Favorite Things from Favorite Authors: Vannetta Chapman

ONE of my favorite things is the piano. I've been playing since I was young, as you can see from this picture. I've always had a piano in my home, except for a brief time when I was finishing my college degree and living in campus housing--then I used the practice pianos reserved for the music majors. I was NOT a music major. I like to think piano balances my brain. It feels like it does, though some would argue whether that's even possible!

 

A Promise for Miriam, the first book in a brand-new romantic series from popular author Vannetta Chapman, introduces the Amish community of Pebble Creek and some of the kind, caring people there. As they face challenges to their community from the English world, they come together to reach out to their non-Amish neighbors while still preserving their cherished Plain ways. 

Amish schoolteacher Miriam King loves her students. At 26, most women her age are married with children of their own, but she hasn’t yet met anyone who can convince her to give up the Plain school that sits along the banks of Pebble Creek. Then newcomer Gabriel Yoder steps into her life, bringing his daughter, an air of mystery, and challenges Miriam has never faced before. 

Will Gabe be able to let go of the past that haunts him? He thinks he just wants to be left alone, but the loving and warm community he and his daughter have moved to has other plans for him. After a near tragedy is averted, he hesitantly returns offers of help and friendship, and he discovers he can make a difference to the people of Pebble Creek—and maybe find love again.

From Harvest House: http://harvesthousepublishers.com/book/a-promise-for-miriam-2012/

 

Vannetta Chapman writes inspirational fiction full of grace. She has published over one hundred articles in Christian family magazines, receiving more than two dozen awards from Romance Writers of America chapter groups. She discovered her love for the Amish while researching her grandfather’s birthplace of Albion, Pennsylvania. Her first novel, A Simple Amish Christmas, quickly became a bestseller. She now writes Amish fiction for Abingdon Press, Zondervan, and Harvest House. Chapman lives in the Texas hill country with her husband.

For more information, visit her at

webpage -- www.VannettaChapman.com

blog -- http://vannettachapman.wordpress.com

facebook -- www.facebook.com/VannettaChapmanBooks, and

pinterest -- http://pinterest.com/vannettachapman

 

Favorite Things from Favorite Authors: Lisa Harris

It's probably a good thing that I'm not big on shopping considering that the nearest mall is about seven hours away from our house. But living in a tropical country with year round sun, I have come to enjoy one fun fashion accessory--flip flops. When I was back in the US earlier this year, I came across these cute flip flops and had to buy them. And for some crazy reason, these flip flops make me smile every time I wear them. 

LISA HARRIS is a Christy Award finalist and the winner of the Best Inspirational Suspense Novel for 2011 from Romantic Times. She has over twenty novels and novella collections in print. She and her family have spent over eight years living as missionaries in Africa where she homeschools, leads a women’s group, and runs a non-profit organization that works alongside their church-planting ministry. The ECHO Project works in southern Africa promoting Education, Compassion, Health, and Opportunity and is a way for her to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves…the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.” (Proverbs 31:8)
 
When she’s not working she loves hanging out with her family, cooking different ethnic dishes, photography, and heading into the African bush on safari.  For more information about her books and life in Africa visit her website at www.lisaharriswrites.com or her blog at http://myblogintheheartofafrica.blogspot.com. For more information about The ECHO Project, please visit www.theECHOproject.org.

 



Have a wonderful Fourth of July!

Blessings!

June 27/PM/Mystery Clue

Favorite Things from Favorite Authors: Kellie Coates Gilbert

This is AVA, my 2.7 pound Yorkie. After years in a household of men (my husband and I raised two boys), I'd had about as much masculine as I could take. I needed a tiny girl. I needed to be able to comb her hair and place pink bows and cuddle.

PRINCESS AVA SWEETPEA (her nickname) often sits cuddled in my lap while I'm writing. Makes me stretch my arms a bit to reach the keyboard, but worth the effort.

Wouldn't you agree?

Barrie Graeber has two great kids, a loving husband, and a respected job as a high school counselor in her close-knit community. Without warning, everything unravels when her teenage daughter, Pearl, is betrayed by friends and lashes out.

Nothing prepares this mother for the helplessness that follows when her attempts to steer her daughter back on course fail and Pearl shuts her out . . . or when she discovers the unthinkable about her nemesis, the football coach.

Emotionally riveting and profoundly moving, MOTHER OF PEARL brings us into the heart of a mother bound by an incredible burden, who ultimately finds she must recognize her own vulnerability and learn to trust in something much bigger.

A former legal investigator and trial paralegal, KELLIE COATES GILBERT writes with a sympathetic, intimate knowledge of how people react under pressure. She writes about messy lives…and eternal hope.

www.kelliecoatesgilbert.com

In the Line of Duty

 Public domain

On May 14^th, 2012, the FBI released “preliminary statistics for law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty for 2011.”*  According to the stats,  “72 of our nation’s law enforcement officers were feloniously killed."  The numbers are broken down by region, type of weapon, ambush or conducting an investigation, etc.

