”  Of course, Christina’s decisions are never small – “I’m going to get to officer rank and they have all these things I can learn so I can get into programs to help me learn to fly…” and she continued talking me through the book and information someone had given her.

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She is a scrimping saver and refused any help with CAP dues, fees, or for her first uniform.  (This is a point of pride for her – to be able to cover all her own expenses.  She saw God’s love in action, though, when she thought she wouldn’t be able to go to winter encampment but our amazing church family gave her enough money for the trip and the extra items needed!)

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CAP gave her a grant to go toward buying her first blues uniform though – something about earning a certain rank.  (These are my borrowed shoes for her first day wearing blues.  Her real ones have a one inch heel and no decoration.)

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Lucas loves Christina’s uniform – especially the caps (aka, covers).

Thanks to CAP, Christina has matured greatly in social interaction (you can order younger siblings around all day, but it is different ordering someone else around!).  She is more confident, more physically active, emotionally and physically stronger, and enjoying the company of respectful, goal-driven, encouraging fellow cadets.

Our family has learned some new terms: water is hydration, anything not a uniform is civies, a funny backpack with a water bag inside and a fishtank-hose looking straw hanging around the cadet’s neck is a camelback, among others.

 

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We’ve swelled with pride watching our cadet march in parades (even if we only get a picture of her back half hidden behind another cadet)…

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…assist veterans in her blues…

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…and attend encampment as a student…

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…and staff.

She’s constantly challenging herself to new higher limits – one day, I’m sure, she’ll touch the sky!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

 

 

 

My Illustrators

August 3, 2017

My Illustrators

I love to write.  When it comes to drawing, I’m not an artist.  So when I’m ready to finish a story, I enlist the aid of my team of illustrators.

The latest releases, “The Mystery of the Strange Chip” and “A Clue in the Barn” were illustrated by a team.  Christina Tart sketched the design and Kimberly Tart used her new favorite medium, pastels, to color it in.  They turned to a computer editing software package to add text for the design.  The results are the new covers for what they call “old” stories.  (Old, well, they were written when I was dating and just after I was married – so they are older than the illustrators!)

It’s interesting for me to see what my illustrators come up with when they draw.  Sometimes what they see is not what I would have seen, but it’s usually much better!  When Ann Pearson (one of my little sisters) illustrated for “Long Tail” her images of Long Tail and Red Hawk looked different than what I pictured, but they were so perfect for the series!  Those images were colored by Christina and Rebeccah.  Crayon drawings gave the perfect texture to the childish, fun, read-along Long Tail stories.  (Ann’s running farmer was just perfect – you can see him in the DVD book and handmade book versions.)

Another new release is “Sisters at the Seashore” one of the Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters.  Jaquline did her first illustration job on that!  She’s excited because “now I’m published too!”  Christina thinks it’s neat that their names show up on the ebook websites as illustrators or colorists (depending on their role).  Rebeccah loves getting commission on her work!  (I pay my illustrators 10 to 50 percent commission depending on the number of illustrations in the work.  The “Jilly and Luke’s Block Adventures” are 50 percent commission works because they are picture books – an illustration almost every page!)

At one bookshow I did, a fellow author expressed interest in my illustrations.  Her favorite was “The Living God” because she claimed the “abstract art is amazing” and she commented that it looked like the open jaws of a lion.  I’d honestly never seen it that way, but now, I can’t not see the open lion jaws when I see the book cover!  I previously just saw it as colorful geometric shapes.  (Christina’s favorite book cover illustrations appear to be random flowers, geometric designs, and scrollwork.)

As of the latest release, I now have five illustrators on my team: Ann Pearson, Christina Tart, Rebeccah Tart, Kimberly Tart, and Jaquline Tart.

Oh, and Jaquline’s second book cover illustration will be published shortly too – she redid the cover for “Birthday Present!”

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

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