Serenity

The Challenge:

1. read a book with a color in EITHER the title or the author’s name
Something Blue (*need to order)

2. read a book with a person’s name in the title
Sweet Caroline

3. read a book with the word house, or home, or cottage in the title (only one book with either of those words in the title)
Dakota Home

4. read a book with the word family, brother, or sister in the title (again, only one book with either of those words in the title)
The Love Of His Brother (*need to order)

5. read a book with some type of water in the title -this could be ocean, lake, pond, river, rain, etc.
Trouble The Water

When I was born, I was born with a birth defect — a pulled ligiment in my knee. I spent the first 6 weeks of my life with a cast on my leg. My mom wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to walk normally, but with the cast and physical therapy, I was able to grow up with 2 normal legs. I learned to walk and run and for the most part, didn’t display any signs of having something wrong at birth. One thing that I wasn’t able to do was sit Indian style, when we would all sit around in a circle to play games at recess. As an adult that would include sitting yoga position. But, all in all, that is a small price to pay for birth defect when you were born in the ‘50. The medical field has come a long way and many things that seem horrendous when a child are born can be fixed and the child goes on to live a happy and normal life. I was very blessed !

I stayed home from work today. I wasn’t terribly sick, but I didn’t feel good. My heart was out of rhythm more than it normally is, and made my head feel funny. I slept most of the morning, in a hard deep sleep, fill with dreams. I know part of the problem is that I have just let things spiral out of control, and I feel like I am ready to explode, physically. If there was just some way to suck the fat out! and make all the problems with being overweight go away … I would like to think that would solve all my problems. But, taking a realistic point of view here, I could lose the weight and be skinny, get rid of all the physical problems, but if I don’t address the emotional reasons here for doing what I seem to keep doing, its always going to be an on going battle. I’m just tired of being like this. Of being depressed, of be in pain all the time, basing my life of what I can and can’t do. Things have to change. But where do I start? it is all so overwhelming — and when I get overwhelmed, I tend to retreat and bury my head in the sand and try to make the problem at hand go away that way. Obviously, that isn’t working for me. I have to start somewhere, take small steps, and turn it around. We are in serious trouble here.

I have an iPod, a laptop, my Explorer has a CD player and cassette player, as well as the standard radio. David used to use a Blue Tooth, we all have cell phones. TV and a DVD player. Yes, we are very much electronics savvy in the way we lead our lives. And yet … I enjoy nothing more than sitting down with a good book and reading. I have loved to read since I was a small child. I passed that love of reading on to Ethan, by reading to him before he was born, often with audio tapes of books (or music) playing on a tape recorder on my round belly. He loves to read, as do I. We could spend (and sometimes do!) a fortune at the bookstores. Electronics are great, and do make our lives easier, and entertainment go an extra mile. But nothing beats an afternoon with a good book!

This week, the

Christian Fiction Blog Alliance

is introducing

Trouble the Water

Thomas Nelson (March 11, 2008)

by

Nicole Seitz

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nicole Seitz is a South Carolina Lowcountry native and the author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass as well as a freelance writer/illustrator who has published in numerous low country magazines. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism, she also has a bachelor’s degree in illustration from Savannah College of Art & Design. Nicole shows her paintings in the Charleston, South Carolina area, where she owns a web design firm and lives with her husband and two small children. Nicole is also an avid blogger, you can leave her a comment on her blog.

Seitz’s writing style recalls that of Southern authors like Kaye Gibbons, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Sue Monk Kidd, and this new novel, which the publisher compares to Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, surely joins the ranks of strong fiction that highlights the complicated relationships between women. Highly recommended, especially for Southern libraries.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

In the South Carolina Sea Islands lush setting, Nicole Seitz’s second novel Trouble the Water is a poignant novel about two middle-aged sisters’ journey to self-discovery.

One is seeking to recreate her life yet again and learns to truly live from a group of Gullah nannies she meets on the island. The other thinks she’s got it all together until her sister’s imminent death from cancer causes her to re-examine her own life and seek the healing and rebirth her troubled sister managed to find on St. Anne’s Island.

Strong female protagonists are forced to deal with suicide, wife abuse, cancer, and grief in a realistic way that will ring true for anyone who has ever suffered great loss.

