Meet Vivian Alderdice the Girl with the Dagger

The Girl with the Dagger: Vivian Alderdice in

The Waxwood Series

Photo Credit: Lady in Prison, Raja Ravi Varma, date unknown, oil on canvas, Sri Chitra Art Gallery: Praveenp/ Wikimedia Commons / PD Art (PD Old 100) 

Vivian Alderdice is the unofficial main character (MC) of my upcoming historical fiction family drama, the Waxwood Series. The reason I call her the unofficial MC is that she’s not the sole MC of any of the 4 books in the series. But she is the character upon which the many themes of the series come to a head. She is present in all the books (the only character who consistently is), and her point of view, even when not the main one, is psychologically always present.

So what makes Vivian so special that she earned her place in a four-book series? The fact that she’s a Gilded Age debutante, caught right in the crossroads of an old century about to be hurled into the modern age is one reason. History writer and doctoral student Evangeline Holland writes of the Edwardian debutante in her blog Edwardian Promenade, and although the post mainly covers the first few decades of the 20^th century, her point about the American debutante rings true for Gilded Age young women of wealthy families. Vivian comes from a wealthy and socially prominent San Francisco family and, like the Edwardian debutantes, becomes a woman when she reaches the age of eighteen. Until that age, she went about with long hair and shorter skirts. When she turned eighteen, her hair went up, her skirts lengthened, and she earned her first pair of “slippers” (the name for high heeled shoes at that time). But more than that, once she hits eighteen, she has a set of rigorous expectations placed upon her, namely, to marry as soon as possible and marry well (I.e., a man whose wealth and social standing is equal to the Alderdices).

Most Gilded Age young women accepted this as their fate. Indeed, they were conditioned by the separate spheres to believe this was their destiny. But I write about characters who are both a product of their time and rebels of it. So Vivian is different. Her own zest for life and her recognition of the hidden truths, evasions, and lies that make up her dysfunctional family tree have made her desire more out of life than what the Victorian separate spheres has to offer women.

In addition, her insightful personality makes it impossible for her to shy away from the unpleasantness of the past. Unlike her mother and brother, who have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” life philosophy, she faces adversity head-on. This is why Vivian is the Dagger Girl. She isn’t afraid to plunge the dagger into the heart of a matter and twist the knife. The problem is, sometimes her daggering hurts people she cares about and forces them to face demons they’re not ready to face.

There was no real life inspiration for Vivian, but she is the person I wished I was twenty or twenty-five years ago. At that time, I was blind to my own family dysfunctions, unwilling to dig for the truth and twist the dagger. Characters are often times a composite of people the author has seen and known or heard of, but I think they also frequently contain an element of the author that he/she wishes they were or had been.

Vivian didn’t start out as this kind of dagger-plunging character. I wrote here about how the Waxwood series evolved from a novel in three voices to a four-book series. The original character of Vivian (named Daisy) was a more passive character looking for a mother’s love and finding it in the most unlikely place. But when I conceived of the series, I knew I wanted to make Vivian more active, flawed in that she is too direct and truthful at times but also with the guts to face her demons and look back at the past. As I wrote The Specter, I related Vivian to her grandmother Penelope Alderdice, whose own dreams had been squelched by society’s expectations. Vivian emerged as a strong voice, a voice specific to the new century see-sawing between the old ways and the new promises of the modern age.

To what lengths will one go to exorcise a specter?

One rainy morning in 1892, people gather to mourn the death of San Francisco socialite Penelope Alderdice. Among them is a strange little woman named Bertha Ross, who claims to have known “Grace” in the 1850’s in the small town of Waxwood. But Penelope’s granddaughter, Vivian, has never heard of Grace or Waxwood.

Bertha reveals surprising details about Grace’s life in Waxwood, including a love affair with Evan, an artist and member of Brandywine, Waxwood’s art colony.Vivian’s mother, Larissa, insists Bertha is an imposter who has come not to mourn a woman she knew in her youth but to stir up trouble.

Vivian, however, suspects the key to her grandmother’s life and her own lies in Waxwood. She journeys to Brandywine where she meets Verina Jones, Evan’s niece, and discovers a packet of letters her grandmother wrote forty years ago about her time in Waxwood.

