We recently heard the exciting news that Mothering Heights has been named as a Silver  Medal recipient in the Adult Books – Inspirational/Motivational category in the U.S. based Mom’s Choice Awards.

The Mom’s Choice Awards recognizes authors, inventors, companies, parents and others for their efforts in creating quality family-friendly media, products and services. Parents, educators, librarians and retailers rely on MCA evaluations when selecting quality materials for children and families. The Mom’s Choice Awards® seal helps families and educators navigate the vast array of products and services and make informed decisions. For more information on the awards program and the honorees, visit MomsChoiceAwards.com

As a small side project to Mothering Heights Keitha has developed The Jonah Tree – a mother’s prayer journal.  The Jonah Tree is a fictional blog centred around the faith, prayer and family life of Francesca Copeland.  It tracks the ups and downs of Francesca’s life as a wife, mother and friend as seen through her conversations with God in her prayer journal.  The Jonah Tree captures some of the delights and frustrations of motherhood and echoes some of the themes found in Mothering Heights.

This is a serialized story that started on June 1st and will run for a year with a new posting (almost!) daily.  If you would like to tune in to the next exciting episode visit - www.motheringheights.org/journal

Mainly Music is an organisation started in New Zealand in 1990 as a fun music group for parents or caregivers to enjoy together with their young child. Throughout the morning, children develop gross and fine motor skills, language, imagination, maths and pre-reading skills as well as socialise with others.  Each mainly music is associated with and is run by volunteers from a local church. Children are introduced to music, creativity and more, plus families given a chance to think about the God-part of life.  There are now hundreds of mainly music groups throughout Australasia – and mainly music is going global. Visit – www.mainlymusic.org.nz

As part of our ‘set out and see’ journey Susan and Keitha have had a chance to play a small role with Mothering Heights. Each year mainly music hold a series of conferences in the four main centres in New Zealand, and this year Mothering Heights was one of the featured books at the conferences. Keitha got the opportunity to attend the Auckland conference on May 16th and had a great time meeting mothers and signing books.

Although Mothering Heights was released in the United States towards the middle of April 2009 the book was not available in New Zealand for several weeks after this. The official book launch was held on Saturday May 9th at the Rawene Centre in Auckland and was attended by 95 people.

Sadly, with Susan currently living in England, she was not one of them!  However a number of Susan’s family were on hand to help celebrate the release of the book on the eve of Mother’s Day.  Susan’s daughter, Ruth Brereton Rogers (pictured : top left) gave a delightful speech on Susan’s behalf that went some way to making up for Susan’s absence.

Bernard Brown, law lecturer, author, and organising member for the New Zealand Society of Authors was also on hand to give his congratulations and endorsement to the book.  In his speech Bernard admitted to being far from the target audience for the book, but in spite of this had read the book twice and had much to say in its praise.  Bernard (pictured : top middle) is a long-standing friend of Keitha’s and has given her much writing encouragement over the years so it was great to have him involved on the night.

The evening was a magical one for Keitha (pictured : top right) who has been writing for many years without publishing success (until now!).  It gave her the opportunity to share the blessing of Mothering Heights with family and friends and to give thanks to all those who had been inspirational in its writing – especially Susan and the women who shared their stories as part of the book.

Our road to see Mothering Heights come to publication has taken Keitha and Susan on quite a journey.  It all began towards the beginning of 2006 when Keitha got inspired to write a book for mothers, and approached Susan to see whether she would like to be involved.  The book was written and honed over a six-month period during that year, a time that Susan and Keitha both look back on with much fondness.

Once the book was ‘finished’ and in a submittable state, we then set about the task of looking for a publisher.  As those in the book industry will tell you, this is no small or easy task.  However, Susan and Keitha were both encouraged by the idea of ‘set out and see’ following the biblical example of moving forward as God leads without necessarily knowing or understanding the final destination.

This process led us to find a submission service based in the United States called ‘Writer’s Edge’ who offer a manuscript assessment and either send you a report to tell you what needs fixing, or if all is well, put you on a report that is sent to 75 different Christian publishers in the States.  Mothering Heights passed the assessment process with flying colours (a huge blessing and relief!) and then we waited to see if any of those 75 publishers might be interested.

We were approached by three different publishers and ended up signing with Judson Press (publishers for the American Baptist Churches USA) in July 2008.  Mothering Heights then went through an eight-month editorial process before being released in the States in April 2009.

The journey to publication has had its share of ups and downs but has been a real blessing to both Keitha and Susan.  With the release of the book we continue to have the same ‘set out and see’ philosophy and look forward to seeing where the journey takes us next!