“This is another thing I know for a fact: a woman can’t be an island, not really. No, it’s the touching we do in other people’s lives that matters when all is said and done. The silly things we do for ourselves–shiny new cars and jobs and money–they don’t mean a hill of beans. Honor taught me that. My soul sisters on this island taught me that. And this is the story of true sisterhood. It’s the story of Honor, come and gone, and how one flawed woman worked miracles in this mixed-up world.”

“…a special sisterhood of island women whose wisdom and courage linger in the mind long after the book is closed.”
-NEW YORK TIMES best-selling author SUSAN WIGGS

When I came across Deb Raney and her series of books, my heart beat just a little faster. The more I read, the more I knew that this was one author that would be in my extensive library of books. Not only does she have a series of books based in a fictional town in Kansas — but she herself lives in Kansas. Small world. I emailed her to see if I could publish an excerpt of her newest book, Leaving November, but in truth, that was just an excuse. Yes, I truly do want to publish an excerpt here … but I wanted to email her the minute I visited her website, but was hesitant to do so. Being able to ask her permission was just the window of opportunity that I needed to feel comfortable emailing her — as well as asking her where in Kansas she lived. I won’t devulge that information, but she was gracious enough to tell me. Small world!

So, it is only fitting, that this blog that has taken on a life of its own as a “book blog” (that wasn’t by design … its just something the evolved) — to promote a new author (to me!) and her new book. After reading this first chapter, I can hardly wait until the copy of the book I ordered arrived. Its most definately on my list as my next read!

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Leaving November

(Howard Books/Simon & Schuster) is available at bookstores everywhere,

on amazon.com, barnesandnoble. com, christianbook. com, and at your local Christian bookstore.

Copyright © 2008 by Deborah Raney. All rights reserved.

Visit the author’s Web site at www.deborahraney. com

Daughter of the town drunk, Vienne Kenney has escaped Clayburn for law school in California. But after failing the bar exam—twice––she’s back home with her tail between her legs, managing Latte-dah, the Clayburn café-turned-upscale- coffee-shop. Jackson Linder runs the art gallery across the street and Vienne has had her eye on him since she was a skinny seventh grader and he was the hunky high school lifeguard who didn’t know she existed. Now it’s his turn to fall for her and suddenly Clayburn seems like a pretty nice place to be…until Vienne discovers that Jack is fresh out of rehab and still struggling with the same addiction that ultimately killed her father.

Chapter One

November

Vienne Kenney closed her eyes, inhaling familiar scents. Moldy books. Fresh shavings from the pencil sharpener. A bouquet of wilting chrysanthemums. The tick, tick, tick of the ancient grandfather clock in the library’s main hall threatened to carry her straight back to her childhood.

The computer fan clicked on and its whirr rescued her, jolting her into the present—not that the Clayburn Public Library had changed one iota in the eight years since she’d moved away from this two-horse Kansas town. But the Internet was her lifeline, tethering her to California. To her future. Adrenaline surged through her veins as she clicked the mouse and scrolled down the Web page, scanning the list for the only name that mattered.

Her name had to be on that list. It had to be.

One cautious letter at a time, she retyped her name into the search field and clicked again.

Nothing. There must be some mistake. Staring at the computer screen, her vision blurred and she fought to catch her breath.

She took a sip of lukewarm coffee from the travel mug she’d snuck in, then pushed it to the back of the book-cluttered desk. She’d agonized over this moment for three months, and now it was here. And if this official State of California-sanction ed Web site was up-to-date, she had good reason to agonize. The site supposedly verified the name of every person who passed the July bar exam.

So why wasn’t her name showing up? She glanced at the connection icon on the screen. Maybe there was something wrong with the library’s Internet service. Maybe the system was pulling up an old page from when she’d checked earlier today. That had to be it.

She typed in the URL again and entered her information hunt-and-peck style. The page refreshed­­––with the same results. She slid the ponytail holder from her hair and combed her fingers through the tangled mass of curls.

She couldn’t have failed. Not a second time. A sick feeling settled in the hollow of her stomach. She’d lived through this humiliation once.

