Welcome Guest Blogger - Lillian Duncan -Special Giveaway

Are You Sure?

Guest post by author Lillian Duncan

 “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

Hebrews 11: 8 [NKJV]

In my upcoming book, PUZZLE HOUSE, Rachel is asked, “Do you want to be healed or to be a healer?” She wants to please God so her answer is to be a healer. Of course when she answers she doesn’t know she has a serious medical condition that is about to turn her world upside down.

Most of us will be asked that same question during our life if we’re deeply committed to following God’s Will. The question won’t be exactly the same since God has different plans for all of us.

My question was, do you want to be a writer? I’d already been dabbling in fiction writing when God asked me that question. Not literally of course, but in my spirit. My answer was a resounding yes, but… like Rachel, I should have taken a few more moments to think about it. To ask myself ... “are you sure?”

Don’t get me wrong, I love writing, and even more, I love writing Christian fiction. My stories demonstrate God’s goodness is many different ways depending on the story. But it hasn’t been an easy journey.

It took fifteen years to get my first traditional contract. That’s a lot of rejections. Would I have kept writing if I’d known it would take that long? I’m not sure but I’m so glad I didn’t quit.

Let me give you a short glimpse into a writer’s life. It takes a lot of time to bring a story to life. First you have to write it then you have to rewrite it and then you have to rewrite it again and again and... Then it’s time for editing, revisions, and polishing before submitting it to my publisher. Then it’s time to go into marketing mode. Actually you have to be in marketing mode all the time. And at the same time I’m in the process of writing and rewriting new stories to get them ready for submission.

It’s a never-ending process, but I truly love it so it’s OK. And then there’s my reward, right? If you’re thinking a financial reward, stop! Yes, some writers make big bucks—but so far I’m not one of them.

But my reward is even better than money. My reward is knowing I’m doing what God wants me to do. My reward is the joy of creating stories that demonstrate God’s love to my readers as I entertain them.

So when God comes knocking at your heart and asking you your question, it may sound like an impossible task and you may ask yourself—are you sure? No, you can’t know what will happen, whether you’ll be successful or not, whether it will be an easy or a difficult journey, whether you’ll quit or persevere.

But like Abraham, you have to start the journey if you want to get to your destination. The destination God created for you. That destination might bring you a few tears … or more … along the way, but it will also bring you peace and joy, and a satisfaction that can’t be described.

That sounds good, right?

Are you sure?

 PUZZLE HOUSE BLURB:

Life isn’t a box of candy—it’s a puzzle!

Rachel Summers is all about Rachel Summers…until the day she crashes headlong into a semi-truck. As her life hangs in the balance, she has a visitor who asks a very simple question.

Does she want to be healed ... or to be a healer?

She makes her choice, but the journey doesn’t go quite the way she expected.

And so Rachel now runs Puzzle House. Every guest is different and yet the same. They all come to the Puzzle House for one reason and one reason only—to be healed, usually from a life-threatening illness. Sometimes they receive their miracle, and sometimes they discover there’s more than one kind of healing.

Nia is a fifteen-year-old African-American girl who is dying. The doctors have told her there is nothing else to be done. No more treatments. No more hope. No more life. And she’s angry about that. Very angry. Against her wishes, Nia’s aunt brings her to The Puzzle House.

Together, Nia and Rachel will take a journey that will change both their lives.

GIVEAWAY INFO: To celebrate the release of Puzzle House, I’m having a very special giveaway on my blog, Tiaras & Tennis Shoes at www.lillian-duncan.com. Leave a comment on one of my Puzzle House posts and you’ll be entered to win. Thanks!

Lillian Duncan…Stories of faith mingled… with murder & mayhem.

Lillian is a multi-published author who lives in the middle of Ohio Amish country with her husband and a menagerie of pets. After more than 30 years working as a speech pathologist for children, she believes in the power of words to transform lives, especially God’s Word.   

Lillian writes the types of books she loves to read—fast-paced suspense with a touch of romance that demonstrates God’s love for all of us. 

To learn more about Lillian, you may visit her at www.lillianduncan.net or www.lillian-duncan.com. She also has a devotional blog at www.PowerUpWithGod.com.

A Time to Heal ♦ Book Spotlight ♦ Rose Verde

Hi, fellow 'Whisperers' ... it's time to sit back and enjoy this peek into another  "Story Behind the Story" and book spotlight. I think you'll find this one uniquely interesting. I know I sure want to read it. 

A Time To Heal

Image courtesy Pixabay.com

a 'Story Behind the Story'

by Paulyn Aneke, writing as Rose Verde

As a teenager, I’d read some detective/military books and fell in love with the characters—minus the villain, LOL! I remembered telling myself I’d want to be a detective. The attraction was all the action, brilliance and their ability to overcome the obstacles. What I never knew was the risk they faced every day.

A time to heal popped into my head when I began to consider how much people risked themselves to keep us safe. I started with the “what-if” question which took me round and round for a while. I wanted a story in which my protagonist will lose his job in the US Marines, and it had to matter to him? It had to be something he really cared for.

And then an idea struck. What if he was a foster kid and the Marines guaranteed he wouldn’t have to live on the street when he outgrew the system? And “A time to heal” was born.

