Hello Sweet Readers!
Hey, I hope everyone is having a great week!
You just have a few days to enter to win one of the $50 egift cards I’m giving away to celebrate the release of the 50th Dyess/Gussman audio. Listen to Always with You (at least the first chapter) HERE and then click HERE and tell me your favorite thing about it. I’ll choose winners Thursday night, so enter before then!
I am almost finished writing Cowboy Stealing My Heart. I’ll be typing The End today or tomorrow, hopefully.
But, today you can be entertained by the fun and funny Jay Dyess – if you need a smile or if you just love to laugh, check out his preview below. I love love love the live previews, and it’s always fun to see what he’s wearing, but today his introduction is absolutely awesome – he’ll have you laughing. Watch it, don’t forget to leave a comment and give it a thumbs up, too!
You can scroll on down for a farm story from a couple of years ago, and I’ll be back on Friday with another FREE audio and some $50 egift card winners!
Laugh with Jay’s introduction and watch him perform the preview HERE!
An energetic philanthropist and a quiet mechanic are thrown together through a car accident. But the mechanic has a secret and the philanthropist has a fiancé. When the secret is exposed, the philanthropist must make a choice: will she choose love over money?
Kelly Irwin just wants to help children like she used to be—underprivileged, hungry, and with a family so mixed up she wasn’t sure who she really belonged to. None of them wanted the responsibility to raise her. She’s convinced herself that she loves her fiancé and that they’ll make a great team.
Tough Baxter is trying to establish his business and keep his side job a secret. After all, most people don’t think that a man who can barely string two sentences together in the presence of a woman would make a very good relationship advice columnist. Then Kelly moves her children’s center next door to his garage and suddenly not only are his plans to expand his shop wrecked, but his secret is in danger of being exposed.
After spending time with Tough working and helping kids, Kelly can’t deny the attraction she feels for the soft-spoken mechanic. But she has a fiancé and a life plan which doesn’t include Tough, so she turns to the advice columnist all of America is writing to. Will he tell her to follow her heart or pursue her dream?
SNUGGLE up with SWEET romance that will WARM your heart and CURL your toes.
Reviews for Forever With You:
★★★★★ “So I have just found Jessie’s books in the last two weeks and let me tell you I have been on a binge ever since. I have read all the books in this series so far and I’m so looking forward to more.” – Tiffany
★★★★★ “Jessie Gussman writes character-driven stories with all the feels. I held my breath while reading a good portion of this book and kept having to remind myself not to hold my eReader too tightly.” – Charlene
★★★★★ “I love the development of the characters and the overall story. As usual Jesse has a new twist on romance and this one was a winner for me. She writes with humor and insight and I love how the relationship between Tough and Kelly grows.” – swavelykid
★★★★★ “This was a great read. Can’t wait now to order the third book. It was very good from start to finish. I didn’t want it to end.” – Ida
★★★★★ “Humorous, interesting romance with great characters that have you hoping for the best for them. I love books where you get involved and can’t wait for the end to see if everything works out and this was one like that for me.” – Pam
Coming Home to Sweet Water Book #3 Releasing on 7/12!
Five divorces, three boys, one snowstorm and two people who want to be anywhere other than where they are. Only God could use it all to make a beautiful love story.
Bellamy Levine is the highest paid actress in Hollywood, but she just inked her name on her fifth divorce settlement and her personal life is in shambles. Again.
She vows it’s for the last time.
That’s why she’s rented the entire vacation spot in rural North Dakota and intends to spend the holidays alone, figuring out what she’s going to do with her life.
Calhaun Powers was blindsided when an old classmate rolls into Sweet Water claiming the oldest of her three boys is his. He knows for a fact the kid isn’t his son, but he finds himself watching all three kids while he renovates vacation houses for his neighbor.
God seems to be testing him in a strange way when he ends up snowed in with Hollywood’s biggest movie star – five times divorced – and three boys who aren’t his, but who need a dad…and a mom.
Can two people who come from completely different worlds find common ground and build a family together?
Jessie here with a farm story from two years ago:
I know a lot of you know this – when you grow up in a farming community, you always know people who have been in accidents – caught in the PTO, crushed when a tractor rolled, fall down the silo or into the manure pit…danger is a part of life and no matter how “safe” you make things you can’t escape it.
Honestly, in some ways, I feel like life really should be that way. The closer you live to death, the more aware you are of God and your dependence on Him. Seems like today we want to replace “God” with government and a bunch of regulations to go along with it. I think sometimes we fall for the fallacy that there is a way to make everything “safe.”
Anyway, my sister-in-law’s father – a dairy farmer – was killed when his sweatshirt tie got caught in the silo unloader. It strangled him.
Her sister’s father-in-law died after a bull crushed him against the barnyard fence.
Not to be depressing – I think you all know I like to find the humor in what can often be a thankless and dirty job – but there’s always danger.
We have two bulls. One of them weighs about a ton. He’s started to put his head down and I’ve been begging Watson for months to get rid of him. He’s a Penn State bull – Jesse James stock and good. Still. I don’t care how good his genetics are, he’s not worth a life.
Watson grew up in a truck driving family. He doesn’t understand that you don’t get a warning. They just snap. One day they’re fine, and the next day someone’s dead.
Anyway, we weren’t vaccinating the bulls, but they had to be separated from the herd. That was my job. : )
The sooner the better, actually, because I don’t like working around them.