As Vivian confronts the specter that holds the truth to secrets buried in the family consciousness, she examines her grandmother’s life as a mid-19^th century debutante and her own as a Gilded Age belle. Will she find her way out into the world as an autonomous being, or will she be haunted by the specter of her grandmother’s unhappiness all her life?

Available at the following online retailers:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RLVX7NW

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07RLVX7NW

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-specter-tam-may/1131626306

Apple iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1464211695

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-specter-5

Tam May grew up in the United States and earned her B.A. and M.A in English. She worked as an English college instructor and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher before she became a full-time writer. She started writing when she was 14 and writing became her voice. She writes historical and contemporary fiction about characters who must examine their past and the time in which they live to move on to the future.

Her first book, a collection of contemporary short stories titled Gnarled Bones And Other Stories, was nominated for a 2017 Summer Indie Book Award. She is currently working on a Gilded Age family saga, of which the first book, The Specter, is now available. She is also working on a historical mystery featuring a turn-of-the-century New Woman female sleuth. Both series take place in Northern California.

She lives in Texas but calls San Francisco and the Bay Area home. When she’s not writing, she’s reading classic literature and watching classic films.

For more information on Tam May and her work, feel free to check out her website at www.tammayauthor.com.

Tam May and The Specter new release! and review

Announcing a new release from Author Tam May!

To what lengths will one go to exorcise a specter?

One rainy morning in 1892, people gather to mourn the death of San Francisco socialite Penelope Alderdice. Among them is a strange little woman named Bertha Ross, who claims to have known “Grace” in the 1850’s in the small town of Waxwood. But Penelope’s granddaughter, Vivian, has never heard of Grace or Waxwood.

Bertha reveals surprising details about Grace’s life in Waxwood, including a love affair with Evan, an artist and member of Brandywine, Waxwood’s art colony.Vivian’s mother, Larissa, insists Bertha is an imposter who has come not to mourn a woman she knew in her youth but to stir up trouble.

Vivian, however, suspects the key to her grandmother’s life and her own lies in Waxwood. She journeys to Brandywine where she meets Verina Jones, Evan’s niece, and discovers a packet of letters her grandmother wrote forty years ago about her time in Waxwood.

As Vivian confronts the specter that holds the truth to secrets buried in the family consciousness, she examines her grandmother’s life as a mid-19^th century debutante and her own as a Gilded Age belle. Will she find her way out into the world as an autonomous being, or will she be haunted by the specter of her grandmother’s unhappiness all her life?

Available at the following online retailers:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RLVX7NW

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07RLVX7NW

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-specter-tam-may/1131626306

Apple iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1464211695

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-specter-5

A Brief Interview with the Author:

Tell us, Tam, what do you love about this new book?

I love the character of Vivian Alderdice. She’s the unofficial protagonist of my historical family drama, the Waxwood Series, and she’s a representative of the Gilded Age woman moving into the new century (the 20^th century) which saw so many changes in America, including a flourishing of women’s rights. I love that she isn’t afraid to probe into the past, and that she realizes knowing the past is necessary to a peaceful and enlightened future, not only historically, but personally.

I am also fascinated by the dynamics of the Alderdice family. I struggled with this family since 2004, as I knew there would be so many complications to their dysfunctionality, but I wasn’t able to put my finger on where they were coming from until I wrote this book. There is so much going on under the surface related to their personal family dynamics and the expectations of the Gilded Age. I think the stage is set The Specter for this family to develop more meaningful interactions and startling revelations as the series progresses.

Introduce us to the character who made you laugh first.

That’s a challenging question, because none of the characters in The Specter are really that light-hearted. But I think the character that most made me laugh, though not in a mean way, was Bertha Ross. She’s an elderly woman who’s a little “confused,” let us say, but very kindhearted and wise in her own childlike way. She has a quirky pattern of speech, and her thought processes aren’t always easy to follow. Sometimes she says funny things without meaning for them to be funny. But she also has insights that lead Vivian to important places on her journey to discovering some of the truths about her family.

Share one or two things you learned while researching.

