Ten years ago my life took an amazing turn when “By the Banks of Cottonwood Creek” came out in paperback. Today, I’d like to share some of my journal entries from 2015. They record the excitement of publishing a book for the first time:

February 14: “The way opened to have “Cottonwood” printed as a paperback…I did a happy dance all morning the day this went through.”

April 11: “The proof for “Cottonwood” is in the mail. (Note my Norwegian reserve as I record this momentous news.)

April 27: “I ordered 100 copies of “By the Banks of Cottonwood Creek”…They were to arrive next Wednesday, but arrived five days early. I called Pastor Dan and asked if I could set up a book table at church on Sunday, and he agreed.” The rest of journal entry told of the logistics of being an author. I was finding my way through a whole new world. (More Norwegian reserve.)

May 3: “Today we went to Braddock for the Senior Craft Fair. Only sold 7 books, but about 8:30 someone phoned to say they really liked it and to let them know when the next one was coming out.”

What? Me write another book? That’s like asking a woman who just gave birth when she plans to have another child. But, that sweet couple weren’t the only ones who hoped I’d produce another book very soon. The next Sunday morning, a lady in high heels came running through the church lobby exclaiming how much she loved “Cottonwood.” Another gal was upset because she couldn’t put the book down and ended up reading all night.

Oh joy in the morning! Maybe I would write a sequel.

May 24: “We went to Estes Park for the Colorado Christian Writers Conference May 13-14. The auditorium was filled with Christian writers praising the Lord.” Writing is a lonely occupation and that evening, surrounded by others who were on journeys similar to mine, remains a highlight of my life. Ironically, this week I will attend the conference online.

But, back to Braddock, pop. 14, and fifty miles from Bismarck. That trip began a precedent of taking my books to small North Dakota towns. Plus, a month after receiving that first box of books, they were stocked in my hometown at the LaMoure Drug, and still are today.

July 20: “Something I’ve dreamed of for many years is happening—I’m getting royalties in the mail!” (Finally, my Norwegian reserve broke and I used an exclamation point.)

August: “This morning I did an interview on KNDR-FM. We gave a book away to the first person to call in, and the calls started right away. The interview played again that afternoon. The announcer said he’d started to read a book I left at the station and, ‘folks you won’t be able to put it down.’ It’s really strange to sit in your kitchen and hear your book promoted.”

Today, ten years later, people still ask when the next book is coming out, and with all of the encouragement, I’ve published six books. What a blessing to have this encore career and the chance to publish stories that are dear to my heart.

I’m so grateful to friends, family, store owners, and readers far and wide. My husband, Larry, has been my closest friend and best supporter, and he also “drives Miss Daisy” to out of town events. Thank you also to all of those talented people who provide support—early readers, proofreaders, editors, webmasters, tech people and other authors. I hope my books have been a blessing to you.

 For your summer reading enjoyment, “By the Banks of Cottonwood Creek” will be available for $10 on Amazon during August. The other books in the series, “Amber’s Choice” and “Cottonwood Dreams,” will also be $10. 

But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31

Enjoy the rest of summer! 

For centuries, time was measured with an hourglass. How it works is sand runs from an upper chamber to a lower chamber marking one hour. In Latin, an hourglass with wings means tempus fugit or time flies.

Time does seem to fly these days. I just finished taking the Christmas decorations down, and now it’s Lent.

Another sign that time is flying is that Little Sister, A Family Memoir has been out six months as of March 13, and I’ve hardly begun to promote this slice of North Dakota life.

Little Sister exposes a lot about my life and my family’s life in the 20^th Century, such as the stories about Easter. When we dyed Easter eggs, one always turned brown because it was dropped in too many cups of dye. And I figured out that Mom was the Easter bunny the year I received a tube of toothpaste in my basket.

I also remember the sense of freshness and new life I felt when I walked into Cottonwood Church one Easter morning. In Little Sister I wrote, “An excitement ran through the people as though the empty tomb had just been discovered.” Do you remember when everyone dressed up, the women and girls in hats, white gloves and patent leather shoes?

I still have an expectancy of joy when I walk into church on Easter morning.

Every week, I hear from people who have read Little Sister. A few days ago, a friend told this charming story: “My sister who is 90 years old just told me that I absolutely had to go out and buy this book called Little Sister. I told her ‘I mailed that book to you’ and she said, ‘Oh I just love this book, it reminds me of so many things in LaMoure that I had forgotten about. I’m going to order one for my boys so they can see what my younger life was like.’”

Other readers say they can relate to being the youngest in the family and feeling that they didn’t quite fit in. Just last week someone said she was over seventy before she quit wondering if she had been adopted!

