Ready-Made Family
April 2009-Steeple Hill Love Inspired–IN STORES NOW!
(Received 4.5 Stars from Romantic Times)
Wings of Refuge Series

Ready-Made Family

Ready-Made Family
Amelia North needs refuge, and finds it–in Refuge, Illinois. Stranded there after a car wreck, the single mother expects to be cold-shouldered. After all, she’s already been rejected by her parents, her church and her daughter’s father. Instead, she finds a town full of people with open hands and hearts…including pararescue jumper Ben Dillinger.
Ben wants to help Amelia and her daughter find safety and stability. Instead, he finds himself freefalling—right into love with the ready-made family.

Cheryl Wyatt

Cheryl Wyatt’s closest friends would never dream the mayhem she plots during announcements at church. An RN-turned-SAHM, joyful chaos rules her home, and she delights in the stealth moments God gives her to write. She’s convinced that having been born on a Naval base on Valentine’s Day destined her to write military romance. She stays active in her church and in her laundry room. Her debut novels (Books 1 and 2-Wings of Refuge Series-Steeple Hill) received Romantic Times Top Picks. In addition, her debut books received the honor of coming in at #1 and #4 on eHarlequins’s Top Ten Most-Blogged-About-Books, lists which included several NYT Bestselling authors. Cheryl is currently serving as Vice President of American Christian Fiction Writers. www.acfw.com
To receive her quarterly newsletter for updates on new releases and contests with GREAT prizes (think: free books, CDs, iPods, and a Kindle!), visit her Web site at www.cherylwyatt.com and sign up in the space provided. Cheryl respects your privacy and will not share your e-mail address with a third party.
Her current contest:
KINDLE CONTEST—NO FOOLIN!
Starting April Fool’s day 2009 I’ll be running a Kindle contest. Only my newsletter subscribers will be eligible for entry. To receive those quarterly newsletters as well as more information on the Kindle contest, visit www.cherylwyatt.com and sign up in the newsletter space provided. This is a double-opt-in feature and you will receive an e-mail prompting you to confirm that you wish to receive the newsletter. I respect your privacy and will not share your e-mail address with a third party. Winner will be announced on Independence Day 2009 on my newsletter and blog.

AUTHOR CONTACT INFO:
Web site: www.CherylWyatt.com
Cheryl’s Blog: http://www.scrollsquirrel.blogspot.com

Though Ready-Made Family is part of Cheryl’s Wings of Refuge Series, each story stands alone.
A Soldier’s Promise and A Soldier’s Family are still available at most online booksellers.
Look for Cheryl’s upcoming Wings of Refuge books:
A Soldiers Reunion-June 2009
Soldier Daddy-October 2009
A Soldier’s Devotion-January 2010
Home Sweet Hero (tentative title)-Spring 2010

 

If Tomorrow Never Comes
By: Marlo Schalesky

If Tomorrow Never Comes:

They say you should reach for your dreams. 
            This time, they’re wrong…

Childhood sweethearts Kinna and Jimmy Henley had simple dreams—marriage, children, a house by the sea…everything they needed for happily ever after. What they didn’t plan on was years of infertility, stealing those dreams, crushing their hopes.  Now, all that’s left is the memory of young love, and the desperate need for a child to erase the pain. Until…

Kinna rescues an elderly woman from the sea, and the threads of the past, present, and future weave together to reveal the wonder of one final hope. One final chance to follow not their dreams, but God’s.  Can they embrace the redemptive power of love before it’s too late? Or will their love be washed away like the castles they once built upon the sand? The past whispers to the present.  And the future shivers.  What if tomorrow never comes?

Marlo Schalesky
www.marloschalesky.com

A Bit About Marlo:

Marlo Schalesky is the award winning author of seven books, including her latest novel, If Tomorrow Never Comes, which combines a love story with a surprise ending twist to create a new type of novel that she hopes will impact readers at their deepest levels. Marlo’s other books include Beyond the Night (just nominated for a Christy Award – yay!), Veil of Fire (winner of the 2008 ACFW Book of the Year, historical category), and Empty Womb, Aching Heart- Hope and Help for Those Struggling with Infertility.

She’s had over 600 articles published in various Christian magazines, including Focus on the Family, Today’s Christian Woman, Decision, Moody Magazine, and Discipleship Journal. She has contributed to Dr. Dobson’s Night Light Devotional for Couples, Tyndale’s Book of Devotions for Kids #3, and Discipleship Journal’s 101 Small Group Ideas. She is a speaker and a regular columnist for Power for Living.