She massaged her temples in slow circles. She’d done everything right this time. Studied her heart out. Spent money she didn’t have on a course that practically guaranteed her success at passing the bar. She’d been so confident….

How would she ever live it down if she’d flunked the bar exam again? Tens of thousands of dollars wasted on a law degree—money she’d spent grudgingly because of its source.

She lifted her head and stared at her cell phone lying on the desk beside the computer’s mouse. Her mother would be calling any minute, expecting to celebrate good news. And Jenny, too. Her roommate had another semester to go, but Jenny was brilliant. She would pass easily. On her first try. Salt in the wound.

Vienne put her head in her hands. She’d probably be fired from her job the minute word got out. And if she knew Richard Spencer, he was probably online at this very moment back in California, checking the results to make sure her name was there. When he discovered it conspicuously absent, he’d no doubt call to offer consolation and a shoulder to cry on.

But he would fire her just the same.

A sour taste filled the back of her throat, and she washed it down with a sip of lukewarm coffee. At least she wouldn’t have to walk in to work and face everyone Monday. But she couldn’t stick around here either.

Mom probably had half of Coyote County praying for her. Since the day testing started in July, her name had no doubt been at the top of the prayer chain list at Community Christian, complete with all the gory details: Please pray God will bless my daughter, Vienne, with success as she takes the bar exam. This is especially important since she flunked—by a margin of quite a few points—the first time she took the exam.

Vienne gave a silent, humorless laugh. Ironic she would find her name on that dubious prayer list, and nowhere in sight on the list that mattered.

The walls of the library closed in on her. She started to push away from the desk. But something—some misguided sense of hope—compelled her back to the computer. She put her hand over the mouse again. Did this Podunk library even have the right software to display the page correctly?

A glimmer of optimism sparked in her. Maybe she’d just missed it. The page refreshed, and the ominous message appeared again: No names on the pass list match “Vienne Kenney.” And this time she knew the truth. She’d failed. Again. Thirty years old and she would never be able to sign her name Vienne Renée Kenney, Attorney at Law.

Brinkerman & Associates had been forced to keep her on after the first time she’d failed. But without a license, they didn’t have a position for her––at least not at a salary she could survive on. Not that she’d consider staying at the firm after this humiliation. And she would not take the test a third time. She’d wasted too many years and too much of her mother’s money. Her father’s money.

She shuddered. It was time to cut her losses, and move on. But the job market in Davis was pathetic. Besides, did she really want to face the chance, every day, that she might run into some well-meaning Brinkerman associate who’d feel obligated to pat her arm and tell her how sorry they were and how much they missed her and how was she doing? And was she taking the exam again, etc., etc., ad nauseam?

But where could she go now? She stared at a large painting hanging on the wall in front of her—a misty landscape of gnarled cottonwood trees and a green-watered river. It was probably supposed to be the Smoky Hill that Clayburn was built upon. It was a peaceful scene—and nicely done. But it was locus classicus Kansas. And she had shaken the dust of Clayburn off her feet when she left town the summer after high school graduation. The only dreams she’d ever entertained about returning involved thumbing her nose at this hick town and her so-called friends who had made her persona non grata when she needed them most.

Several years ago, when it was discovered that my heart was in Atrial Fibrillation, it was a traumatic time for me (my mom has just passed away unexpected a few weeks prior to that), and everything just happened way to fast. I just took what the doctor’s said at face value. I didn’t question, I didn’t absorb. I just did what I was told. I was pretty much on auto pilot, emotionally and mentally.

Now, several years later, I have processed all of it, I accept the condition, and continue to take medicine as my line of action. When I was invited to visit HeartLibrary.com, I looked over the sight with more than just a passing interest. Browsing through their interactive heart video library, what the doctors had “told” me several years ago, made so much more sense tonight, see it in visual form. I know what I feel from the inside out — the quivering of the heart, the out of rhythm beating of my heart. But, regardless of how many times its explained to me — in words — I truly didn’t understand just what my heart was doing until I saw the video. Now I understand.