Another result of the book is that readers are thinking about how to record their own memoires. That is so important, because our shared histories define a whole generation.

In some ways I began writing Little Sister in my heart almost fifty years ago. However, last year I felt an urgency to get it done, as though life was slipping faster and faster through an hourglass. So with that in mind, join me in saying this prayer taken from Psalm 90:12 that encourages us to make the most of our time,

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” NKJV

Writing Update

Wow! Finishing Little Sister was monumental for me and it’s taking a while to shift gears and think about writing anything else.

April 12: The Northbrook Vendor Show will be at Northbrook Mall in Bismarck from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Maureen and Shelly are setting up a fun event, so if you’re in Bismarck, please stop by. I’ve signed books there almost every year and look forward to going back.

Happy Easter!

Many thanks to all who have purchased Little Sister, A Family Memoir, since its publication last September. And a million thanks for who have sent comments. Many say they relate to the stories in it about growing up in the 1950s. You all warm my ink-stained heart.

It’s been about ten years since I published my first book. I’ve met a lot of readers…and writers since then. Whether I’m speaking to groups or sitting at a table signing books, people seem to want to chat.

Often someone will ask how I got started writing. A few minutes into the conversation I realize what they really want to ask is, “How can I begin writing?”

I love those exchanges because they are so personal. Sometimes others will scoff at your dreams, so it’s hard to admit you want to write your memoir or have an idea for a bestselling novel. By telling me, they’re exposing a secret side of themselves, and we’re no longer strangers, but friends with a shared interest.

Let me encourage you, if you have a desire to write, 2025 is the year to begin. I published Little Sister after decades of stalling. I’m glad I did it now because memories fade and opportunities slip away much too quickly.

Most of us don’t feel qualified to be writers. But if a story is begging to be told, who’s more qualified to tell it than you? It’s sad to think of all the history that has been lost because someone was embarrassed by their grammar or spelling. Those things can be corrected, but only you can tell your story.

One way to begin writing is to keep a journal or diary. That way, you learn to write regularly and how to record your thoughts without the pressure of showing it to others. Sometimes the smallest details you write down become important decades later. Keep in mind that today’s mundane events become tomorrow’s history.

A great example of the usefulness of a journal can be is found in Dr. David Livingstone’s story. He kept a journal all of his life. He began working in a cotton mill in Scotland when he was ten. As a boy, he was in church working the bellows of the organ when he felt God calling him to Africa. Perhaps every Sunday he wrote in his diary, “I worked the organ bellows again today.” And then in one defining moment, the direction of his life changed from factory worker to future missionary. We know the details of that encounter and his exceptional life as a missionary and explorer because of the record he kept.

If you want to start journaling, here are some tips: Ask God to direct you. Choose a time and place to record your thoughts. You can write in a notebook or on your computer. Forget the flowery beginning and simply launch into comments about your day or week. Record the date and what happened and when and where. Why was it important? How did it make you feel?

To start writing down your memories try this: Don’t attempt to tell your whole life story, instead focus on one special memory. The happiest or saddest day of your life. A moment that changed your life’s course. Is your faith important to you? Why? What is your favorite scripture or saying? What advice would you give the next generation?

If you’re inspired to keep a journal, begin writing a memoir or launch into a novel that’s been on your mind, please let me know!

Writing Update

As the holidays neared, some of my writing friends and I realized we had all published recently. We decided to celebrate with a Christmas Coffee at the Bismarck Public Library in December. We were excited and blessed to talk about our writing to a room full of people. Pictured here are five of the six recently published authors.

You can obtain a copy of Little Sister, A Family Memoir at Amazon.com. At this time, it is sold out in Bismarck, but I hope to have them restocked by Valentine’s Day.

My other five books can be found at all online bookstores.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall director your paths. Psalm 3:5-6

As I write this, we are well into the ho-ho-holiday season. Thanksgiving is a distant memory, although it was less than two weeks ago. On the horizon, a family birthday, an exciting author event, a series of parties, a wedding, a baby shower, and finally, the holiest twenty-four hours of the year, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. All of this is packed into the few weeks before we reach 2025.

There haven’t been many quiet Christmases in my life. When I was growing up, my siblings were already raising families (as told in my recent book, Little Sister, A Family Memoir). After we moved to town, everyone that lived nearby came to our house for Christmas Eve. By then, Dad had to give up his precious lutefisk and oyster stew Christmas Eve supper. Mom still rolled out homemade lefsa. And she and the other women made their best holiday dishes, while the men brought the eggnog. There’d be hot German potato salad, ham, pressed chicken, sloppy Joes, and a wide assortment of salads and cookies.