Marlo is also a California native, a small business owner, and a graduate of Stanford University (with a B.S. in Chemistry!). In addition, she has earned her Masters in Theology, with an emphasis in Biblical Studies, from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Marlo lives with her husband and five young children in a log home in Central California.
When she’s not changing diapers, doing laundry, or writing books, Marlo loves sipping Starbucks white mochas, reading the New Testament in Greek, and talking about finding the deep places of God in the disappointments of life.If Tomorrow Never Comes is available for purchase at:

Available through:

Amazon

Christian Book Distributors

And fine bookstores everywhere!

****
An Interview with Marlo:

How did you come up with the concept for If Tomorrow Never Comes?

If Tomorrow Never Comes began with a single image that popped powerfully into my mind – an old man, walking along a foggy beach at dawn, bending to pick up an old locket from the sand.  The rest of the story grew from there.  The funny thing is, when you read the book, you’ll find that Kinna finds the locket, not an old man.  But originally the image of the locket in the sand was so intriguing to me that I kept thinking about it until a story began to develop.

How closely is If Tomorrow Never Comes based on your personal experience? 

In If Tomorrow Never Comes, the main characters are struggling with the fall-out from infertility.  I’ve spent most of my adult life – 15 years – dealing with infertility and miscarriage.  I’ve had some successes along the way, and whole lot of failure, disappointment and pain.
So, as far as plot-line goes – what happens to the characters and how they’re changed and challenged through the book – that is uniquely Kinna & Jimmy’s story.  But the emotions, the fears, the questions they face are things I drew from my own experience.

The longing for a baby that seems like it will never be fulfilled.  I’ve been there.  Month after month of trying and failing.  Turning into year after year.  I’ve been there.  Frustration.  Doubt.  Wondering how God could possibly love me in the midst of this.  Been there.  Having to pry my white-knuckled fingers off my own hopes and dreams.  Been there.  Choosing to love anyway.  Choosing to believe anyway.  Choosing to trust God anyway.  Been there.

It seems that just about every deep and meaningful thing I’ve learned about God, I can point to my journey through infertility and say, “Yeah, infertility taught me that.”  It taught me that I’m not the god of my life.  God is.  It taught me there are things I cannot control, cannot achieve, no matter how hard I try.  And sometimes we must choose to live the life God has given us, with love and hope, even when it’s not the life we dreamed. 

Because infertility taught me that God calls us not to the pursuit of our dreams, but to love.  “Love one another,” Jesus says.   “Love your neighbor as yourself.”   God taught me that through the journey of my own infertility.  My hope is that If Tomorrow Never Comes will reveal the same truths to others as well.

What is the symbolism for the title If Tomorrow Never Comes?

The idea behind the title is that the choices and decisions we make today dramatically impact our future, our “tomorrows,” and not only ours but the tomorrows of others as well.  Choosing to love, choosing to do right despite pain, disappointment, and sorrow, allows tomorrow to come.  But choices made out of desperation, fear, and clinging to our own desires can cut off the future God wants for us.

We don’t know, we can’t see, what tomorrow holds.  So all we can do is do what’s right now, love now, trust now.  Because God sees the whole of our lives and weaves all things together, even those hard and painful things, in a way that will make a beautiful masterpiece in the Kingdom of God. 

So, really, the title means that if we choose love today, if we choose sacrificial love, God will hold our tomorrows in His hand.  That’s what’s at the heart of If Tomorrow Never Comes . . .the choice to love, the choice to believe, the choice to let go of our dreams in order to embrace His.  To do it today, for the sake of all our tomorrows.

Do you have a favorite character in If Tomorrow Never Comes? Why?

My favorite is Thea (her name is short for Alethia, the Greek word for Truth), who is the old woman whom Kinna rescues from drowning in chapter one.  Throughout the story, all the reader knows is that Thea is there for a reason – she has a purpose in Kinna & Jimmy’s lives.  With wry humor and odd confrontations, she steers Jimmy & Kinna toward reconciliation and one another.  She helps them to remember their past love story.

What I like best about her is her humor mixed with mystery.  She’s just fun.    She thinks she’s in a dream, and doesn’t want to become some crazy old lady with a houseful of cats.  But despite her doubts, she chooses to care about Jimmy and Kinna and help them, no matter what.  She chooses right, and as it turns out, that makes all the difference, for them, and for her too.

How did you choose the story line?

Well, the story line I chose isn’t the one you’ll read in the book.  The story line you’ll read is the one the characters insisted on.  Mostly it was Kinna’s fault – she simply wouldn’t do what I’d outlined for her to do!  In fact, I rewrote the first third of the book a dozen times trying to convince her to act the way I wanted.  But she wouldn’t  cooperate.  Just like in the story, she had her own plans!  So finally I gave up and allowed the story to change and flow as the characters dictated.  Needless to say, that worked out a lot better.  So, I invite the reader to experience the story of If Tomorrow Never Comes much as I experienced it – page by page, scene by scene, being surprised and delighted by each turn of events.

