Art In Life

Here is a little bit about the book. Decision to Love is the third book in my Sacred Vows series. Eight years have passed since Hope and Tony had their short-lived affair that rocked both of their marriages to the brink of destruction. Hope and James stayed together and Tony and his wife eventually divorced. Hope and James have one child and he goes off to college on a scholarship. They have high hopes for Jimmy. When he tells his parents he’s gay, their foundation is rocked and their lives implode once again. How does a boy who was raised in a Christian home and been saved, enjoyed reading his Bible every day, witnessed to friends, and even gotten baptized suddenly turn and go on an entirely different path than his parents anticipated?

Decision to Love follows a number of different characters who are facing challenges they never saw coming. Jimmy’s “coming out” is only one of the many issues that face Hope. Tony, her former lover, also has a long lost daughter who finds him, and he is overjoyed. But with his new relationship comes an entirely new set of challenges for him.

I wanted to write a book from a mother’s perspective where she is shocked into dealing with an issue she never anticipated. She wanted to be a grandmother and after her son’s disclosure she doesn’t see that happening. Her husband can’t take the stress and becomes so enraged that he has a fatal heart attack when Jimmy brings a boyfriend home with him. Hope is not sure what to do, but after losing her husband, the last thing she wants to do is lose her son, too. She tries to understand and support her son, but grieves the loss of his innocence and is conflicted about her grief over the loss of her husband since his death was caused by the stress he experienced from her son’s revelation.

I wanted to write part of the story from Jimmy’s perspective. How would it feel to know that his father despised gay people and his worst fear was realized the day Jimmy told him the truth about his attraction to men. There are so many internal and external conflicts that arise from this scenario. Jimmy thinks he is in love and rebels against his father, though he only hurts himself by giving his body to his boyfriend. Jimmy ends up feeling used and deceived and questions everything he believed about himself. Jimmy’s spiritual journey is something not seen in inspirational fiction, but this type of conflict happens in many families as I soon discovered from my research.

I also wanted to write a story from a father’s perspective. How it would feel for Tony to see the child he thought he’d lost forever and have her come back into his life only to discover that the man who had replaced him hurt his little girl and damaged her in ways that were unthinkable to Tony. He had a lot of making up to do and wondered if it would ever be enough. Then there is the fact that he also has a son who is still dealing with the loss of his mother when she was brutally murdered, and then the loss of his stepmother when his father divorces her. Tony is conflicted about getting involved in another relationship if it would hurt either of his children. He decides he must love them enough to do what is best for them even if it means he has to stay single.

Decision to Love explores a number of issues that people deal with in modern times, and have, in fact, dealt with for centuries, though on a different moral landscape. Decision to Love is the book of my heart because I go much deeper than I do with any of my other books. I hope you enjoy it, too.

An Unintentional Start Over

By Sherri Wilson Johnson

Have you ever wished you could start over? You’ve made so many mistakes in life that it seems you can’t get away from the reputation you’ve earned? Maybe it’s someone in your life that you can’t get away from and you want to pack your bags and leave. You want to leave your hectic lifestyle in the city for a peaceful existence in the country.

In my novel Song of the Meadowlark, Cora Buchanan is in that very spot. Her husband disappears one night after being arrested and bailed out for drug trafficking. In a flash, Cora’s life is turned upside down. The man she loves with all her heart is now a fugitive on the run. She waits a year and then decides to leave the town she lived in with him to return home to her parents to mend their broken relationship. Although she hopes Clark will return and be found not guilty, she can’t wait on him and must attempt to repair the broken bridges with her parents. She braces herself for the harsh words that will undoubtedly come over the fact that they were right in their opinion of Clark prior to her marriage to him. While traveling through Georgia on her way home to Florida, Cora’s car breaks down and leaves her stranded. This is where her unintentional do-over begins. At first she curses her old car but later realizes if it had not been for it she would not have found a new beginning.

Sometimes all it takes is a desire to start over to set the wheels in motion. The beauty in getting a fresh start is that you have the chance to seek forgiveness from those you have offended and you can forgive those who have wronged you even if they do not ask. To truly start over, a pruning happens in your life. You cut away the old in order for the new to grow. It’s a painful process, but once it occurs, you feel so grand.