My protagonist was a foster kid who got into the US Marines as a way out off the system he’d outgrown. He falls in love with his job as a dog handler, but while on tour in Afghanistan, a bomb explodes killing his dog and leaving him with a traumatic amputation and a leg that had to be salvaged.

It is often a wonder what the imagination is capable of with just a what-if question. At first, it may not seem like its heading nowhere—random ideas, right? But out of those scribbles, meaningless and meaningful ones are birthed the best stories.

It’s interesting and I always love the happily ever after, after my dear, dear protagonist has gone through the wringer.

 About the Book:

Book Title: A time to heal by Rose Verde (pen name)

Publisher: Forget Me Not Romance

Release Date: 05/08/17

Who wants a broken man?

After being medically discharged from the US Marines, Landon Kendall has no immediate plans. Reluctantly, he accepts a friend’s invitation to spend Thanksgiving in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee where he meets the guy’s sister. Her lively spirit and faith give him reasons to hope. He wants to live again…but wishes he were whole for her.

Raven Jamison’s plans to see the world does not involve a man. Yet when her gaze locks with the smoky gray eyes of her brother’s friend, she wants to wipe the hurt that calls to her from their depths. But she knows something keeps him from opening up. Will he trust her with his secret and allow them find their way to love or keep her like everyone else out forever?

About Rose:

Rose Verde is an avid reader and has always enjoyed making up stories since junior high school. She is a nurse/midwife in her other life, married to her own real-life hero and blessed with two lovely kids. When she is not writing, she is singing, daydreaming or reading.

Social media links

Website: authorroseverde.com

Facebook https://web.facebook.com/roseverde2016/,

Twitter https://twitter.com/Roseverde2016)

Discussion Question for Readers:

If asked why you love “Happily Ever-After’s”, what would you say?

♦♦You can get the novella free between June 1st-5th and if you love it, a tweet size review would be appreciated.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071F1LDF7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494422956&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Time+to+Heal+Rose+Verde

Writing Helps to Heal Author Justine Johnston Hemmestad

by Justine Johnston Hemmestad

In 1990 my car was broadsided by a speeding city bus as I turned out of a parking lot - I was in a coma and had sustained a severe brain injury. I was paralyzed when I woke up from my coma, though I worked hard to walk again within a few months, and to relearn how to perform the basic functions of life.

I began to write when I was carrying my first child Megan, less than two years after my accident, as tool or a way to cope with feeling so alone in my disability and misunderstood. Writing, throughout the darkest part of my recovery—when everyone looked down on me and I had no one to talk to or relate with me—helped me to get my thoughts in focus, to learn new things, and to remember what was important to me. I felt bullied, my thoughts and perception were skewed, and I felt emotionally alone, isolated by my personal lacking (my speech was slurred; my reactions were slow, etc.).

But writing was my Savior. When I was so afraid and so filled with guilt for being disabled, writing offered me a safe and comforting place to go, where I could cry and feel loved. Writing was my confidante and gave me hope when the world was crushing me. Writing even helped me find out who I was, since everything about "me" seemed to have melted away with my TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). Writing helped me find my words to speak again. Writing was my purpose, and writing was my healing.

My novella, Truth be Told, is essentially the story of my recovery wrapped up in fictional characters in a different time and place. Everything is symbolic in my novella because symbolism itself taught me how to travel deep inside my thoughts and search until I found the answers. Symbolism aided my memory by the weight of its meaning.

The old man in my novella is symbolic of God, prayer, love of my children, and the inner truth I found when I dug deep, the challenges that stretched my mind and that I knew I had to face when I wanted to give up on life completely.

The Lady is the aspect of my recovery in which I felt lost, even to myself—I didn’t know who I was—but in prayer and meditation I learned to focus my mind, calm my thoughts (which were drowning in the guilt I felt for being disabled) and listen to God’s answer…what defines me?

The knight is the aspect of my recovery that was assaulted by PTSD. Not only was I recovering, but I was recovering amidst a torrent of fear, pain, and false persecution. He represents the survivor’s guilt I had for living as brain-injured, and the part of myself that felt I deserved the lies that people told about me simply because it was easy to lie about me. I illuminated my purpose— the purpose that any recovering person needs to be able to climb out of the darkness—symbolically as Jesus. When people lied about me, writing defended me and made the truth immortal. My purpose, as writing, was the well within me; writing saved me and gave me direction in life (even when I no longer had any sense of direction due to my TBI). There were people who tried to point me in the wrong direction, but my prayer, and written prayer, was always brimming with truth.

My purpose in writing raised me out of the darkness and set me on a new path. As my characters in Truth be Told founded one of the first Universities in Europe, my purpose led me to enter into college, to study tirelessly, and to set goals and reach them. For a person with a TBI, these things stretched my mind to the breaking point. And yet my savior, writing, was always there, so much that my purpose and my goals became intertwined. Every class I’ve had brought me new challenges; every professor’s pushing has helped me more than they were ever aware.

My husband and I now have seven children and I'm still writing, for both have truly been essential to my recovery. I've also earned a BLS through The University of Iowa and am now working toward a Master's Degree in Literature through Northern Arizona University. I’m grateful to have written a book that I felt so strongly, all along, could be of help to survivors, for them to recognize themselves in the characters and to know that they're not alone. I would have recognized myself in this story and it would have given me hope. My mission now is to give other survivors hope.

Justine on Amazon

Justine's Website

Justine's blog

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