Oh, wow, there are so many things I learned! I’ve done research in the past on the 19^th century, and I’m an avid reader of classic literature of that period, but this was the first time I did research on specifically the Gilded Age. The biggest thing I learned writing The Specter was all about late Victorian mourning practices, as there’s a lot of mourning going on in the series. These practices were extremely specific and elaborate, and many of them were based on superstition, as people in the 19^th century believed superstitions much more than we do today. For example, I learned that all the mirrors in the house were covered and all the pictures put face down because of the fear that the spirit of the deceased would emerge from one of these images or his/her reflection in the mirror and possess the living. Kind of creepy!

How has your writing grown since your last release?

It’s grown so much! My last release was in 2017, a book of contemporary literary short stories titled Gnarled Bones and Other Stories. I loved writing it and was glad to release it. But in the intervening years, I discovered my true passion lay in historical fiction. All my stories are psychological fiction --- that is, story comes out of character and the plot includes the deeper elements of character, such as thoughts, musings, dreams, fears, and desires. That hasn’t changed. But I realized while continuing to work on my writing that the past influences our future on both a personal and a collective level. Painful as it sometimes is, we must look back at the past, or we can’t move on to the future, at least, not without complete peace of mind and self-knowledge. We don’t want to dwell on the past, of course, but I think we need to recognize it and acknowledge how it shaped us, who we are, our beliefs, our choices in life, our emotional and psychological reality. In my first book, my characters realize that and go through their own emotional journeys to get to the end of a long, dark tunnel where they can walk into the light, if not knowing who they are now, at least seeing the potential of who they can become unhindered by who they were in the past.

What's next for you?

I’m working right now on the second book of the Waxwood Series which is going to focus on Jake Alderdice, Vivian’s brother. Then next year, it’s on to the last two books of the series involving other characters whose psychological and emotional lives lend themselves to Vivian’s growing awareness of who she is and who she wants to be, as well as reflecting the rapid motion of the last years of the 19^th century that hurled us into the modern age.

What are you reading now?

I read several books at one time. I just started a novel by historical fiction author Libbie Hawker called Madam. I always try to find historical books set in 19^th century West Coast towns (Hawker’s book is set in Seattle), as so much Gilded Age fiction seems to be about the East Coast or the Midwest. I’m also always reading one classic fiction book, since I love the oldies. I discovered Gertrude Atherton several years ago, and I’m right now in the process of reading as much of her work as I can, since she is a San Francisco writer and comparable to Henry James and Edith Wharton, who were both psychological fiction authors. The book I’m reading of hers right now is called The Sisters-In-Law and it’s a fascinating “insider” look at the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, although it’s much more about two women who become sisters-in-law and their differing attitudes toward class and society at the turn of the 20^th century.

Lisa's Review:

The Specter is a deeply impressionable tale of a nearly lost Bohemian culture taking place across America in the 1850s. May focuses on one such community north of San Francisco, where artists and other odd ducks could live and create in a setting of like-mindedness and peace.

May’s historical fiction picks apart the delicate façade of American gentility in upper class, well-heeled families on the wild West Coast at the end of the nineteenth century. The world is beginning to change yet again as society shifts with a burgeoning middle class. A matriarch of a shipping family passes away, and with her death come more secrets that granddaughter Vivian will do anything, even break strict mourning codes, to unravel. Bypassing her unemotional aristocratic mother, Vivian follows a mysterious old woman who insists she was Grandmother’s friend, to the summer getaway of Waxwood, where Grandmother spent an adventurous year as a Waxwood Belle. There, and in the artist’s colony of Brandywine, specters breathe.

A large portion of the novel consists of letters home, which slowly reveal some of Grandmother’s secretive life, but only if one reads between the lines. I had fun thinking up numerous solutions to the riddles, some of which were cleverly revealed, and others left tantalizingly dangled. The research and era-specific codes, dress, and references were nearly faultless to Grandmother’s mid-1850s period, and the era of Vivian, the 1890s. Told mostly through Vivian’s perspective, and as she reads the letters, the grandmother’s, readers of American family drama who enjoy riddles will find much to appreciate about this first novel in a series. Although complete with a thoughtful conclusion, another mystery is dredged up at the very end which I assume will be the focus of another book in the series. 

Thank you, Tam.

About the Author: 

Tam May grew up in the United States and earned her B.A. and M.A in English. She worked as an English college instructor and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher before she became a full-time writer. She started writing when she was 14 and writing became her voice. She writes historical and contemporary fiction about characters who must examine their past and the time in which they live to move on to the future.

