Finding Thanksgiving by Marie Bast

 

 

I love the holidays and this time of year. It always brings to mind            

how much I have to be thankful for—our family, our health, for
the many blessings, but this year I get to add my first book with
Love inspired. I’m so grateful to the wonderful LI team and all
their hard work to get my book ready for publication. 

But Thanksgiving also goes deeper…

When I set the table with my grandmother’s antique Haviland Bavaria china and mom’s silverware, memories from past years with family come flooding back. One Thanksgiving years ago, it was my turn to host the traditional family dinner. It snowed 15.6 inches in northern Illinois the night before. I had cooked and baked for two days and had tons of food and afraid we’d be eating a 25-pound turkey for a month. They plowed the roads and everyone made it. Now we go to South Carolina for the winter, but my grandson thought he’d send me a reminder of those days.

 

Yet Thanksgiving can be about remembering a family vacation like
the one we had three years ago with our son and his family in Michigan and visiting the dunes and enjoying beautiful Lake Michigan. Two years ago, it was about taking a cruise to Mexico with our other son and his wife.
                                                 

Thanksgiving was also when my husband had bypass surgery, and today I thank the Lord every day that he is here with me.

Yes, Thanksgiving is all these things and much, much more.

Thanksgiving isn’t about just one day, it’s about all the memories, all the good times, all the people, and yes, it’s about the food, too, and about sitting down together and joining hands in prayer and making new memories. It’s about finding all that we have forgotten about…

So what are your memories? Have you found your Thanksgiving?

 
































                                                

 

Finding Your Niche by Marie Bast

Authors all want to get published, but it’s not always easy to find a publisher that’s the perfect fit for our writing. Especially when it’s our first book. I’m a new author with Love Inspired, and therefore, thought I’d share my experience on cracking the code to publication. For those of you who have been trying to capture the attention of an editor or publisher, here is my journey to my first book contract.              

Before

I joined writers’ organizations like RWA, ACFW, SCBWI, Word weavers, and two critique groups. The training and information from these professional organizations and writers were invaluable. Now, I’m going to enlist the aid of my son’s dog, Lola, who has graciously volunteered (after receiving several biscuits) to demonstrate show don’t tell for manuscript makeover. In the creative stage of writing, extraneous little creatures—over-used words, adverbs, prepositions, sentence starters and filler words had weaseled their way onto each page. They made my work-in-process (WIP) look bloated and shaggy—needing a cleanup.       

After

After scrubbing and trimming my manuscripts, they looked professional, sharp, and ready for presentation to editors and publishers. Besides publishing dozens of articles, short stories, devotionals, poetry and prayers, I contributed to four book compilations. Brimming with confidence, I wrote three adult books and five children’s books. Armed with proposals, I attended several writers' conferences. None of them caught a publisher's attention. Disappointed but I was still determined.      

 
Since I enjoyed reading Love Inspired books, I browsed their webpage and found that in February, they often held contests or offered submission opportunities. My first attempt at submission, failed, but I received constructive comments and advice. The next time I entered a contest, I made it through stage one, but rejected at stage two. Then at a writers’ conference, I attended a workshop given by Allie Pleiter. I learned a lot from Allie on how to further hone my work, and it gave me the push to submit to LI again. After submission, the whole process took around a year, but it ended in a contract.

 My advice, don’t give up. Attend writers’ conferences and workshops, find a publisher that you’d like to work with, then read their books and determine if this is the kind of niche or genre you’d like to write. Before you submit, make sure you have trimmed and polished your manuscript until the shaggy spots are gone.    

My first book, The Amish Baker releases March 2019. Have you ever had someone give you that crucial shove to try something one more time?  To get to know me better, visit my blog, follow me on Facebook, or Twitter.



 

 
 

 

Animal Antics

By Carol J. Post

I’ve been a major animal lover all my life. From my earliest childhood, I can’t remember ever not having at least one pet. Over the years, the Post place has been home to a variety of four-legged friends—cats, dogs, rabbits, even an iguana.

After losing our 16-year-old long-haired dachshund last fall, we now only have two cats, both solid black. I live in Florida and North Carolina, driving back and forth almost every month. Midnight and Zorro love to travel, so I always take them with me. Regardless of where I’m going, they try to make sure they’re not going to get left. 

"If we're packed in your suitcase,

that means we're going, right?"

My cats are great company when I write, although they can sometimes be stinkers. Last week, my husband and I went to dinner with friends. When we got home, I found Midnight on the dining room table. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to close my laptop. While I was enjoying dinner, he was making changes to my current manuscript. He added several lines of gibberish, deleted some of the stuff I had written, moved chunks of text around, then did a “save as” (F12), naming the file “kkk.” (I’m pretty sure that stands for “kitty-kitty-kitty.”) Apparently, he thought my work needed some help. Fortunately, I had track changes turned on, so I was able to reject everything the cat had done.

“Hmmm, misplaced modifier, shallow

characterization, unnecessary backstory…

Still needs some work.”

Since I love animals so much, they often find their way into my books. My hero, Bryce, in Lethal Legacy has a black lab that he rescued from neglect. When he wants to loan him to the heroine as a guard dog, he’s pretty sure he’ll behave. But getting to that point has involved some hard work and a whole lot of patience. In Bryce’s words, “Six months ago, you’d have rather taken your chances with an ax murderer than share a house with him.” Fortunately, my two are pretty good. As long as I keep them away from the computer.