One year I counted twelve adults and fourteen children in our small house. The adults talked, laughed and joked as they jostled babies on their laps. The other kids darted around the house playing games. At some point, the noise, warmth and cigarette smoke got to me. I slipped into my coat and out the front door.

The outside air was refreshingly cold and the sky, cloudless. The moon and stars stood out clearly, and the Milky Way formed a wide band across the sky. I began strolling up the street, my face turned toward the wonder of the night sky.

Little angels at our church two years ago.

It wasn’t hard to imagine the star of Bethlehem. It wasn’t hard to believe in the birth of a special baby over 2,000 years ago. It wasn’t hard to understand there was a God in heaven who watches over us. The words of a Christmas song soared in my heart. It came upon a midnight clear, That glorious song of old, From angels bending near the earth, To touch their harps of gold. Peace on the earth, good will to men, From heaven’s all-gracious King. The world in solemn stillness lay, To hear the angels sing.

For many years after that, I continued to slip out alone on Christmas Eve to view the night sky. The vast universe moving in its majesty brought the sacredness of Christmas home to my soul in a way that jolly activities never could.

I hope you will find a few moments to escape the busyness of the season and look up to find a message from the King of kings in the night sky.

It is the LORD who created the stars, the Pleiades and Orion.

He turns darkness into morning and day into night.

He draws up water from the oceans and pours it down as rain on the land.

The LORD is his name! Amos 5:8 NLT

Writing Update

Little Sister, A Family Memoir has been out for a couple months now. Thank you to all who promptly ordered copies! Since then, so many have phoned, emailed, messaged or sent notes. I can’t tell you how much your responses bless me.

Little Sister and my other books are gentle reads that make great Christmas gifts. If you hurry, it isn’t too late to order them from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or other online stores. Just go to those pages and look for Gayle Larson Schuck.

My last event of the season is Christmas Coffee with the Authors on December 14 in the Missouri River Room at Bismarck Public Library. Four other authors and I are celebrating our published book. If you are in the area, please stop by.

May your days be happy and bright, and filled with the love and peace

that can be found in our Savior!

I’m pleased to announce that Little Sister, a Family Memoir is available on Amazon and in select stores in Bismarck. To celebrate its publication, I recently spent some time in St. Paul with my nieces. One of them made the delicious Little Sister shortbread cookies shown on this page. It was such a thoughtful gift, I may have to get a book cookie cutter and learn to make them.

Little Sister is filled with personal stories that my siblings told about growing up in the 1930s and 40s, and also the stories I remember from the 1950s. Many of the tales were shared around my parents’ kitchen table over cups of Folgers. Not all of the stories are happy. Our family was faced with a series of crises when I was young. Writing gave me new perspective on our lives back then. All of the stories are set in an era that is gone.

Since my six siblings and their spouses have all passed on, their stories are being lost. But now, at least some of them will be preserved. I’m so grateful to the early readers who have given me feedback. They’ve said they can relate to the stories, that they laughed and sometimes shed a few tears while reading the book.

I’ve been working on Little Sister for the last couple years, but it’s been on my heart much longer than that. In fact, I found a notebook from the 1970s declaring that I would write the family’s story. I expected to do that fifty years ago, but life got in the way. More recently I used a childhood diary, begged information from my nieces and nephews, and perused historical documents to lay down the best story I could.

And then there were the photos. After sifting through hundreds of old photos, I wanted to include each one. In the end, a mere sixty are in the book. Little Sister is my memoir and the Larson family history set in our hometown of LaMoure, N.D. But it is also about living in the Heartland, and could be anyone’s story.

Please consider giving Little Sister as a gift to someone who might relate to growing up in the 1950s, in the Midwest, or who was the youngest in their family. To purchase copies go to: Little Sister: Schuck, Gayle Larson: 9781737257127: Amazon.com: Books. You can also contact me for signed copies.

Writing Update 

These are the events on my calendar:

• Nov. 10, Capital Christian Church in Bismarck, I’m speaking at the 50 Plus Thanksgiving potluck in the afternoon
• Nov. 19, Touchmark Vendor Show in Bismarck, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• November 30, 7^th Annual Stop n Shop Holiday Vendor Show, Bismarck Amvets
• December 14, Bismarck Public Library/ Five local authors present their recent books

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving doesn’t get much press these days. Wedged between Halloween candy and Christmas festivities, it’s become “Friendsgiving Day” or “Turkey Day.”

