Kim Suhr shares short stories

Wisconsin author and director of Red Oak Writing Studios announces her new release, Nothing to Lose, a collection of short stories that take place around Wisconsin. Welcome, Kim Suhr. 

                       

Cornerstone Press, Dec. 2018
ISBN 9780984673971
Paperback: $14.95
E-book coming soon
Buy on
Indie Bound
Amazon

About the book:
Drawing on the rich complexity of the American Midwest, Kim Suhr peoples her debut book of fiction with characters that we know, carved out of the Wisconsin landscape and caught between expectation and desire. An Iraq war veteran stalks the streets of Madison. Four drunk friends hunt deer outside of Antigo. A mother tries to save her son. A transplanted New Yorker plots revenge against her husband. A man sobers up and opens a paintball range for Jesus. A woman with nothing to lose waits for her first kiss.

Personal and powerful, Kim Suhr’s Nothing to Lose shows us a region filled with real people: less than perfect, plagued with doubts, always reaching.

A brief interview with the author:

Introduce us to your most difficult character.
That’s a tough one because I love all my protagonists—even the unlovable ones—for their complexity and brokenness. Perhaps the most difficult for me to get inside of was Anna, aka Ellen Wilkinson, from the story titled “Brush Strokes.” I wanted to help readers identify with her even as they become increasingly uncomfortable with her. Who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy?” I like to keep the reader guessing.

Can you share two things you learned from your research during the writing and publication process?
I learned that there are artists who actually paint with human blood. (I don’t even want to think about what my Google search history looked like on the day I learned that!)

As for a publishing tidbit, I learned the truth of the adage: “I’m a great believer in luck. The harder I work the luckier I get.”

What do you hope readers will tell others when they’ve finished the book?
This book made me see something in a different way; it made me compassionate for someone who is different from me.

What’s next for you?
I am working on the audiobook version of Nothing to Lose, then probably an e-book as well. I have a couple of short stories in process and a few chapters of something that wants to be a novel. (Ssshhhh! Don’t tell anyone.)

What are you reading now?
I just finished Besotted by Melissa Duclos (which I loved) and have cracked the spine on Saving the Scot by Wisconsin author Jennifer (Rupp) Trethewey, the fourth book in her House of Balforss series.

Lisa---I'm a big Rupp fan, too, but shhhh! Don't tell anyone.

Thanks for sharing, Kim.

About the Author:
Kim Suhr lives and writes in southeastern Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in Midwest Review, Stonecoast Review, Rosebud and others. She holds an MFA from Pine Manor College, where she was the 2013 Dennis Lehane Fellow in Fiction. She is director of Red Oak Writing and a member of the Wisconsin Writers Association Board of Directors. You can follow her at:

Facebook
Twitter (@kimsuhr)
Instagram

Robin Fuson and her new Romantic Fiction

The Encounter

Robin Densmore Fuson

Romantic Contemporary Inspirational Novella

March 23, 2019

Forget Me Not Romances

Buy on Amazon 

Paperback $6.74

Ebook $2.99

About the Book

At first blush, fifty-two-year-old Renee Harris appears to be a confident sophisticated woman. Hidden are the scars of deep pain and fear. A meeting in an ordinary elevator will not only take Renee to the designated floor but also on a journey of discovery. Chaplain Lance Freeman’s only thought is to help a family in their hour of need though unknown to him, the woman in the elevator needs him more than the family down the hall. Elevators can be strange things. Full of ups and downs, they may be used as a vehicle to change the course of someone’s life. Renee and Lance are about to find out just how much a chance meeting can alter a person’s direction. Can real love be a part of their new beginnings? Will they allow God to lead and interrupt their lives so they can eventually find peace, joy, and love?

My Review

After I got over the shock of Renee and Lance’s first meeting and the unusual reaction Renee had to her husband’s passing, I was entranced with how Renee picked up the pieces of her life. As she slowly reveals her history, she forges a new direction and takes control of her destiny as a challenge to the childhood that had been stolen from her. Lance is one of those wonderful, fantastic people who deserve a break, and as a bonus, has Renee’s daughter firmly on his side. He finds new love in Renee, but realizes they have a lot of work to do to mend from their recent traumas. After healing, they revisit a potential relationship. Renee learns that Lance has kept important information from her, a blow to her delicate recovery. Together they explore whether they are truly meant to be together or better as friends.