What about you? Do you have any furry friends who don’t always behave? I’d love to hear about them. And I hope you’ll look for Lethal Legacy, coming out September 1.

Someone wants her family secrets buried 

He's her only chance to survive

Andrea Wheaton thought her parents’ tragic deaths were accidental—until she’s attacked during a burglary at their home. Now she’s also being targeted. Her ex-sweetheart Sheriff Deputy Bryce Caldwell insists on protecting her, though she refuses to trust him again. But with a killer closing in, can she and Bryce uncover her family’s secrets before it’s too late for them both?

Amazon                

Harlequin            

Barnes & Noble

Connect with Carol on:

Facebook - www.facebook.com/caroljpost.author

Twitter - www.twitter.com/caroljpost

Newsletter - www.caroljpost.com/newsletter/

Check out her other books: www.caroljpost.com/my-books/

We All Need a Valley of Hope

This month, Harlequin released my novel, Valley of Hope. Well, technically, it’s a re-release since I originally wrote this novel in 2013 and self-published it.

Sarah Price's Amish romance, Valley of Hope, at Walmart

For over 35 years, I’ve been writing romance novels. Seeing a novel published and sitting on the bookshelves of a store, especially Walmart, is always a thrill.

But especially for this book, Valley of Hope.

You see, in most Amish romances, the Amish are depicted as living idyllic lives. They smile as they do chores, they fall in love by fence posts, and they live happily ever after.

Having grown up in a Mennonite family, I’m very familiar with the culture of conservative Mennonites as well as Amish. When I was nineteen, I found an Amish family who took me in and let me stay with them. For years I would spend summers and spring breaks at their farm. Later, an older Amish woman let me rent a room from her and I spent several years with her, going back and forth to Pennsylvania from my life in New Jersey.

And I know that not all Amish romances begin with the sweet meeting by the fence post.

In Valley of Hope, the fourth book in my Amish of Lancaster series, Samuel Lapp is a headstrong young man who, while on rumpschpringe—that period of freedom before Amish youth take their kneeling vow—prefers to hang out with Englischers. He loves Mary Ruth, but he’s wrong when he thinks she will wait for him forever.

What I loved about writing this novel was how it depicts the inner turmoil some of the youth go through when involving the process of making that final commitment to join the Amish church. Not a lot of people realize that there are two types of Amish: those who are born into the community and those who join the church. Not all of those who are born Amish actually become Amish.

An Amish Farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Photo Credit: Sarah Price

Samuel Lapp isn’t certain that he wants to become Amish and give up the good life. Only he comes to learn that what he believed was exciting and fun isn’t as ‘good’ as he originally thought. Isn’t that something we can all relate to? How many times have we thought we wanted something, worked hard to achieve it, and when we obtain those goals, we realize that we aren’t as happy as we thought we’d be.

Does Valley of Hope have a happy ending? Well, most of my novels do. But surprises happen along the way because…well…that’s life. It’s full of surprises, just like the real world of romance and life. And just like the real world, sometimes we all need a valley of hope in times of indecision. 

Sarah Price is the author of over 40 novels, several of which were on the ECPA Bestseller Fiction List. She runs the Amish Fiction Authors blog at http://www.amishfictionauthors.com. Her own website is http://www.sarahpriceauthor.com.   

Researching the Amish -- Vannetta Chapman

Amish garden, Shipshewana, Indiana

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is “How did you become interested in the Amish?” Since I’m new to Love Inspired, I thought it would be fun to share that story here.

My first agent was Mary Sue Seymour. I had written several books, and she’d pitched them to publishers. We always ended up in the top 3 books they were considering, and then they’d pass. I couldn’t figure out what was going on!

Finally Mary Sue wrote me an email and told me that I should write an Amish book. This was in 2009, and there were a lot of Amish books coming out--even more than now. She had publishers calling her asking for more Amish! I thought about it a few minutes and then told her “No.” I was so afraid to tell my agent no, but as I explained to her, we have no large Amish communities in Texas, only a very small one in Beeville and they don’t even have a store to visit. I’d never met an Amish person!

 

Amish school, Cashton, Wisconsin

Mary Sue wrote me back and said she understood. Then she wrote me another email, this one quite long, explaining that I could learn, research, visit, and then write that book. I prayed and fumed and worried and tossed and turned that night, and then finally I decided that if she was going to be my agent I should accept her advice--so I said “Yes!” That was the 9^th book I’d written, and the first book we sold. Abingdon Press bought it, and A Simple Amish Christmas released in 2010 and was a huge success.

Since then I’ve published 4 novellas and 16 Amish books (romances and mysteries), including my most recent with Love Inspired, A Widow’s Hope. My husband and I have visited a lot of Amish communities in the last 9 years--communities in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma. I’ve met a lot of Amish folks, and I feel fortunate to count them as my friends. I’ve learned a lot, and I’m so glad that Mary Sue pushed me beyond my comfort zone.

What about you? Have you ever done something that scared you just a little and then changed your life in some way? I certainly never saw myself becoming an Amish author! (PS--I would love you to stop by my webpage and look around. You can do so here or follow me on Facebook here.)

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