When writing a novel, you have to do a lot of editing to get it right. It’s a painful process. Sometimes you have to cut away things that seem vital to the story because in reality they are not. Once you have a finished product, you will not miss those scenes because they weighed down the characters and kept them from being all they could be.

Not all starting over requires you to pack your bags and leave town nor does it always involve kicking someone out of your life. Sometimes all it takes is nothing more than a seed of desire, which germinates and becomes a lovely plant or tree with new life blossoming all over it. When we let God direct our paths and when our motives are pure, He will guide us where we never could go on our own. Psalm 23:3 (NIV) says: “He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” That is a promise that He will keep.

About Sherri: Sherri Wilson Johnson is the author of To Dance Once More and Song of the Meadowlark. She is from Georgia, has been married since 1988, and is a former homeschooling mom. She loves to write, read, eat ice cream, ride roller coasters and make people laugh. She loves Jesus and hopes to spread His love to the whole world through her writing.  Visit her at www.sherriwilsonjohnson.com

About Song of the Meadowlark:

When trusting others causes nothing but pain and rejection, and loving ends only in loss, what will it take to restore hope again? Shamed by the uncovered truth about her missing husband’s secret life, Cora Buchanan sets out on a road trip for home to mend her broken relationship with her parents. While traveling through Georgia—through a town experiencing missing and murdered women—her car breaks down leaving her stranded. Cora stays at the struggling Southern Hope Ranch until she can get back on the road. While there, a bond develops between Cora and little Susie O’Reilly, who unexpectedly fills a void in Cora’s heart. She finally journeys home but wants to return to Georgia to help save the ranch and to aid the family when the crimes hit too close to home. Will Rex O’Reilly, the bitter widower angry with God—and father to Susie—stand in her way?

FYI, for my Visionating Readers. I promised a post on Wednesday to continue our Visionating Series and I haven’t posted it yet. I will continue the series on Monday, May 14th so you will be able to read the next post in the series then.

Now for the Story Notebook…

If you’re a fiction writer, how do you organize your ideas for your story? I have a Story Notebook. This has been a lifesaver for me. I used scribble ideas on random pieces of paper or in various Word documents. This has proved to big a big time waster.  

This time around, I’m using a story notebook.

Since I’m in the very early stages of a story idea, I’m just pre-writing and brainstorming. I ask a lot of ‘what if?’ questions and allow myself the freedom to follow bunny trails as the Muse leads me. This has been a fun diversion for me since my days are pretty action packed with diaper changes and potty training, lol.

Eventually, I’ll gather my ideas into an organized system. I’m thinking I’ll include categories like:

*Story Structure: Include an overall sketch of main points in the story to help me get from point A to point B.

*Character Sketches: Motivations, History, etc.

*Setting: Pictures and Note on real or imagined settings

*Freewriting/Brainstorming: what if questions, dialogue snippets, etc.

*Scene Lists & Notes: more detailed than ‘story structure’ I’ll include different elements of a particular scene

I’m pretty sure that as I delve deeper into the work, I’ll have several notebooks filled with stuff. I’m hoping this will be much better than how I worked on my last novel which, although completed, took a lot of work to finish because my ideas were scattered everywhere.

If you’re a writer, how do you organize/plan out you stories?

People often ask me how I come up with ideas for my stories. In the case of “Love Notes”, my soon-to-be-released novel (my first Christian inspirational), it was a poem on a plate.

“As I was wandering over the green Not knowing where I went By chance I saw a pleasant scene The cottage of content”

The plate was on a shelf in an antique pine hutch at my Aunt Pat and Uncle Frank’s “cabin” in northern Minnesota. Each year, my husband and I spend a few days at Pat and Frank’s cabin, unwinding, relaxing, and trying to forget the stresses of our busy lives (me, the owner of a bed and breakfast and tea house, and he, a pastor).

Their “cabin” is really a cute three bedroom cottage, renovated and expanded by Frank and decorated with garage sale treasures and quilts by Pat. I was feeling pretty content when I first read the poem on the plate. We’d enjoyed a delicious dinner and a long walk in the woods. We’d poked around Ely and gone boating. The men were playing Scrabble. I was working on my needlepoint.