About the Author

Robin recently moved to Tennessee with her husband Jimmy. Together, they celebrate with seventeen grandchildren. An award winner for romance and flash fiction. Robin is multi-published and writes stories on her blog for children. Robin is a member of ACFW, Vice President of ACFW Colorado Western Slope, and member of John316 Marketing Network. She enjoys leading a Bible study group and singing in two community choirs. Robin loves company and challenging her young guests to discover the many giraffes in the obvious and hidden nooks and crannies of their home.

Terri Wangard WWII Fiction

No Neutral Ground 

Book 2 of Promise For Tomorrow

Terri Wangard

WWII Historical Fiction

2016 Hope Springs Books

Connect with the author about purchases. 

About the Book

After his father divorces his mother because of her Jewish ancestry, Rafe and the rest of his family flee Germany. As a B-17 navigator, he returns to Europe. On the ocean voyage, he meets Jennie, an artist journeying to Sweden to work with the OSS. Flying missions against his former homeland arouses emotions that surprise Rafe. Despite being rejected, he is troubled by the destruction of Germany and his heart still cries for his father’s love. Sweden may be neutral, but it’s full of intrigue. Jennie assists the OSS at the American legation in Sweden. She thought she’d be doing passive, behind-the-scenes work. Instead, she’s pushed into an active role to gain intelligence and frustrate the Germans. How can Rafe and Jennie succeed in their dangerous roles when they are so conflicted?

My Review    

After a year and a half delay, I finally got back to Terri Wangard’s very nice and beautifully researched World War II historical romances. This second story is set for the most part in Sweden, a country that attempted to remain neutral during World War II. Our romantic couple meet on the Queen Mary as they are on their way to England from the States at the early stages of the war. Rafe is a German ex-patriate whose Jewish-ancestry mother fled with Rafe and his siblings to the US just before the outbreak of war. Rafe grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his mother, divorced, remarried. Rafe then joined the US Air Force as a flight navigator, still fighting his demons of abandonment and love for his homeland, friends and family still there, against whom he now is at war.

Jenny is thoroughly American, and follows her father, a lieutenant in the military intelligence, to Sweden, where he and her mother live in Stockholm. Her father’s work is with military personnel who are interred in Sweden, and Jenny’s job is she uses her artistic talent to do whatever it takes to harass the German military, whether to create false rumors or anti-propaganda posters. When Rafe’s damaged plane seeks asylum in Sweden, he and Jenny reunite.

Their developing relationship is never a secret nor in doubt, nor even conflicted. It’s Rafe who must overcome the wounds of both childhood and what the war is doing to his family and his beloved homeland. While he works through fighting Nazis, not Germans, with the support of Jenny, the war grinds on, eventually to a close, allowing the healing to begin.

About the Author

Terri Wangard's first Girl Scout badge was the Writer. These days she is writing historical fiction, and won the 2013 Writers on the Storm contest and 2013 First Impressions of the American Christian Fiction Writers, as well as being a 2012 Genesis finalist. Holder of a bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in library science, she lives in Wisconsin. Her research included going for a ride in a WWII B-17 Flying Fortress bomber.

Write Now Literary Tour with Rufus Chambers

Write Now Literary Book Tours is pleased to be organizing a two-week book tour for Does Your Vision Need an Engineer? by Rufus Chambers 111.  This tour will run April 22- May 3, 2019.

 Click here to book your own book tour.

Genre:                 Christian Leadership

Rufus Chambers is a dynamic business & ministry professional with over 20 years of experience who built a successful career in the construction industry. He has an expertise in Project Management and a teaching gift that empowers leaders and individuals to overcome challenges and achieve greatness. He has worked on numerous construction projects in the role of an Owner’s Representative, General Contractor, Construction Manager, and Construction Manager at Risk.

As a dedicated ministry leader with significant corporate and ministry achievements, Rufus has been afforded the opportunity to make significant inroads in the communities of Oakland, Pittsburg, and Richmond. These inroads consist of partnering with local school districts, faith-based organizations, non-profit agencies, and law enforcement agencies in serving the previously mentioned communities.

Rufus resides in Los Angeles with his wife of over 15 years, and they have 2 beautiful daughters together.

