Prepare for your Christmas list with short fiction from Victoria Minks

Wind Chimes: Christmas Story Collection

Victoria Minks

Buy on Amazon 

ebook .99

paperback: 9.99

Anthology of Christmastime short stories

Christmas is a day of forgiveness, love, God, and family, no matter where you live or when you lived. These stories will take you somewhere long ago, and yet much like today.

With a touch of humor and a family-loving gentleness, these stories carry all the hope of Christmas. 


The Wind Chimes-- Still bitter over a hurtful mistake a year ago, Martin Roebuck meets the despised doctor on Christmas Eve.

The Two Runaways-- Lost while running away from home, Albert Russell is taken in by an old man, who seems to also have past grievances.

On the Fourth Floor-- Though living on the same floor, George Nolan and Christin Rimmers overlook each other-- until a common challenge brings them together the night before Christmas Eve.

The Spinster-- Wanting to avoid Christmas loneliness, Milly Lambert finds herself in the cabin of an old woman who holds a wise secret.

The Broken Man-- Criminal Arch Fisher attempts to take advantage of a kindly old settler in the woods, but things go miserably awry.

Winifred's Adventure-- Elderly couple Amias and Winifred Hambly--eager for an uncommon life--discover a dying mother the day before Christmas.

My review:

I learned of this young author through a review opportunity for her second book titled Jonas and Olivia http://livingourfaithoutloud.blogspot.com/2016/07/new-fiction-from-victoria-minks.html. Minks has a lovely sense of story and fluid, mature writing style which can only grow better the more she practices and grows her craft. I love short stories and enjoyed each of the six Minks put together for a historical Christmas anthology. The stories take place in America and England.

The stories are described well. Each is layered in motivation and ethics, with a sense of moral minority under skirting each theme. Even though the author will continue to advance in mechanics, I was awed by the character development in each little bite of story, the natural dialog and her ability to set place and time. Well done. Enjoy this book and watch for more work from this author.

About the Author:

Victoria Minks was born in Oklahoma but moved to Japan as a missionary kid at age 3. Since then, she has enjoyed the life of a foreigner in four different locations in Japan and has traveled all across America twice with her family.

She was saved at age 5 and is surrendered to doing whatever God wants her to do in her life. She is excited about the future, looking forward to see what God will do. 

An avid bookworm ever since she can remember, she has cultivated a desire for telling stories since a young age, and still has hordes of old manuscripts from her first 15 years of life that she's too embarrassed to show anybody but too sentimental to throw out. 

When she was 16 she began the first novel she decided was going to get published, whatever the cost. Since then she has written multiple more books, all in various stages of the process to publication. A self-taught Jack-of-all-trades, she takes pleasure in learning how to web design, format books, create book covers, edit, market, budget, and finance everything. 

Homeschooled by her mum, she enjoys anything involving history, literature, language, or art.

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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Colin Cahoon and The Man with the Black Box

I had the privilege and honor of working with Colin on an early draft of this haunting novel and together we found his publisher, eLectio. For those who enjoy international intrigue and early twentieth century history with a taste of a brusque Scotland Yard detective! Much to love. The author has some great background material on the era, which as a historian I thoroughly enjoyed, and the story behind how he got started on The Man with the Black Box. Also interesting are videos and pictures of the places where the main parts of the story take place.

Buy on Amazon

ISBN-13: 978-1632132642

Ebook: $4.99

Print: $15.99

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

EVERYONE'S DYING TO KNOW.

An international crisis threatens to plunge the world into war at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, but the British Foreign Office finds itself blinded by the bizarre deaths of crucial agents and informants as it struggles to stave off the coming conflagration. For help, they turn to an unconventional outsider, Inspector Jenkins of Scotland Yard, who soon finds himself on the trail of a mysterious man with a deadly black box and a host of devoted accomplices. Innocents transform into monsters. Men of God become agents of destruction. Good men rise from the flames of damnation to become soldiers in the coming apocalypse. The Man with the Black Box is a terrifying examination of the corruptibility of mankind, a riveting twist on the classic battle of good versus evil, and a fantasy thriller of historic proportions.

About the Author

Colin P. Cahoon is a practicing patent attorney, former Army helicopter pilot, and writer of historically based fiction. He is a frequent speaker at legal seminars in the US and abroad on the topic of legal ethics and patent law. Colin is the Chancellor and a Lay Eucharistic Minister for the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Dallas, Texas, where he has served on the board of its affiliated school. He earned his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from New Mexico State University and his J.D. degree from Southern Methodist University School of Law, where he met his wife, Susan. Colin and Susan have three grown children and live in Dallas when not enjoying Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Colin grew up in the Mesilla Valley of New Mexico, and enjoys traveling in Europe and fishing and skiing in the Rocky Mountains. Visit him on the web.