Life was good, nearly perfect at that moment. Still, I wished I could escape the craziness of my life and enjoy more laid-back, carefree days like the one we’d just had. When I saw the poem, my mind started whirling.

What if there was a man who had everything – fortune and fame – but nothing that really mattered? No family and definitely no love? What if he was lost and came upon the cottage of content? What if he had to give up what he thinks he wants to get what he really needs? And Tommy Lubinski of Tommy Love and the Love Notes was born.

The next step was to figure out who lived in the cottage of content. What if she had nothing – no money, no children, a husband who died tragically and left her to pay back a huge debt to the bank – but had a strong faith in God in spite of her dilemma? And thus, Hope Anderson was born.

The cottage of content turned out to be a cluster of rainbow-colored cottages – Daisy, Fern, Ivy, Bluebell, Violet, Rose, and Lily – at Rainbow Lake Lodge, the family resort Hope is trying to bring back to life. Snippets of information about living “up north” I picked up while chatting with Pat – frequent power outages due to a deteriorating electrical cable buried at the bottom of the lake, snowplows scraping “roads” on the lake so people can drive on the ice in the winter, getting stranded on a boat in the middle of the lake – became fodder for a plot. A story was born.

To me, life is all about second chances, whether dilapidated cabins become honeymoon cottages, a heartbroken widow finding love again, or a tortured soul discovering new life. I hope you’ll enjoy Tommy and Hope’s story in “Love Notes”.

By day, Sherrie Hansen Decker plays double duty as a pastor’s wife and the owner of a Victorian Bed & Breakfast and Tea House, The Blue Belle Inn. By night, she enjoys writing novels, quilting, playing the piano, renovating old houses and traveling. Sherrie and her husband live in Northern Iowa. You can contact Sherrie at http://sherriehansen.wordpress.com/

War is hell on the home front, too. Having been a Navy wife, and mother of a sailor, I understand the sentiment. But even my perception falls short of what many women and children deal with daily because the war is being fought in their hometown, or like in the Civil War, raging right over their house.

When Shadows Fall (the Shadow Series book 1) releases May 1. In my story, the nation is at war, The Civil War, and Rebekah Montgomery is caught right in the middle of it.

I give this following story as a reminder of what many of those who stayed behind had to deal with.

On September 17^, 1862 the Battle of Antietam was waged. It was the first battle to be fought on Union Soil. History dictates that it was the bloodiest, single day of battle during the Civil War. It was significant. Front page news.

That same day in September another occurrence took place that was tied directly to the war. It’s headline was printed lower on the page. It wasn’t blaring my any means, and the story behind it was just a clip in comparison to the story that followed the news of Antietam. But this story was no less significant. It told the story of the plight of many during the war, a reminder that the Civil War impacted everyone. Not everyone who incurred loss stepped on the battlefield.

It was crisp a Autumn morning just outside of Pittsburgh. Many of the workers, women and school aged girls headed to Lawrenceville’s Allegheny Arsenal, where they worked to build cartridges and other articles for the soldiers in the field.

Some 1000 plus workers had employment at the arsenal in 1862 most worked long hour days for 50 cents to $1.10 hourly rate. They worked to make a living and keep food on the table because their husbands and fathers were gone to war. Since it was payday most of them were probably at work. A vast majority of those who worked at the Arsenal were women and school-aged girls. They had to be of ‘character,’ which meant they were widows and orphans.

Working around barrels of black powder made conditions dangerous, so strict rules were enacted for the protection of the workers. Only enough powder for the day was to be in the lab. Empty boxes were not to be kept. Ammunition was to be placed in the magazines at night. Workers at the cartridge making tables were not to get up and leave their seats. (static electricity?). Workspaces were to be clean. Loose powder was swept out onto the stone roadway between buildings and gathered up into powder boxes and disposed of.

Around two that day, there was spark, a little spark, caused from a horseshoe or wagon wheel on the stone road, then a fire, followed by a series of explosions. So loud, the residences of nearby Pittsburg and Allegheny, thought they were under attack from Confederate forces. When the townspeople arrived on scene at the arsenal, however, they met a horrendous sight. The Pittsburgh Gazette would call it “an appalling sight.”

