New Release!

I have another book releasing! It's actually releasing on Dec 5th (and I am posting this on the 4th) but it's the news of the week and month!

The book is a themed devotional on the topic of prayer co-written by my childhood MK friend, Shirley Crowder and me. It makes the third in our prayer series with the others being Prayer: It's Not About You written by me, Study Guide on Prayer: A Companion to Prayer: It's Not About You written by Shirley. We are currently working on the fourth and final book in this series. It will be an anthology that we hope to have released by PixNPens in summer '18.

But the interesting thing about this new release is that it straddles two different book series. Shirley and I currently have a seasonal devotional that we hope to rework and also add two more to cover the  year. Those three, "Glimpses of God in the Winter/ Spring", "Glimpses of God in the Summer/Fall", "Glimpses of the Savior" which takes the reader through the end year holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year, and the book releasing tomorrow, Glimpses of Prayer will also make a four-book devotional series.

And as a special bonus, all of the Glimpses books will be illustrated by my talented daughter, Kristin Michael.

I will not always partner with Shirley nor she with me. I have other ideas in the works, some I hope to write alone, and one I am collaborating with someone other than Shirley. She has another devotional she just released that she co-wrote with someone other than me. So, we are not always writing partners butt we do work well together and have future plans for quite a few more collaborations. Meanwhile, we celebrate the latest one!

Here's a pictur of us a kids ... long ago in a faraway land. (Shirley is kneeling in the plaid dress, I am standing behind her, next to the really tall boy.)

 

New Release

It's release day!!!! YAY!! My debut novel based on the lives, love, and calling of my parents is now available on Amazon. Woo-hoo! Amazon will eventually combine the paperback and kindle but for now there are two links. Both can be found on my author page

The two characters in the book, Kyle and Ali, are very like my parents, Keith and Alice, and many of their adventures come straight from my parent's lives. However, Ali and Kyle also have adventures of their own which came from my imagination rather than stories I've heard my parents tell.

When I embarked on writing their story, it soon became clear to me that it would be easier to write and make a livelier read if wrote it as fiction. Had I chosen nonfiction, I would have had to make sure every little detail was absolutely as it happened. In fiction, I had more leeway ... and well, I took it. I combined some characters into one in a couple of places and added made-up adventures in some places.

I sent the manuscript to my mother, chapter by chapter as I wrote it over the past couple of years and she loved it! She once called me up and choking back tears, she told me how much she liked the way I was writing her and Daddy's story She added, "It didn't all happen this way, but it could have."

This book was written from my heart for my parents and it has their stamp of approval.

😊

It’s Here!!!!!

“Prayer moves the arm that moves the universe … Prayer is the greatest privilege man can have.”

This a quote cited in the book, “Soldiers of the Cross” by Kent D. Dollar. Dollar found this quote in a hand-written journal from a soldier in the civil war by the name of Edward Owings Guerrant. I don’t know whether this was Guerrant’s original thought or if he had heard someone else say it.

I found the book by Dollar about ten years ago in the gift shop of a civil war battle site just outside of Washington D. C. while visiting my son who lived in D. C. at the time. The book in general and this quote in specific grabbed me. I could just picture a soldier in the throes of war, sitting by himself contemplating prayer and writing about it in his journal.

I can relate. I may not have ever fought in a physical war but I have been in spiritual wars contemplating and journaling about prayer.

For four years, in fact, I did just that.

At the end of those four years I had a manuscript written on the topic of prayer. Then, it took another almost eight years working on turning that manuscript into a book. It garnered a special recognition along the way when it finaled in the 20011 Women of Faith” unpublished manuscript competition. But until now it had not made it into book form.

Today, at last, I am thrilled to announce that the book is finally out! It can be purchased in paperback and will be available in e-book form in a few more days.

Here’s the link: Prayer: It's Not About You