Her first book, a collection of contemporary short stories titled Gnarled Bones And Other Stories, was nominated for a 2017 Summer Indie Book Award. She is currently working on a Gilded Age family saga, of which the first book, The Specter, is now available. She is also working on a historical mystery featuring a turn-of-the-century New Woman female sleuth. Both series take place in Northern California.

She lives in Texas but calls San Francisco and the Bay Area home. When she’s not writing, she’s reading classic literature and watching classic films.

For more information on Tam May and her work, feel free to check out her website at www.tammayauthor.com.

Fallen Leaf new mystery from Julie Cosgrove

Fallen Leaf, book 2 of the Relatively Speaking series

Julie B Cosgrove

Inspirational mystery

Write Integrity press

May, 2019

$2.99 ebook

$15.99 paperback

Buy on Amazon 

Buy on Barnes and Noble

About the Book

A DNA shocker.

Can Jessica prove the father she’s never known is innocent of a thirty-year-old murder?

It must be a mistake. When a DNA kit reveals the blond, blue-eyed Jessica Warren is half Cherokee, she confronts her adoptive parents who have always been tight-lipped about the circumstances surrounding her infancy. Reluctantly, they hand over her adoption certificate along with a letter written long ago by her biological mother about her father — in prison on a murder charge!

Jessica and her best friends, Bailey and Shannon, head for Oklahoma to locate her birth mother, seek the truth about her heritage, and discern if her father is as innocent as he claims. In the process of trying to prove he was wrongly imprisoned, the three women uncover a thirty-year-old mystery some powerful people never wanted revealed. Can Jessica trust a handsome, young district attorney from Tulsa to help her discern the truth, or does he have an agenda of his own?

As Jessica chases down the past and digs into the real reason she was put up for adoption, she soon learns the sins of the fathers really can be visited upon their children, just as the Bible states.

The father she’s never met wants Jessica to prove his innocence.

My Review

Three friends decide to research their family heritage through the popular DNA kits sold through genealogy research sites. Cosgrove’s Relatively Speaking stories are interlinked, but stand alone. Fallen Leaf is the second and focuses on Jessica, a woman who was adopted and learns she is half Cherokee, much to her surprise. With today’s internet search engines, and the help of her parents, it doesn’t take long to find her birth parents, who thirty years later have new lives. Jessica’s mother, Megan, has married her father’s best friend, and Jessica’s father is incarcerated for murder. Not exactly the dreamy story a young lady would like to hear.

As a single, divorced journalist who makes a living free-lance writing, Jessica decides, after meeting both parents in their new settings, to delve into the devastating event that changed everyone’s lives. With her friends Bailey and Shannon for support, she heads up to Oklahoma to meet the parents. A couple of days turns into a week in Oklahoma that promises to shift her world after a prison encounter with her birth father sets the friends into a whirlwind of discovery to unleash the truth of a thirty-year-old murder which was based on lies and still has the power to destroy.

A series of potential leads all come and go with the help of the hunky very young Oklahoma DA, Grady Collins, who is a friend of Bailey’s beau, Texan Detective Chase Montgomery. When things start to tie up too neatly, budding romance too good to be true, and an ordered car ride gone very wrong, it appears the DA has ulterior motives for assisting Jessica in clearing her father’s name. In a twist of memories and illusive facts and the help of modern forensic science, the crime may be solved, but its effects remain and change Jessica’s life. Once suspicious of men as a result of her disappointingly short marriage, Jessica learns the value of deep friendship and that not all men are unfaithful.

Billed as a cozy mystery, this faith-filled story will please those who enjoy a little toothy inspirational tale set in the real world of terrifying crime and racial injustice. It’s clean language with some illusion to horrific acts rings true and doesn’t cross lines between good story and decency. As with all of Cosgrove’s story, faith is the ground layer, but supports the characters, not driving them. Recommended for mystery readers junior high on up.

About the Author

Freelance writer, award-winning traditionally published author and speaker Julie B Cosgrove leads retreats, workshops, and Bible studies. She writes regularly for several Christian websites and publications and is a digital Missionary for Campus Crusades for Christ Canada's The Life Project managing over 25 devotional writers. Julie has one grown son and lives in Fort Worth, Texas. Visit her website at www.juliebcosgrove.com or her blog: WhereDidYouFindGodToday.com.