Law enforcement officers are heroes--willing to risk their lives for the greater good. For people they love and people they don’t. For their country. 

Despite rigorous planning and significant safety precautions, sometimes the unthinkable happens. As an author, I want to write stories that honor heroes and bring to light what these men and women face every day. And when the unthinkable occurs, what happens to the people they leave behind?

In A Love Remembered, Special Agent Jonas Love was in charge when a member of his team was killed. All he ever wanted was to do something right with his life. Be a hero. 

Not only are lives on the line, but hearts are on the line as well.   

Oregon Outback

Four rough and tumble brothers find themselves in the midst of big trouble in life and love. FBI agent Jonas Love struggles to keep a promise to protect his old flame, Darcy Nichols. Rancher Carver Love finds it hard to focus on rustlers with female sheriff Sheridan Hall so near. The fearless Lucas Love suddenly finds courage waning when it comes to beautiful bookkeeper Avery Summers. Justin Love tracks down a fugitive a little too close to home—and lodge-keeper Darrow Kincaid. Will these brothers find a way to keep their loves safe?

Available in bookstores on July 1.

Pre-order your copy today.

*  http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-releases-2011-preliminary-statistics-for-law-enforcement-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty

Two for One Special Today

I'm blogging on two great blogs today! I look forward to seeing you there.

Christians Read:  All About Words and Weddings and Dreams. http://christiansread.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/all-about-words-and-weddings-and-dreams-by-elizabeth-goddard/

Seekerville: The Well-Trained Author: SuperCharge Your Brain to Generate Great Ideas: http://www.seekerville.blogspot.com/2012/06/well-trained-author-supercharge-your.html

Favorite Things from Favorite Authors: Trish Perry

 

For as long as I can remember, my father has been totally floored by how cute babies and toddlers are. His remark upon seeing a child behaving adorably was always the same: “God love him!” But the way he said it was accented with a laugh and such emphasis that it sounded more like “Gyod love ‘im!”

 I have become my father. I mean, in this respect, I am now predictable. My own kids—young adults at this point—get a kick out of how passionately I react to little kids. Maybe it’s a grandparent gene that lies dormant until a certain age. But I can’t just walk by a delightful kid. I have to stop and absorb the delightfulness. I have to point out the cuteness to anyone willing to humor me. My son laughs at me while I watch the chubby toddler across the street playing hockey with a stick twice his height. How can people take things like that for granted? Little kids, on the whole, are one of my favorite “things.”

 

So it was with pleasure that I accepted the offer to write Labor of Love for the novella collection, The Midwife’s Legacy. Yes, the story is more about adults than it is about children. But the plot definitely leans upon the blessings children bring to our lives. Kendra Silverstone, my heroine, has no children of her own yet. But her entire career is centered on helping others add to their families in as gentle and healthy a way possible. When an aggressive adversary thwarts her efforts, she perseveres with babies in mind.

Personally, I was never very good at giving birth, and I probably wouldn’t have done very well with a midwife unless she was willing to provide anesthesia of some kind. But only salvation has brought more joy to my life than the two kids and two grandkids God has given me so far. And I think I see a bit of my own babies in all of the children I see around me. 

I may not say it out loud, but I certainly hear it in my head. “God love ‘em!”



About the collection: Four brave women fight against the outside elements, the odds, and those who oppose them as they help to bring new life into the world and also find new love. In this generational, which starts in the Midwest and leads to the Willamette Valley of Oregon, a journal with messages of faith and encouragement in the calling of midwifery is a key factor, written in the mid 1800s by the first midwife of the family, Adele, and added to through the early years, as her descendants also remark on what has helped them. As each story unfolds, the journal provides encouragement to help these women as they embark on their own adventures as midwives, each nugget of wise counsel and Godly wisdom aiding them with what they are going through in their personal lives.
 

About Labor of Love: Kendra Silverstone has been certain of her calling to be a midwife as long as she can remember. Whether aiding in childbirth at the Willamette Valley Hospital Center or in the privacy of a family home, she feels God's loving hand in her work. But when a local doctor campaigns aggressively against midwifery at the same time one of Kendra's mothers experiences the loss of her newborn, she finds her confidence shaken. She starts to reconsider her life's work and question her reading of God's guidance. Her blossoming romance with carpenter Steven Nichols provides a bright light in her circumstances, not only because of his supportive, nurturing love, but because of the journal he finds while repairing and refinishing an antique desk passed down to Kendra through the years. Will the guidance and blessings provided through her ancestors' words be enough to convince Kendra of God's will for her life?

My fellow authors in this exciting collection are Jane Kirkpatrick, Rhonda Gibson, and Pamela Griffin. 

For more about Trish Perry, visit her website: www.trishperry.com


Blessings!