Author Leila Meacham, in yellow, delighted residents during her visit to the community on October 29.

Residents of Morningside at The Meadows had the wonderful privilege of meeting bestselling author Leila Meacham during her visit to the community on Monday, October 29.

Ms. Meacham, the bestselling author of Roses, Somerset, and Tumbleweeds, captivated the audience as she shared the story of how she began writing her first bestseller at the age of 65.

“I had volunteered for everything under the sun, I had served in the session of our church, and I really was tired,” she said. “One morning I looked up (at God) and said to him, ‘you’ve got to help me out here, you’ve got to tell me what I’ve got to do with the rest of my life.’ Well, He said to me, ‘I want you to write a book.’ That was the last thing I wanted to do… I put forth so many arguments, and He ignored them all. He said, ‘If you write this book, I will do the rest.”

Ms. Meacham also read aloud the prologue of her most recent book Titans, a drama set in the early 1900s. She answered residents’ questions, and even shared the synopsis of her new book coming in 2019.

She concluded her presentation with this valuable piece of advice: “It doesn’t matter how old you are, it doesn’t matter how young you are… if you want to write a book, just do it!”