                                               

Does Your Vision Need an Engineer? It is a simple question with an answer that may seem to be obvious.  Countless people have dreams and visions, but few are able to translate them into a practical plan that can followed.  Rufus Chambers takes readers on a journey of understanding how to connect a plan of action to their divinely inspired vision.  If you are struggling with understanding what to do next or who to recruit to join your team, this is the book for you.  There is nothing more frustrating than having a vision but being clueless on how to actively pursue.  Rufus will take you into the mind of a vision engineer, whose singular focus is creating a strategic plan that can systematically execute vision.

ISBN-10: 1795624744

ISBN-13: 978-1795624749

 

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Barnes and Noble

 TWITTER|FACEBOOK| WEBSITE

 

Tour hosted by wnlbooktours.com

Debut Young Adult

Spoken by Melanie Weiss

Young Adult fiction

March 2019 Rosehip Publishing

$7.99 Ebook

$9.99 Print

Buy on Amazon

About the Book:

High school freshman Roman Santi has everything -- good looks, great friends, a mansion with an infinity swimming pool -- except the one thing he really wants. A relationship with his father.

When Roman’s life gets turned upside down, (thanks, Mom!?), he is forced to leave his pampered Hollywood lifestyle and move into his grandparents’ Midwestern home. Sleeping on a lumpy pullout sofa and starting at a new high school is the worst, but Roman’s life starts to look up when his pink-haired friend, Zuzu, and his crush, a classmate named Claire, introduce him to performance poetry through the high school's Spoken Word Club. While his mom is flying back and forth to L.A., trying to return them to the life they had, Roman becomes part of a diverse group of characters who challenge his rather privileged view of the world. Through Spoken Word, Roman recognizes the hole in his own life he needs to fill and discovers his voice. Spoken Word leads Roman on a journey of new friendships, first love, and finding the dad he never knew.

“Spoken” is an uplifting, funny, and heartfelt coming-of-age story that captures how the honesty of performance poetry binds together students from all different walks of life and forever changes Roman’s life.

Review:

Weiss’s debut young adult fiction captures the angst and inner workings of a teenager, Roman Santi, whose life is turned from mansion with a housekeeper in LA to sleeping on grandma’s sofa bed with a statue of the Buddha staring at him. The novel is a lovely, refreshingly sweet and poignant story about a kid not warped by society whose goal is to simply live happily ever after, be a friend, find friends, but also to find the father he’s never known. One of my favorite lines is from Roman’s first day at his new school, when he’s challenged by his mother’s over-the-top appearance as a minor movie star in exile: “Welcome to my world, where I’m happy my hippie grandma is the one taking me to school today.”

Everybody knows about being fifteen. Teens suffer amid the transcending moments. Roman finds his transcending moment when a poem and a girl spark his interest and he joins an after-school poetry club. Weiss, a trained journalist, writes what she knows about Midwestern living and the experiences of the Spoken Word movement in high school. She shares about her inspiration for the novel. During the late nineties, when the character Roman was born, Spoken Word was incorporated into the English classroom in Oak Park. Weiss credits this performance writing as a means for students to share their struggles and triumphs. Her character. Roman, found his niche in his program, although he decides not to share his poetry with his family. “The only way I can be real about what I write is if I know I won’t have to explain myself to them,” Roman says. Participating in Spoken Word allows him to uncork his bottle of stuffed feelings about his place in life, his environment, and his upbringing.

 When an opportunity to go to Europe arises from a Spoken Word competition, Roman, with the encouragement of his friend Zuzu, takes a step on a journey to find his father. Roman knows only that his father is a French cruise ship entertainer his mother met the summer they both worked on board. But first he has to earn the right to be part of the poetry team to compete against their London counterparts.

Roman shares his story through first-person present tense narrative, an effective method of bonding the reader to him. Spoken is not one of those in-your-face epic hero journeys. It’s a rare school year peek into contemporary high school freshman year, where the onus to grab life and make meaningful memories in on us. It’s difficult to find comparisons to today’s contemporary YA. Spoken is a finely-tuned story about coming to grips with identity without needing to kill, die, have sex, or do drugs. The cover is an evocative rendering of experiencing not only what you learn, but how you can share it.

About the Author:

I am a member of the Chicago Writers Association and live in Oak Park, IL. As a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, I have worked as a journalist and in marketing. This is my first novel. 