The roof over the cartridge assembly building had collapsed, and flames licked out from its remains. The windows and doors of the surrounding buildings had been blown out by the powerful blasts from exploding gunpowder.

Woman and children ran from the buildings, screaming. Their clothes tattered from the blast and burning on their bodies, or missing completely.  The fire was so hot it melted bodies to bone and white dust, only the steel bands from their hoops remained. Other bodies were badly riddled, some beyond recognition, by the explosion and ensuing shrapnel. Body parts were strewn over the area.

When it was over, and the smoke had cleared, 78 people mainly women and girls and some men and boys were dead. Unsung heroes of the war. History would say it was Pittsburgh’s bloodiest day. A stark reminder that the Civil War was far reaching and touched more lives than the men who stepped on the fields of the front.

To learn more about the Allegheny Arsenal Tragedy here are a couple sites.

http://www.historynet.com/explosion-at-the-allegheny-arsenal.htm

http://rgkellerman.blogspot.com/2011/02/allegheny-arsenal-explosion-brief.html

To learn more about me or connect on the web:

My website — http://www.tinapinson.com/

Twitter:@Tina_Pinson

Facebook– http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=754617103

Purchase my books at:

Desert Breeze Bookstore

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In the Manor of the Ghost – http://tiny.cc/we4ul

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Thank you for having me in your virtual home today! I am excited to share with you all about how Real Virtue came to be.

So there I was, flying cross-country, when the older gentleman to my right asks me if I have a second life.

“A second what?” came my reply.

He then continued to explain the details of his job of creating virtual possessions that gamers on interactive game sites can purchase for their avatars. One of them being the game site, Second Life.

“Seriously? People spend money on a fake character?” And apparently enough for this guy to make a living on.

So, I bet you can guess what I was doing for the remainder of my long flight … plotting out the story that would become Real Virtue.

My questions to myself were what would happen to someone who took their virtual life just a little too far? What would happen if that said someone lost all these possessions to, say, a villain bent on revenge? How far would someone go to protect their virtual life? Would they be willing to give up their real life for it? Just what would drive a person to do it? Who would this person be?

And since I write romance, my next question was just what kind of person would be their perfect match? And Voila! Mel Mesini and Jeremy Stiles were born.

It took me three months to write Real Virtue. The words flew from my fingertips. I had written short stories before, but this was my first completed full-length novel. It actually clocked in at 135,000 words. Yikes! I didn’t know anything about the publishing industry and how they had standards on word count. So, it might have taken me three months to write it, but then it took me another year to cut it and edit it to make it sellable.

After many contest placements, including the Georgia’s RWA prestigious Maggie contest, where it placed second, I got the “call” that Real Virtue had found a home at Soul Mate Publishing.

My shining moment through this whole process from sitting in that airline seat to sitting here and chatting with you today, was when someone asked me what I do for a living, and I smiled proudly and said, I’m a writer.

I write higher-purpose stories in high-speed worlds. As an inspirational author, speaker, children’s ministry director, and home-schooling mom, I love to share tales of love, from the greatest love story ever told to those sweet romantic stories of falling in-love.

I hope you enjoy Mel and Jeremy’s story as much as I loved telling it.

And please, let’s stay connected! I not only would love to hear what you thought, but would love to get to know you…

 “So then we are no longer strangers, but members of the household of God.”

                                                                    ~Ephesians 2:10

Contact Katy via one of these channels:

www.KatyLeeBooks.com

www.facebook.com/KatyLeeWriter

Twitter @KatyLeeBooks

About Real Virtue:

In a virtual reality game where she can fly, there’s someone aiming to take her down.

Mel Mesini is a New York City restaurateur and an avid, virtual reality world traveler. She’s risen above her misfit life and now bears a striking resemblance to her glamorous, gaming avatar. But her successful life—both online and in reality—takes a swerve the night her father is seriously injured in a hit-and-run. Mel is careened back to her judgmental hometown, where being the daughter of the town’s crazy lady had made her the outcast she was. To make matters worse, Officer Jeremy Stiles, the man whose harsh, rejecting words had cut her the deepest, is heading the investigation.