A Radio Spot with Rex Owens

I recently had the pleasure of being featured on 103.5 SunPrairie radio. Here's a link to the hour-long interview with very cool historical Irish fiction author 

Rex Owens on his Conversations with Wisconsin Artists.

Talking with Marc Kerry from Time Trap by Danele Rotharmel

Meet Marc Kerry

Character from Time Trap by Danele J. Rotharmel

Today, I’m talking with Marc Kerry, a professional time counselor with the Temporal Counseling Program at National Science University. Marc, can you tell us what time counseling entails?

Sure, Lisa! Time counseling is a unique—and sometimes dangerous—profession. TEMCO’s main objective is targeting death-row offenders for time-based counseling. It’s my job to travel back through time and counsel criminals while they’re children. Many times, I’m able to put the children on a better path so that when they grow up, they avoid a life of crime.

You mentioned that time counseling can be dangerous. How so?

Sometimes, time counselors encounter unexpected events. For instance, a few years ago, a student cadet encountered a serial killer during her field exam. Gil almost lost her life.

Has anything like that happened to you?

I’m happy to say that it hasn’t. But a time counselor always has to be prepared. Danger is part of the job.

Does TEMCO take precautions to keep you safe?

Of course! Since Gil’s deadly assignment, time counselors always travel in pairs. And student cadets are no longer allowed to handle criminal cases—they’re assigned suicide preventions. Speaking of which, two cadets, Phoebe and Drake, are about to tackle their field exam. I just ran into them on campus. Director Matthews and Dr. Nelson were going to tie up some last-minute details and then send them through a temporal portal.

Will Phoebe and Drake be in danger?

Probably not. Danger isn’t likely during a cadet-handled suicide prevention. Besides, TEMCO has top-notch lab technicians who constantly monitor the timeline. This helps ensure the safety of time counselors in the field.

Marc, you blushed when you mentioned TEMCO’s lab technicians. I’ve heard that one of the techs, Crystal Stuart, has caught your eye.

That may be true, but I’m not sure what to do about it. Crystal and I had a fight several years ago, and she refuses to talk with me.

If you try hard enough, I’m sure you can patch things up and grab her attention.

I don’t know, Lisa. I’d like to think that my famous “Kerry Charisma” could charm her, but Cris has a mind of her own—and that stubborn mind of hers is determined to hold a grudge. I wish she’d forgive me. She’s a fascinating woman.

Marc, thank you so much for talking with me. I want to wish you luck on your next assignment…and also luck with Crystal.

Thank you, Lisa! I appreciate it.

About Time Trap:

 When problems arise during a field exam, Director Peter Matthews and Dr. Laura Nelson are sent through a time portal to investigate.  While they search for their missing cadets, they encounter an enemy who is calculating and brutal—a mysterious nemesis who is holding a grudge against the TEMCO program.  As Peter and Laura race to unravel clues directing them to their kidnapped cadets, their own survival comes into question.  A deadly trap has been set, and they are forced to pit their wits against a serial killer who is intent on playing a deadly chess game through time itself. 

Prism Book Group

$3.99 eBook

$16.99 Print

Buy on:

Amazon

Barnes& Noble

 About Danele J. Rotharmel 

Danele Rotharmel’s life took an unexpected turn when a mysterious illness brought her close to death. Eventually, she learned that a carbon monoxide leak from a faulty furnace was poisoning her. This poisoning triggered Multiple Chemical Sensitivity causing her to be put in quarantine. For seven years, she could only talk to friends and extended family through a windowpane. During this time, she wrote the first six books in The Time Counselor Chronicles.  Although her journey back to health was difficult, it provided her the opportunity to grow closer to God and write her books. For that, she’s forever thankful. To learn more about Danele, visit her blog:  

https://dragonflydanele.wordpress.com/

Meet Danele on the web:

Testimony: https://dragonflydanele.wordpress.com/welcome/

Books: https://dragonflydanele.wordpress.com/my-books/

He's Still Working Miracles free book Aug 9

He's Still Working Miracles:  Daring To Ask God for the Impossible

Dana Rongione

About the Book:

The Bible is full of the impossible. The parting of the Red Sea. The crumbling of Jericho's walls. Jesus walking on the water. A multitude being fed with one boy's lunch. A Father sacrificing His own Son for fallen mankind. And now, Christian author and Bible teacher, Dana Rongione, wants to take you on a tour to explore what God has done, what He's capable of doing, and how He works in the lives of His children.

Each chapter of He's Still Working Miracles highlights a story in the New Testament where an ordinary person met an extraordinary God and gives application of how these encounters relate to your own life and circumstances.

You are not alone in your struggles. You don't have to face your heartaches alone. Call out to the One who cares. The One who can make a difference. The one and only God of possibilities.