Busy busy week ahead. For all of us. Ethan has practice and/or work all week, but that has pretty much been a given for the last few weeks. David had a board meeting last night, another meeting tonight; and then we both have a concert at our church to attend tomorrow night. Because we have so much going on, I told David I would cover Ethan’s play performances, and he could cover Prom next week (the things that they are needing parent volunteers for). So…for me, Wednesday night — the concert, Ethan’s play Thursday, Ethan’s play Friday, a birthday party to attend Saturday, and the last performance of Ethan’s play on Sunday. And if it wasn’t the play on Sunday, one of the guys in Ethan’s scout troop is having his Eagle Scout Court of Honor that day as well, so we are busy Sunday, regardless. It normally isn’t this bad, but its just one of those weeks. If Ethan had continued going to Barbershop practices, that show was this Saturday as well. Quite honestly, I’m glad that we don’t have that on the agenda as well. Enough. Is. Enough.

This week, the

Christian Fiction Blog Alliance

is introducing
Amber Morn

(Zondervan Publishing Company - April 2008)

by

Brandilyn Collins

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brandilyn Collins is a best-selling novelist known for her trademark Seatbelt Suspense™. These harrowing crime thrillers have earned her the tagline
“Don’t forget to b r e a t h e …®”
Brandilyn writes for Zondervan, the Christian division of HarperCollins Publishers, and is currently at work on her 19th book. Her first, A Question of Innocence, was a true crime published by Avon in 1995. Its promotion landed her on local and national TV and radio, including the Phil Donahue and Leeza talk shows.

She’s also known for her distinctive book on fiction-writing techniques, Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors (John Wiley & Sons), and often teaches at writers conferences.

Brandilyn blogs at Forensics and Faith. Visit her Website to read the first chapters of all her books.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than sixty seconds.

Bailey hung on to the counter, dazed. If she let go, she’d collapse—and the twitching fingers of the gunman would pull the trigger. The rest of her group huddled in frozen shock.

Dear God, help us! Tell me this is a dream . . .

The shooter’s teeth clenched. “ Anybody who moves is dead.”
On a beautiful Saturday morning the nationally read “Scenes and Beans” bloggers gather at Java Joint for a special celebration. Chaos erupts when three gunmen burst in and take them all hostage. One person is shot and dumped outside.

Police Chief Vince Edwards must negotiate with the desperate trio. The gunmen insist on communicating through the “comments” section of the blog—so all the world can hear their story. What they demand, Vince can’t possibly provide. But if he doesn’t, over a dozen beloved Kanner Lake citizens will die…

Amber Morn is the climactic finale to Collins’ widely read Kanner Lake series. All first three titles in the series, Violet Dawn, Coral Moon, and Crimson Eve, were bestsellers. Library Journal placed Crimson Eve on its Best Books of 2007 list, and hailed it the “Best Christian suspense of 2007.”

A few early reviews of Amber Morn:

“… essential reading … a harrowing hostage drama.” – Library Journal

“… heart-pounding … breakneck pace … satisfying and meaningful ending.” – RT Bookreviews

“This cataclysmic ending left me breathless … Kanner Lake is the Best Suspense Series of 2007/2008.” – deenasbooks.blogspot.com

“Collins has saved the best for a last .. a powerful ensemble performance.” — BookshelfReview.com

“… a staccato tempo … Sometimes you just have to close the book in order to come up for air.” – Dale Lewis

“…a masterpiece of page-turning suspense with a cast of dozens.” – Peg Phifer

There is one house in our town that I just love to drive by and just look at. If I could live an any house in this town, it would be that one. I don’t know why — its just a cute house. Its not too big, but not too small. Its blue, but what I think draws my attention and my heart to this house is … the hearts on the vinyl shutters. It just looks like a house that is full of warmth and country lovin’ — a house that is more than a house, but rather a home. The home that all the kids gather, and feel at home at. I know that it is the people inside that make it that, but there is just something about those shutters that I just really like. Am I a goof or what? Course, keep in mind, I am also one of those ladies who buys a vehicle based on the cup holders. It if doesn’t have good built-in cupholders in the front, I don’t want it. So, don’t mind me. I tend to base my decisions on things with my heart, not my head. Thats why David and I make a good team. He makes decisions with his head (and his wallet!) Once I could accept that, we made a great couple!