Let’s do what we can to preserve the original intent of this national holiday that is dedicated to thanking God for his favor and blessing on our nation. Here’s a sample prayer for your thanks-giving gathering:

God, we thank you for the blessing and joy of family. Thank you for those who are gathered with us today and those who are far away. May we all see the many ways you provide for us, comfort us and protect us. Thank you for the beauty that surrounds us and the bounty of food before us. In the mighty name of Jesus, amen.

“Oh, give thanks to the God of heaven! For His mercy endures forever.” Psalm 136:26 NKJ

I’m pleased to announce that my sixth book has been published.

I’ve been working on Little Sister, a Family Memoir for the last couple years, but in reality, it’s been on my heart much longer than that. As I wrote it, I pillaged a lifetime of notebooks and files in my office and found personal stories, bits of history and photos. Some of the book is funny, but some might make you cry. And, while it’s my memoir, it’s also the Larson family history set in my hometown of LaMoure, N.D.

To give you a taste of the book, I’m including an excerpt from Little Sister at the end of this blog post. I hope you’ll read it and give me some feedback. The book is only available on Amazon at this time. Look for it under Gayle Larson Schuck. Or contact me to order a signed copy, which will be available after Oct. 15.

Another reason I’m celebrating this fall is this is my 90^th blog post! The first one was published in 2015.  I remember when I first heard the word “blog,” which is short for Web Log. That was in the late 1990s and it didn’t seem like an idea that would fly far. Boy, was I wrong. Blogs have become a standard form of communication. Thank you to everyone for sticking with me and not hitting the unsubscribe button.

I had fun speaking at the Touchmark Ladies Night on Sept. 24. There was a nice turnout and so many old friends chose to attend. I talked about writing Little Sister and gave tips for writing their own memoirs. I hope to include those tips in a future blog post. We all have stories that should be recorded. I encourage you to also keep a journal, because today’s mundane events become tomorrow’s history. Thank you to my friend Connie who took this photo.

Writing Update 

These are the book signings that are planned at this time:

October 26, Wilton Fall Fling, Wilton, ND

November 30, 7^th Annual Stop n Shop Holiday Vendor Show, Bismarck Amvets

Date TBD Touchmark, Bismarck

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.” Isaiah 40:8

Now here is an excerpt from the introduction of Little Sister, A Family Memoir:

From the beginning, I had an inner sense of being set apart, like a yellow tulip in a field of red. I was one of the Larson kids, and yet I wasn’t. This understanding has always influenced my life. The set-apart feeling also added to my insecurities. 

As a child, I suspiciously thought I was adopted. What else would explain my strange place in the family? Finally, a copy of my birth certificate and pure logic put that idea to rest.

Being the baby of the family, and being born a generation later than my siblings, had advantages. They were old enough to have their own incomes, and they gave me lots of gifts. While the family had no luxuries, I had an abundance of toys.

Today, I see another benefit. The adults often forgot I was in the room. I listened to many private conversations as I quietly played with a toy. There wasn’t much else going on in my world. We had no television or computer. The nearest neighborhood children were two miles away. I memorized my surroundings, recorded discussions in my head, and internalized the emotional climate around me.

For a long time, I tried to catch up with my siblings. However, all six of them were married by the time I was ten. By then I was drinking coffee with my sisters and sisters-in-law, and listening to their grownup talk about money, kids and recipes. At that age, I already had eleven nieces and nephews, who were much closer to me in age. They dubbed me Auntie Gayle.

After my mother died in 1986, the rest of my siblings tussled over a cowbell they all wanted as a keepsake. I didn’t even remember the cowbell. I wanted the green sherbet dishes that meant nothing to the rest of them. I was the only one who knew what had become of the four-hundred-day clocks that Bob and Jerry sent home when they were stationed in Europe.

It wasn’t just our childhood memories that separated us. Our teen years were vastly different. They were products of the Depression and World War II. My sisters grew up obedient, practical, and responsible. My brothers were fun loving, but before their voices changed they went to work for neighbors to earn a little money. 

By comparison, I was a product of the promising fifties and rebellious sixties. To my siblings, if you dropped acid, you probably had an accident while working with a battery. By the time I came of age, it was a common term of the drug-laced counterculture of the sixties. I didn’t drop either one.

I almost caught up with my siblings. I married and had two sons before I was twenty years old. Our sons fit in well near the tail end of my parents’ twenty-three grandchildren.     

It wasn’t until I was in my thirties, that it became plain that I would always be a generation behind my siblings. There was no catching up. They were now in their fifties, becoming grandparents and dealing with health issues. I was still taking college classes.

If it was my lot in life to be set apart from my siblings, then it was my privilege to be their Little Sister. They were more than my sisters and brothers, they were my friends and heroes.

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Sister-Gayle-Larson-Schuck