In this book, you will:

·         Learn to identify miracles in your own life.

·         Understand how to apply the principles of Biblical miracles to specific circumstances that the Bible doesn't address.

·         Discover compelling reasons why keeping the faith is so difficult, yet imperative.

·         Be encouraged and inspired to stay on course with God for years to come.

·         Glean valuable insight from each story's unfolding and conclusion.

·         Learn how to pray and accept God's will in every situation.

·         Find the answer to the question, “Does God still work miracles?”

It's time to lay your questions and doubts to rest. The God of yesterday is the God of today. He is still watching. He is still working. And He is still doing miracles.

Limited Time Offer:

Sign up to receive a free Kindle copy of the book on launch day, August 9^th.  http://stillworkingmiracles.weebly.com

About the Author:

Dana Rongione is the author of several Christian books, including the highly-praised Giggles and Grace devotional series for women.  A dedicated wife and doggie “mom,” Dana lives in Greenville, SC, where she spends her days writing and reaching out to the hurting and discouraged.  Connect with her at DanaRongione.com, and be sure to sign up for her daily devotions.

Phoebe Reynolds from Time Trap by Danele Rotharmel

Meet Phoebe Reynolds

Character from Time Trap by Danele J. Rotharmel

Today, I’m talking with Phoebe Reynolds, a senior cadet in the Temporal Counseling Program at National Science University. Phoebe, I’ve heard that you’re about to take your field exam. Can you tell us more about the test?

Sure, Lisa! In order to earn my Time-Counselor License, I have to pass a field exam. For four years, I’ve been studying about time travel. Now, I have the opportunity to surf timewaves myself! I can’t wait!

How far into the past will you be traveling, and what will you be doing?

Unfortunately, because of TEMCO protocol, I can’t give specifics. However, I can say that I’ll be traveling about ten years into the past, and my case subject is a girl named Nicki. She’s a fourteen-year-old artist who is about to commit suicide. It’ll be my job to convince Nicki that life is worth living.

I’ve heard that because of new field-exam protocol, cadets are now teamed with partners. Can you tell us a little about your partner?

My partner is Drake Procerus, another senior cadet. I’m really looking forward to working with him.

You just blushed. Is there something going on between you two?

Not yet, but… Lisa, all of the girls wanted partnered with Drake. He’s so cute. When he looks at me, my bones melt. It’s been so much fun going through the preliminary stages of testing with him. I’m hoping that once we’re out in the field, I can really catch his eye. Gil, one of TEMCO’s former cadets, fell in love during her field exam. Why couldn’t it happen to me?... Not that I won’t be focused on Nicki, of course. Nicki is my first priority.

Are field exams dangerous?

Not usually. Gil ended up facing a serial killer during her exam, but I don’t think that will happen to me. After all, I’m just dealing with a suicidal teenager. What could be dangerous about that? Besides, I’ll have Drake as my partner. I feel completely safe.

You just went pale and shivered. Why?

I’m not sure… I just had the strangest feeling… Never mind, I’m just being silly. It’s just a case of nerves. I know that everything will be fine. Field exams are safe—at least, most of the time.

Phoebe, thanks for being with us today, I wish you the best with your exam.

Thanks, Lisa. I can’t wait to make a difference in Nicki’s life!

And what about catching Drake’s eye?

I can’t wait to do that too!

About Time Trap:

 When problems arise during a field exam, Director Peter Matthews and Dr. Laura Nelson are sent through a time portal to investigate.  While they search for their missing cadets, they encounter an enemy who is calculating and brutal—a mysterious nemesis who is holding a grudge against the TEMCO program.  As Peter and Laura race to unravel clues directing them to their kidnapped cadets, their own survival comes into question.  A deadly trap has been set, and they are forced to pit their wits against a serial killer who is intent on playing a deadly chess game through time itself. 

Prism Book Group

$3.99 eBook

$16.99 Print

Buy on:

Amazon

Barnes& Noble

 Danele J. Rotharmel 

Danele Rotharmel’s life took an unexpected turn when a mysterious illness brought her close to death. Eventually, she learned that a carbon monoxide leak from a faulty furnace was poisoning her. This poisoning triggered Multiple Chemical Sensitivity causing her to be put in quarantine. For seven years, she could only talk to friends and extended family through a windowpane. During this time, she wrote the first six books in The Time Counselor Chronicles.  Although her journey back to health was difficult, it provided her the opportunity to grow closer to God and write her books. For that, she’s forever thankful. To learn more about Danele, visit her blog:  

https://dragonflydanele.wordpress.com/

Meet Danele on the web:

Testimony: https://dragonflydanele.wordpress.com/welcome/

Books: https://dragonflydanele.wordpress.com/my-books/