My Greatest Cheerleader by Mary Manners

My dad was my greatest cheerleader when I shared with him at a young age that I wanted to be a writer. He told me to enjoy the good days and to embrace the not-so-good—even the awful—since they would provide a foundation for my writing, as well as my life.

This was tough advice to swallow on one particularly rough school day during my early teen years. Luckily, I arrived home to find him sitting on the front porch waiting for me. He spent a good hour listening while I vented about the trials and tribulations of being a thirteen-year-old in a cruel, cruel world. I imagined he had no idea what I was going through, since he couldn't have possibly ever been as young as thirteen. Little did I know!

The next day, Dad came home with a small treasure for me--a poster with the most forlorn-looking bloodhound sitting in a washtub full of soap bubbles that had been dumped over his head. The caption read, "Was today really necessary?" Dad helped me mount the poster in a place of honor on my bedroom wall, and then we sat together and talked some more. That's when I began to understand the power of adversity in shaping who I am as well as my life's path.

Today, I use the trials of my life--both the small inconveniences that jab like bony fingers along my rib cage as well as the tsunamis that sweep through to wash away any semblance of sanity--to shape and mold my writing. Characters and storylines come alive. The passion to write the next story burns continuously inside me, and with every detour that comes my way I know that the round-about will lead to another exciting chapter.

My dad succumbed to Non-Hodgkin lymphoma eighteen years ago, but his memory is alive and well in the poster that has traveled with me through the decades. It now holds a place of honor on the wall across from my office desk. Each time I glance up to read the caption, I smile and think, "Yes, today is really necessary."

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Sunrise at Honeysuckle Cove

SWEET, SMALL-TOWN ROMANCE WITH A HINT OF MYSTERY...

Honeysuckle Cove Inn has been in the Brennan family for three generations. When Maggie Brennan’s parents retire, they call her home to Honeysuckle Cove and hand over the reins of the historical inn. If Maggie successfully maintains the business over the course of a year, the inn is hers forever. Maggie considers the timing perfect, with one exception—she finds her path entangled once again with that of Dylan O’Connor.

Dylan has made a name for himself as the go-to guy when it comes to renovations and repairs in Honeysuckle Cove, and he’s waited nearly a decade for high school sweetheart Maggie Brennan to return home. But his handyman skills will be put to the test when it comes to rebuilding the bridge between Maggie’s heart and his, and designing a future…together.

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Mary Manners is a country girl at heart who has spent a lifetime sharing her joy of writing. She lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee with her husband Tim and their rescue dog Axel, mischievous cats Colby and Rascal, 8 rambunctious chickens, and 13 fish.

Mary writes stories full of faith and hope. Her books have earned multiple accolades including two Inspirational Reader’s Choice Awards, the Gail Wilson Award of Excellence, the Aspen Gold, the Heart of Excellence, and the National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award.

Mary loves long sunrise runs, Smoky Mountain sunsets, and flavored coffee. She enjoys connecting with reader friends through her website: www.MaryMannersRomance.com.

Five Factors by Carrie Stuart Parks

Next month, September, I’ll be joining my mentor, Frank Peretti, at the ACFW conference in Nashville. We’ll be presenting the Early Bird portion called “On Writing.” This has been an amazing ride—to go from writing how-to art books to becoming an award-winning, best-selling author in just a few short years. Maybe I should more accurately call it an adventure. Adventures have a lot of pitfalls, wicked witches, and setbacks along the way. So let me present five factors to success.

1. A mentor. I’ll have to admit having “the Dean of Christian Fiction” as my mentor was huge. Frank and his lovely wife, Barb, had been friends for years. We met through Frank’s and my husband, Rick’s, mutual love of the banjo and all things bluegrass. When I wrote a short story for Barb for Christmas one year, Frank saw potential in my efforts. It was his choice to mentor me. For eight years. I’m a slow learner. I listened to everything he said and did it. I’d show up with post-it notes, highlighters, red pens, paper clips, and the writing I’d done the day before (or re-writing as the case may be.) If he said I had to fix something, I fixed it. A good mentor is priceless, but you have to …

2. Listen. If your friend, mom, beta reader, critique partner, mentor, or 1st cousin once removed on your mother’s side said that a sentence was strongly phrased, they got lost, they couldn’t figure something out… fix it. Don’t argue that it was your sheer genius at work. If one person doesn’t get it, multiply that by hundreds—your reading public. This is because you’re…

3. Too close. You are too close to your work. In your head, you have that scene clearly in front of you, the sounds, dialog, action, smells, where you are going…but that doesn’t mean you’ve actually written it on the manuscript. This can be frustrating because you’ve worked on this story for so long you hate it, yet it’s still your baby. The good news about writing is there’s always . . .

4. More to learn. I estimated I read over eighty books on writing, went to countless conferences, took numerous on-line classes, entered competitions, and studied the craft from every angle. I still do. Never accept something as “good enough.” If you have to, put it aside and work on something else, then come back to it. Because you need to be . . .

5. Persistent. I had fourteen proposals go out on my original book. Fourteen “no’s.” Each time I got rejected I’d mope a bit, then get back to work.

Of course, there’s so much more, but we’ll start with these five. God bless you as you write.

An artist hiding from an escaped killer uncovers one of World War II’s most dangerous secrets—a secret that desperate men will do anything to keep hidden.

 

After the murder of her twin sister, Murphy Anderson changed her name and appearance and moved to Kodiak, Alaska, to avoid the press and publicity. But when local authorities discover she’s an artist and request her help in drawing a dying man’s memories, she unintentionally ends up in the limelight again—and back in the killer’s crosshairs.

The deathbed confessions of an Alaskan hunter have Murphy drawing the five bodies he discovered on remote Ruuwaq Island ten years ago. But what investigators find has them mystified. Evidence suggests that the bodies were deliberately destroyed, and what they uncover in an abandoned Quonset hut from World War II only brings more questions.

As one by one the investigators who were at the hut die, Murphy knows there is something much darker at stake. What happened on this island during the war? And who is willing to kill to keep its secrets buried?

Amazon Buy Link - Formula of Deception

Carrie Stuart Parks is an award-winning, internationally known forensic artist. Over the past thirty-six years, she has worked on major criminal cases for such agencies as the FBI and ATF as well as numerous police and sheriff’s departments throughout the US. She is the author of over twenty books, both fiction and non-fiction.

Along with her artist-husband, Rick, a former visual information specialist for the FBI in Washington DC, they travel across the US and Canada teaching forensic art courses. They are the foremost instructor of forensic art in the world.

She has won numerous awards for career excellence. Carrie is a popular platform speaker, presenting a variety of topics from crime to creativity.
Connect with Carrie at: www.CarrieStuartParks.com; Facebook: Carrie Stuart Parks, Author; twitter: @CarrieParks