New from Carol McClain on Stinking Creek

About the Book:

NOTHING GOOD COMES FROM STINKING CREEK

Alone, again, after the death of her fiancé, abstract artist Kiara Rafferty finds herself on Stinking Creek, Tennessee. She wants out of this hillbilly backwater, where hicks speak an unknown language masquerading as English.  Isolated, if she doesn’t count the snakes and termites infesting her cabin, only a one-way ticket home to Manhattan would solve her problems.

Alone in a demanding crowd, Delia Mae McGuffrey lives for God, her husband, her family, and the congregation of her husband’s church. Stifled by rules, this pastor’s wife walks a fine line of perfection, trying to please them all. Now an atheist Yankee, who moved in across the road, needs her, too.

Two women. Two problems. Each holds the key to the other’s freedom.

June 21, 2019

Humminbird Press

$2.99 ebook

$12.99 print

Buy on Amazon https://amzn.to/2Xxxc4w

Buy on Barnes and Noble http://bit.ly/2KwEFNq

A brief interview with the Author:

Tell us about the theme of your novel.

The themes of A New York Yankee on Stinking Creek are nothing is as it seems and little difference exists in any extreme.

The five-year-old twins Macie and Dixon are mischievous, good-hearted children. They wander where they shouldn't, and thus, they run into snakes, fall into ponds and develop a strong friendship with the main character Kiara who supposedly hates children They can't believe she's an atheist, doesn't know how to pray, and doesn't go to church. Such oddity for a grown-up.

Macie loves Kiara's dreadlocks and tries to make her own. When her father forbids her from making a dreadful mess in her own hair trying to make it look like Kiara's, she practices on his beard. Macie wants to be an abstract artist just like her neighbor.   

What do you hope readers will tell others?

When the reader finishes this novel, she'll understand the fine line between extremes. She'll see, beyond a few inconsequential differences, the North and South, as well as the extremely conservative Christian and wild atheist. The two are more alike than different.

We can't judge superficially.

I hope to immerse the reader in the sweet and simple world of Stinking Creek, Tennessee. They'll laugh and cry and demand a sequel. 

What are you reading now?

Currently, I'm reading Take Me With You by Catherine Ryan Hyde. It's a clean, secular read about a burned-out teacher who unexpectedly finds himself taking two young boys on a road trip with him. Their father's jailed and had begged August Schroeder to take his boys while he serves his sentence. It's a compassionate, contemporary novel--my favorite genre.

What’s next for you, Carol?

As for me, the summer offers family visits and gardening and the world outdoors. I'm developing my marketing skills and planning my next novel where a woman discovers three neglected children whose parents overdose and die. The opioid epidemic in Campbell County is brutal. I want the reader to see its devastation.

About the Author:

Author Carol McClain is an eclectic artist and author of four books. Her interests vary as much as the Tennessee weather-running, bassoons, jazz, stained glass and, of course, writing. She's a transplant from New York who now lives in the hills of East Tennessee with her husband and overactive Springer spaniel. She is the president of ACFW Knoxville and the secretary of the Authors Guild of Tennessee. In her "free time" she teaches life skills in the local jail and supervises student teachers for WGU.

Guest Alexis A Goring shares Silver Platter Faith

Here we are with another Faithful Friday offering from returning guest Alexis A. Goring. 

Silver Platter Faith

A devotional by Alexis A. Goring

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. 

And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;

perseverance, character; and character, hope.

And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

~ Romans 5:1-5 [NIV]

Ever since I was a youth, I’d prayed to God to give me an unshakable faith in Him that withstands the test of time. When trials and tragedies entered my life, they shook me. But as I aged, I realized that when I asked God for an unshakable faith in Him, He wasn’t going to hand it to me on a silver platter. He had to immerse me into situations that would not only test my faith in Him but refine my faith and make it solid as gold.

As the Master Teacher, God knew that He would have to put me in situations that tested my faith in order to produce perseverance and result in that deeply anchored, unshakable faith that I crave.