Jeremy knows he hurt Mel and attempts to make amends by finding her father’s assailant. When he realizes she’s the actual target, his plan for reconciliation turns to one of protection—whether she wants his help or not. What he wants is answers, especially about this online game she plays. Is it a harmless pastime as she says? Or is she using it to cover something up? As a faceless predator destroys the things that matter to her, Jeremy knows he’s running out of time before she loses the one thing that matters most—her real life.

Real Virtue can be purchased in e-book format at Amazon.com, BN.com, & SoulMatePublishing.com

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to drop quick note to tell you about the My Book Therapy Voices Ezine. It’s a great online ezine that gives tips on writing craft and the book industry. I’ve recently become the Featured Fiction columnist for the ezine. If you click on the link below, you’ll get to see the latest column which provides a list of the March-April new releases by the My Book Therapy Voices. (The ‘voices’ are members of the My Book Therapy online community.) Enjoy!

http://www.mybooktherapy.com/voices/?p=2290

Mackinac Island: The perfect romantic escape by Cara Putman

The website for Mackinac Island, Michigan, contains this fun question: “Is romance in your soul?”

On this small island nestled in Lake Huron in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, you can step back in time and tap into a slower pace that allows your inner romantic to escape. The island has the magical quality that I love for a book setting. Even though A Wedding Transpires on Mackinac Island is a contemporary novel, the moment you set foot on the island you sense an escape in the making.

It doesn’t take many moments on the ferry that transports you to the island to recognize that Mackinac is special. If you arrive from the St. Ignace’s port, one of the first places you’ll see as you approach is the Grand Hotel. This year the stately hotel is celebrating its 125^th anniversary. If you’ve never been, it’s an experience. After 6:30 you must be dressed for the evening…even if you’re on the verandah. If you don’t want that level of elegance and expense, then be sure to check out the numerous B&Bs. We’ve stayed at Haans 1830 Inn and loved the experience. A B&B can be more intimate and private and can afford more space that the Grand, but there is an air of romance and elegance that pervades the Grand from the red geraniums and sunny awnings to the incredibly dinner menu.

But there’s so much more than wonderful places to stay. Mackinac Island transports visitors back to a time that is slower-paced. Travel is by horse drawn carriage (what’s more romantic!), bike (a bike for two sounds pretty romantic to me) or by foot (stroll quaint streets? Sign me up!). While each of these has charm and appeal, the reality that peace permeates your time on the island because something key is missing. The noise of cars and the requirement to rush around.

The island is distinctive, too. The scent of fudge permeates the air. Fort Mackinac dominates part of the harbor view. And the sound of hoses hooves provides a soothing backdrop.

In my mind Mackinac is a perfect place to escape for a long weekend. It’s fun with children, but would be even better alone with the love of your life.  And if you can’t make the trip, then slip away in the pages of A Wedding Transpires on Mackinac Island.

Cara C. Putman lives in Indiana with her husband and four children. She’s an attorney and a teacher at her church as well as lecturer at Purdue. She has loved reading and writing from a young age and now realizes it was all training for writing books. She loves bringing history and romance to life.
 
An honors graduate of the University of Nebraska and George Mason University School of Law, Cara left small town Nebraska and headed to Washington, D.C., to launch her career in public policy.  

Cara is an author chasing hard after God as she lives a crazy life. She invites you to join her on that journey.

Links:

Website: http://www.caraputman.com

Blog: http://blog.caraputman.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/caraputman

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cara_putman

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/caraputman

A Wedding Transpires on Mackinac Island.

Attorney Alanna Stone vowed long ago to avoid Mackinac Island. Although it may seem the perfect place to heal, for Alanna it holds too many memories of a painful past.

But an exhausting high profile case and an urgent plea from her parents have brought Alanna home. Moving into the house next to Jonathan Covington doesn’t help her. Jonathan may have been her first love, but he was also her first lesson in betrayal. Now Alanna must protect her privacy and her heart. Then Secrets and a murder intersect, and she’s thrust into controversy again as tragedy turns public opinion against her and potentially her family.

For years, Jonathan has stubbornly resisted the urging of his family and friends to date, believing he’s already found the perfect woman. With Alanna’s return, he begins to wonder if he’s waited too long for someone who isn’t the right one after all.