Yesterday I received a heartwarming voicemail from Jessie Haire Richards, a retired teacher. She and I grew up together in Spanaway until my family moved to Cle Elum when I was nine or ten.  We reconnected a couple years ago and I gave her copies of a couple of my books.

Jessie wanted to let me know that one of them, Settle for Best: Satisfy the Winner You Were Born to Be, was just the encouragement that one of her former students needed to “go for the gold” as a writer, despite the naysayers in her life.  She reported to me that the student (still a student in the Bethel School District) has just landed a two-book children’s book deal with a publisher, and she’s over the moon about it.

Isn’t that fantastic? That particular book has helped so many people, based on the feedback I continue to receive from it, three years after its first publication. Several networking partners have bought it (in multiples) to bless the people they know.  It’s my first-ever “motivational self-help” title, so now I’m thinking I need to write more of them!  Except for my 2001 DeForest Kelley title (which has been enhanced with additional anecdotes and images and is being re-issued in January 2016 under the new title DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal, a Harvest of Memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best), Settle for Best has received the highest ongoing accolades. I wish one of my other titles, Let No Day Dawn that the Animals Cannot Share, would get the same opportunity to engage eyeballs and hearts, because I’m immensely proud of it, but I’ll take what I can get, with endless gratitude!!!

One of the testimonials that came in about Settle for Best, early on, was this one from Cassandra Anthony-Lay, writing at Amazon:

The Book For Winners that Settle Only for the Best
I home-schooled my kids in their junior high and high school years. If “Settle for Best: Satisfy the Winner You Were Born to Be” was written then, there’s no doubt that I would have included it in my curriculum. Kristine M. Smith is authentic and passionate in her writing and her straightforward approach to finding one’s potential is, both, refreshing and encouraging. I highly recommend this book to all who are exploring a new career or course of study. You won’t be disappointed. I wasn’t.

This kind of feedback does my heart good–which leads me to another topic (briefly)…

If you enjoy the writing of living authors, please be sure to drop them a line and let them know.  I usually did, as a teenager, and I received wonderful responses from the actual pens and typewriters of Isaac Asimov, Richard Gehman, and other authors.  Authors truly appreciate receiving letters from their readers!

I absolutely treasured the letters I got back from the authors I reached out to thank for their books.

You probably will, too!

So do it!  No author lives forever… except in the magical words they leave behind. Don’t wait!

P.S. To clarify, Settle for Best: Satisfy the Winner You Were Born to Be isn’t just a book for wannabe writers. I wrote it as a book of motivational encouragement for anyone who feels their career ladder is leaning against the wrong wall, for long-term unemployed folks who are despairing of ever being hired again (hire yourself!), and for business owners and entrepreneurs who need occasional (or constant) reminders that what they’re doing is of significant value to the people they’re in business to help.  The book is loosely (and I do mean loosely!) based on Napoleon Hill’s seminal bestseller, Think and Grow Rich. In Settle for Best, I’ve identified the commonalities of successful, up-by-the-bootstraps, millionaire philanthropists (the commonalities that Hill discerned) and made each of them into a chapter so that others have a kind of blueprint to follow to attain their goals. Each chapter is about two pages in length and readers should be able to get through the entire tome in under three hours.

So if you know anyone who can benefit from Settle for Best, t’is the season to bless them!  And I hope you will!  I’d love to hear what comes of it, too!!!