As Romans 5:3 [NIV] states, “suffering produces perseverance.” Sometimes, God needs us to suffer so that we learn how to persevere and hold on to Him. He doesn’t send the storms into our lives to destroy us; He sends tough times to strengthen us! He wants us to have a faith deeply rooted in Him and the only way to get that is to go through things. If our life was always easy or as they say “peaches and cream,” we wouldn’t have faith in God. We may even be led astray thinking that we don’t need Him, which is not true because, without Him, we would be lost and never make it to Heaven.

There’s a song, “The Anchor Holds” and the lyrics speak to the message that I’m trying to convey. Here’s my paraphrase of the song, “The Anchor Holds” as performed by Christian recording artist Ray Boltz: Life’s journey can take you through dark nights, making you feel like you’re fighting for your life alone while trying not to drown in the open sea. But through it all, God’s eyes are watching you and yet the anchor holds! Though your body is battered, though the sails that help you move through life are torn, though you’re in the midst of a raging sea, despite the storm your faith in God is anchored deeper than the ocean and you will survive the storms of life because your faith is rooted in Him and He has the power to speak “Peace Be Still” and calm the waves around you. But if He chooses to take you through the storm and not lessen the magnitude of it all, know that you will stay safe as long as you stay in faith with Him.

The song also talks about one’s perspective when they’re young in their faith and compares their youthful viewpoint to their viewpoint when they’re older and more seasoned by life. As a person matures in their faith walk with God, they see that God uses the storms of life to prove His love for you! It is in tough times that we rely on God the most and in those moments, we see how good He is and we learn that no matter what happens, He is in control. We also find it to be true that there’s nothing we can do to make Him love us less and there’s nothing we can do to make Him love us more because He is our Heavenly Father and He loves us just because we are His creation.

The love of God is a kind, gentle and passionate force that will change you from the moment you experience it and radiate through you for as long as you cultivate your relationship with God. As God’s love radiates through you, it will draw people who need Him to you and before you know it, God is using you to change the world for the better with His love.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

I hope that you are encouraged to stay strong in Jesus Christ and that you too will ask God to give you a faith that’s deeply rooted and withstands the test of time. Trust me, as time moves on and this sin-ridden world gets worse, a faith that’s deeply anchored in God is exactly what you need to survive!

God bless you.

 Love, 

Alexis...

Alexis A. Goring is a college graduate with a degree in print journalism from Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, Maryland. Writing is her passion. She hopes that her stories will touch hearts, bring smiles to faces, and inspire minds to seek God whose love for humanity is unfailing.

 

This post was originally published on Whispers in Purple blog, April, 2019.
Used with permission.

Amazing YA dystopian Erin Lorence

Dove Strong, book 1

Erin Lorence

Christian fantasy

YA or New Adult near future

Released April, 2019

Books 2 & 3 coming in June and August

Watershed Books, an imprint of Pelican Ventures LLC

$5.99

$16.99

Buy on Amazon 

Buy on Publisher’s site 

Goodreads

About the Book

Dove Strong loves God. She loves standing chin up and fists clenched when facing Satan's attacks. But there's one thing she doesn't love—other people. So when this spiritually-gifted, antisocial teenager is chosen to join other believers in a trek across Satan's territory, rattlesnakes and evil-intentioned Heathen aren't her biggest challenges.

But failure isn't an option. In a month, the Christian Councils will decide the Reclaim, a vote on whether there'll be a war between Christ's followers and Satan's to take back America. It is up to Dove, God's messenger for peace, to reach her Council in time. Because if she doesn't, things could get bloody.

My review

In a near future fantastical setting where Christians are outcast, relegated to hide in the treetops, under the earth, or even in plain sight, Satan has power on Earth. The title character, teenage Dove, is the chosen one for the Strong family’s seven-year interval mission to take the all-important vote to the Council on whether to go to war. It’s a perilous journey from which many who attempt it never return.

God seems to have “handed out spiritual gifts with more of an open hand,” Dove says in her somewhat cynical first-person voice, one of many observances in this clever novel geared for young adults. Except that Satan has it in for this girl, and she’s going to need all the help she can get from other members of her Christian family to make it to the Council. Teamed with a reluctant girl from a neighboring underground-dwelling family, Melody, the tree-dwelling Dove must count on Melody’s danger-sensing gift along with her own ability to hear the voice of the Lord to keep them safe.

