God-Winks - Wrapping It All Up!
Hello Gentle Readers and Happy New Year! I hope the holidays were good to you.
At BunnBunnBooks we had a great holiday season and broke our first 100 sales in the process! We were on the road at several vendor events throughout the holiday season and being out in the community was great! We ended the year on a note of sickness but everyone is back up and functioning. All of the excitement, and sickness, unfortunately delayed the final installment of God-winks. For those of you still wondering how this story ends…Today we will take the final step of the journey.
Recap:
My late uncle, my mother's brother, was a Catholic priest. When I was a little girl sometime in the 1980’s, he gave me a doll as a gift. In 1999, during my senior year of high school, I wrote the very first draft of “The Tiniest Angel’s Gift”. During Christmas time my sister had displayed her manger scene. On a platform above the manger sat two porcelain angels. One of those angels caught my eye. She was kneeling with one arm aloft. What stood out to me was that one of the glowing twinkle tree lights had dropped from its branch and was resting in the angel’s upturned palm. This scene created an image of the angel holding a star in the sky above the manger. The inspiration for “The Tiniest Angel’s Gift” took root. I held on to it, thinking…maybe one day. In 2012 I was working my 10th year as a 4th grade Language Arts teacher. A new teacher was hired on who, among many other talents, happened to have a penchant for helping animals, particularly dogs. We became friends. While I was on maternity leave my friend sent a copy of the book which featured her two disabled dogs to my daughter. One day in 2022 I turned that book to the back to see who the publisher was. The book was published by Orison Publishers, Inc. under their imprint Little Blessings.
Have you been curious where all these ramblings have been headed? Are you interested to know how the doll, the angel, the publisher and “The Tiniest Angel’s Gift” are all intertwined? Today I will tell you…
Recently, during a regular visit to my mother’s house I found myself in her basement looking for a toy for my daughter. I was digging through a few boxes of things I had left behind from my childhood when I came across one filled with stuffed animals. I opened it and began going through them choosing some to keep and some to donate. Near the bottom of that box I found, wrapped in tissue paper, the doll from the beginning of this story. Instantly the memory of receiving her came back to me. Curious to know more about her I fired up the Google machine and started entering different terms and various search criteria. Eventually after a few minutes of searching and scrolling I found her. In 1988 Kenner Toys released a line of 5 dolls called "Special Blessings". The one I was given was one of them. I sat there dumbfounded and stunned staring at the search result. Guess what her name is. Go ahead and guess. Do you see where this is going? Yes, you’re right. Her name is Christina. Guess what her “last name” could be considered to be? Right again. It’s Blessing. Guess who that doll looks just like? Right again…She looks just like Ekaterina Mironova’s rendering of the main character in “The Tiniest Angel’s Gift”, the little angel, Christina.
So now we have come to a little timeline filled with God-winks.
1988 - I receive a doll named Christina Blessing.
1999 - (notice the double digits there? 88 and 99) I see a scene with an angel which inspires the story “The Tiniest Angel’s Gift” to more or less write itself.
2012 - I meet my friend.
2022 - (double digits again) I find the publisher’s name, Marsha Blessing, and the Orison imprint “Little Blessings” and begin working on the book.
2024 – I find the Christina Blessing doll in a box well AFTER Ekaterina Mironova has already created the main character, Christina, for my story and lo and behold she looks just like that doll. Take a look at the photo to see what I mean! The similarity is uncanny!
I hope you have enjoyed reading about this journey as much as I have enjoyed being on it and sharing it with you. The path to publication has been just full of little "God winks" with so many crisscrossing lines across the years. Maybe it was meant to be? What do you think?
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Have you read “The Tiniest Angel’s Gift”? I am always interested in hearing reader feedback. If you have time to spare, a short review is greatly appreciated. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews can also be left on www.bunnbunnbooks.com. Your comments are important to me and will help other readers decide whether to read the book too.
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