They both came into the pen with the second half of the herd. These were the cows that were a little harder. The ones that didn’t want to go where we wanted them to.
We had eight in the chute. I’d wormed them all, and the guys were finishing up the vaccinations and had a few to tag. I looked up and noticed that both bulls were right by the outside gate.
So, I put my wormer cup down, slipped out between the rails, took my stick and went to get those bulls out.
I opened the gate, slipped around them, waved my stick off to the side because you never face a bull head-on (hard and fast rule, never, never break it) and both bulls moseyed out – like they’d decided to do it themselves and I had nothing to do with it – to the pasture.
Honestly, I’d much rather work alone than with someone who’s afraid or who doesn’t know cattle. I don’t mean that to be arrogant, but I think you all know what I’m saying. It’s safer that way.
Anyway, I slipped through the boards into the holding pen and got in the back of the cows that were there, next to the back fence, as the guys let the eight out of the chute. This is what I’d done each time, moving the cattle slowly toward the chute, so when the gate opened, they’d walk in.
This time – I’m not sure if DJ thought I wasn’t there, or if he just decided to help – but he walked out the chute and toward the cattle.
There were about twenty cattle in the holding pen. They’d all been heading toward the chute, but with DJ coming out of it, it scared them and they started pushing back.
Toward me.
Now, I’d gotten pushed around some, that’s normal, but cattle that are milling around and pushing you are different than cattle that are scared and pushing you.
These cattle were the harder ones anyway and DJ had scared them. They moved back, pushing against each other and me, not quite fully panicked, shoving back until there was no room left and I was trapped, smashed against the fence and the twenty scared cows in front of me.
I suppose it’s normal at a time like that, that I would think of the farmer in Martinsburg that I’d told you about earlier who’d been crushed against the fence.
I had time to wonder if people would be talking about me as “that woman who was crushed against the fence.” Funny the things you have time to think of when something like that is happening, isn’t it?
They were pressing against me too hard for me to climb up – just one rung and it would have been high enough to get my chest up. As it was, I couldn’t breathe.
I realized later that I got both feet stepped on- I always wear sneakers when I’m working with cattle, because I don’t plan to get stepped on, and they let me move as quickly as I need to, unlike boots – and I got kicked a couple of times, but at the time, the only thing I was really concerned about was being able to breathe.
I like breathing. : )
DJ stood in front of the herd of cattle, right in the middle, which, of course, kept them from moving either direction and kept them wanting to crowd the fence even more.
*sigh*
I think, since I wasn’t saying anything, DJ didn’t know my situation, and honestly, I’m not sure he’d have known what to do if he did.
I’ve always been quiet. I hate drawing attention to myself. I know that’s weird, coming from someone who’s writing a newsletter to thousands of people. But it’s true. Watson and I are actually really compatible this way, because he loves attention and I love directing it toward him.
Anyway, that kind of personality is kind of a draw back in a situation like the one I was in.
Finally, I was able to get one hand up, make eye contact with DJ and point. I ground out, “Move.” Thankfully he understood and moved off in the direction I pointed, which enabled the cattle to disperse to the other side.
Some time later – seconds which felt like years – the cow that was pinning my chest to the fence moved – painfully for me, since she kind of slid off me – and I was able to turn and take a step and get a foot on the bottom board, lifting up just before another cow slammed into my legs and hips. That was fine. I could breathe. : )
It was another hour or so until we were done with vaccinations and worming, then we loaded the weaned calves in the trailer. Dr. C left, DJ’s ride came for him and Watson and the two little girls took off for PA.
That left Julia and I alone on the farm in Virginia as the sun went down.
I’ll be honest, most of the time after a day like that – one full of physical labor, tough and hard – I love sitting on the front porch step and watching the day slowly fade into soft oranges until darkness settles down, warm and good.
I always feel a deep sense of gratitude for being able to do what American farmers have done for decades, helping to feed a nation, that you’re tired, but a country is going to eat, because of you and your neighbors and the people you know and love who are staring at the same sky, feeling the same sense of satisfaction, of using my hands to do my part, it’s a satisfying peace to rest when you’re weary knowing you’ve worked hard and been successful and industrious. Peace and muted joy warming your chest in the best kind of way (it’s the way my stomach feels after eating a nice, big helping of eggplant parmesan. It makes my stomach happy, nice and full and satisfied. : )
We lose electricity here a lot and that day I walked (limped) to the house, just praying the lights stayed on long enough for me to get a hot shower.
For a couple of days, I couldn’t figure out why it hurt to sit, to walk, even to lie down. After I’d been pinned – it hurt and honestly was a little scary to not be able to breathe – but, like I said earlier, when I was a kid, unless you were unconscious, you kept working. It really does take your mind off stuff.
So much so, that it wasn’t until several days later – Watson was back and asked if my boyfriend was beating me. I replied that we didn’t have that kind of relationship, but then I figured I ought to see what he was talking about. I did some contortions in front of the mirror and realized that my entire back side (and areas of my front I hadn’t paid attention to, including the tops of my feet) was pretty much any color from a deep black to a nice, pretty indigo blue. No wonder the pain got worse when I laid down and I had trouble finding a comfortable way to sleep at night. Ha. Sometimes I can be kinda dense. But, I healed up just fine. Alright, thanks so much for spending time with me today! Hugs and love, Jessie