I'll Settle For Love review

I’ll Settle for Love by Michelle Lynn Brown

Contemporary Inspirational Family Fiction

November, 2013

$2.99

$7.99

Buy on Amazon 

About the Book:

Leanne grew up under the steady trickle of the harsh and belittling words of her critical mother, in the shadow of her sisters’ perfection, and under the weight of a dark secret. With her self-confidence all but eroded, and her head hanging down, she is surprised when Mike McKinley notices her. With every kind word, Mike erases a little pain from her past, and for the first time, she feels as if she is standing on firm ground. But seven years into their marriage, she realizes that her foundation is lying on shallow ground. As their marriage and family begin to settle, the cracks appear.

Mike McKinley is a fixer. From cars to people, he is the guy to go to when you have something that needs repair. But when their oldest daughter is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, he is sent into a tail spin. As his daughter is struggling to stay afloat in her world, and his wife is drowning in her insecurities, Mike feels helpless to do anything to save them.

A wide chasm separates their marriage, and storms threaten to send them crashing through the pit. Can Leanne fight her past, her insecurities and her failing faith to discover the difference between settling for the storm, and striving for the rainbow that comes after?

Review:

As the summary says, two people fall in love and marry. One of them wears despair so well under a veneer of the perfect wife no one knows she’s suffering, and the other has gotten so good at seeing what he wants to see that he refuses to remove his rose-colored glasses to understand why his wife spends an inordinate amount of time protecting their daughter from life.

Unlike a traditional romance, I’ll Settle for Love is about dealing with what comes after the wedding. Real life takes work, and while Leanne and Mike do have a great relationship and are making it as a family in a middle class world, Leanne’s past is slowly creeping up on her. Mike continues to gloss over the reasons Leanne refuses to spend time with her parents and made him vow to never, ever allow their children unsupervised visits at their home. His own parents more than make up any slack, and it never occurs to Mike that there’s an obvious problem. In fact, any problem that can’t be revealed through a mechanical diagnosis and fixed with a wrench escapes his happy-go-lucky viewpoint. When Leanne’s stepfather dies, the bough breaks and it takes more tears, more loss, and a lot of faith to undo a life of parental damage and remake the family according to God’s plan.

This is in many ways a difficult story, but told with empathetic and sympathetic characters. The end is not completely obvious, and readers will enjoy making their way through the twists. Adult themes make me suggest parental oversight for younger than tenth-grade readers.

About the Author:
When Michelle Lynn Brown was a teenager, her mother used to take her to used books stores at least once a month. It was there she fell in love with the written word. As a writer, she uses this passion to share with others the joy of having a personal and intimate relationship with Christ.

She is a housewife, mother of three, military spouse, writer, blogger, hopeless romantic, and a cuddly lap for one very large cat. She was born in Dayton, Ohio, but raised in El Paso, Texas. And since she married her husband, the military has blessed her with the opportunity to live in many locations, from Germany to Pennsylvania, where she now resides.

Regina Smeltzer and the Light of Logan review

The Light of Logan by Regina Smeltzer

Contemporary Christian horror

Harbourlight, October, 2018

$5.99

$16.99

Buy on Amazon 

About the Book:

Crows are appearing in Logan, South Carolina, and no one knows why. No one except an elderly blind man Mr. Charlie and a timid young agnostic, Ruth Cleveland. When Nate Baxter, falls in love with Ruth, he's unaware she is hiding a secret that threatens his Christianity and will drive him far from her. Will God use this unlikely trio to save the town from an evil never imagined by the residents of Logan?

Review:

The occult plays a central part in this marvelously creepy tale of spiritually challenging events revealing the deep-seeded underbelly of animosity in one small town.

Ruth is one of those lost souls that make you want to take her home and feed her and just love her up. She’s been beaten by life but doesn’t seem to know she could just give up and meld into fate. Even when she reaches the point where she’s ready to deal with the devil, circumstances miraculously and weirdly intervene to save her from herself. But for what purpose? Mr. Charlie, the mysterious blind man Ruth met and visits with daily, tries to prepare Ruth for the role only he seems to understand she is called to play.

While I found the character of Nate, Ruth’s love interest, a bit plastic, he plays his role well. Peopled with natural, loving side characters beset by raw evil, The Light of Logan is a story that makes readers wonder what would happen in your community if a law that removed taxation exemptions currently enjoyed by non-profits was enacted.

Recommended for those who like a little night terror with their daily inspiration.