Dove and Melody encounter myriad confusion in the world of the Heathen, including the United Church of America. How could this be? But her greatest fears may be realized when she meets Heathens and gets a reputation for being a Heathen-lover. Filled with lovely language like spider-leg eyelashes, trilling voices, and suffering that wraps around Dove’s skull so tight she can’t think, this novel will make every reader consider the depth of faith which calls us.

God is still speaking when all else fails. Lorence has painted a vivid picture of a possibility when Christians with their one-way-to-salvation views are outlawed as perpetrators of hate crimes in a tolerant near future. But the Christians are still people with vastly different views on war and peace, defense and offense. When Dove’s certainly of a peaceful answer clashes with those who believe holy war is the only way to be free, how can anyone win? Dove Strong is the first of a planned trilogy with books 2 and 3 releasing yet this summer. While the reader isn’t dropped off a cliff at the end, you will want to read the stories that follow.

About the Author

As a young child, I fell in love with reading and with Jesus Christ. Over the years, my passion for both has grown. Currently living in Western Washington with my husband and two daughters, I’m excited to share with readers my first young adult Christian fiction, the Dove Strong Trilogy. https://www.erinlorence.com

Contemporary Fiction from Deborah L King

Glory Bishop

By Deborah King

Red Adept Publishing

June 4, 2019

Urban Womens Fiction

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Barnes and Noble

                  

About the Book: 

Glory Bishop lives her life in pieces. At work and with her friends, she reads novels, speaks her mind, and enjoys slow dances and stolen kisses with her boyfriend, JT. But at home, Glory follows strict rules and second-guesses every step. Though she dreams of going to college and living like a normal teenage girl, her abusive mother has other ideas.

When JT leaves to join the navy, Glory is left alone and heartsick. The preacher's son, Malcolm Porter, begins to shower her with lavish gifts, and her mother pushes Glory to accept his advances. Glory is torn between waiting for true love with JT or giving in to the overzealous Malcolm.

When a stranger attacks Glory on the street, Malcolm steps in to rescue her, and her interest in him deepens. But the closer she gets to him, the more controlling he becomes. Glory must eventually decide whether to rely on others or to be her own savior. 

My Review:

King’s tale of a teenager from a dysfunctional and spiritually damaged family falling in with an equally damaged husband shakes one’s soul.

Downtown Chicago, present day. Demons are alive and well—no, not spec fiction demons, the biblical demons that only Glory’s mother can experience. Glory Bishop’s mother is determined to raise a godly daughter according to standards that only mother can exact. The godliness comes about by regular beatings and a Spartan existence inside the home, and regular attendance at the opulent Baptist Church run by the “first couple,” who live an envious, glamorous life.

Glory is allowed to attend public high school where she enjoys her classes and friends, and is exposed to the evils of the world, which must regularly be expunged. One of Glory’s escapes is visiting the beauty salon where her mother goes for weekly appointments. Glory accidentally meets Herschel, the flamboyant and exemplar of parental kindness who for the coming years makes Glory’s life bearable. Glory has a secret—a wedding at age five with the love of her life, JT; a relationship Herschel helps hide. When Glory learns no relationship is sacred and her heart is broken, she feels adrift. Although creeped out by the attention of their pastor’s son Malcolm, a man a decade older who has hidden personality traits we suspect, Glory’s mother pushes them together. When the ominous music starts in the reader’s mind, we want to scream at Glory not to run into the dark woods where monsters hide, just like in the movies. We’re helpless as we watch events unfold and Glory is slowly sucked toward a cesspool covered with illusionary beauty.

Glory Bishop is a cautionary tale of societal prejudice toward outward appearances. Don’t let them fool you. Recommended for readers of contemporary family issue-laden stories with lots of colorful drama.

About the Author:

Deborah King has been a writer and storyteller her whole life. She published her first short story when she was seven years old. Her writing runs the gamut from poetry and women’s fiction, to espionage and science fiction. When she’s not writing, Deborah enjoys cartoons, cooking, photography, and Star Trek. Born and raised in Chicago, Deborah has managed to achieve all of her childhood dreams and still lives in the area with her husband and two youngest children. According to her daughter, she has “literally aced her life!”