What message would you like your readers to take away from If Tomorrow Never Comes?

Our culture tells us that we can do anything we set our minds to, we can accomplish any dream . . . and we should.  “Reach for your dreams,” we say, as if that is the highest goal of humankind.  Success posters (and platitudes) abound.

But 15 years of infertility and miscarriage have taught me that we are not the gods of our lives.  There are things we cannot control, no matter how hard we try.

Perhaps that is why God calls us not to the pursuit of our dreams, but to love.  “Love one another,” Jesus exhorts in John 13:34-35, and also gives, as the second greatest commandment, the exhortation to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Lev. 19:18, and all 3 Synoptics)

So, in our Grasp-Your-Dreams culture, I hope this book will stand against the tide, calling people instead to the way of love – to the way of laying down their lives for others instead of clutching their own dreams and plans.

I hope readers will be inspired to fight for their marriages with sacrificial love, and will be challenged to look to the future for the rewards of loving sacrificially, and to the past to remember the seeds of real love. 

What is your goal or mission as a writer?

I hope to make God’s love in the midst of trials and tragedies evident and unmistakable.  I dream of opening readers’ eyes to the wonder and mystery of our incredible, vivid God.  And I hope the vision of Him will take their breath away.

Are there any other new projects on the horizon?

Yes!  My third “love story with a twist,” currently titled Shades of Morning, is due out in early 2010.  I’m in the midst of writing it now and am enjoying the characters and plot.  For those who read If Tomorrow Never Comes, watch for Marnie, the quirky owner of the coffeeshop and bookstore, who will be the main character in Shades of Morning.

Marnie has her life just where she wants it.  At least that’s what she tells herself – her past is hidden, her regrets locked tightly in a box on her shelf, and her bookstore and coffeeshop business is booming.  No one knows what she’s done, who she’s been.  That is, until the man she once loved finds her again and brings startling news – she’s now the guardian of her 15-year-old nephew, a boy she never knew existed.  And to make matters worse, when the boy arrives, she discovers he has Down Syndrome.  The past collides with the present, the box of regrets is exposed, and Marnie’s world shattered and rebuilt through the love of one special boy who makes all things new. 

And Marlo’s book Beyond the Night is a 2009 Christy Finalist. Congratulations, Marlo! Beyond the Night is currently on my nightstand, and I look forward to reading it!

Cindy here: I’ve enjoyed many DiAnn Mills books. She crafts great stories, and although I’m not finished reading Breach of Trust yet, it’s pulling me in like the current of the Niagara River–just before the falls.

DiAnn would like to encourage readers to visit her website’s homepage where you can view the trailer for Breach of Trust, Book 1 in the Call of Duty series by Tyndale House Publishers.  While there, please sign-up for her monthly e-newsletter so she can stay in-touch with her readers.

Paige Rogers survived every CIA operative’s worst nightmare.

 

A covert mission gone terribly wrong.

 

A betrayal by the one man she thought she could trust.

 

Forced to disappear to protect the lives of her loved ones, Paige has spent the last several years building a quiet life as a small-town librarian. But the day a stranger comes to town and starts asking questions, Paige knows her careful existence has been shattered.

 

He is coming after her again. And this time, he intends to silence her for good.

 

Take a look around at the people you see every day. The friendly clerk at the coffee shop. The cheerful woman who teaches Sunday school. The quiet, unassuming librarian. Wouldn’t you be shocked if one of them turned out to be a former CIA operative with a secret too big to keep under wraps?

 

It could happen.

 

This edge-of-your-seat thriller is the first book in the new Call of Duty series. In Breach of Trust, Paige Rogers is a former CIA agent who is living incognito as a librarian in the sleepy little town of Split Creek, Oklahoma, after experiencing a life-altering disaster in the line of duty. But the unwelcome past has suddenly turned up to find her, in the form of a ruthless politician who is out to destroy everything Paige holds dear. She knows too much, and he’s desperate to silence her. Can she bring him down before he ruins her life? And most of all, what would the Lord want her to do?

 

 –Endorsements from back cover:

 

“[Breach of Trust] is romance with an operative kick when the quiet life Paige Rogers enjoys is sent into overdrive by a past that refuses to stay buried.” —Tamera Alexander, best-selling author of From a Distance

 

“DiAnn Mills has crafted a tightly woven tale of danger and deception. Breach of Trust is a page turner to the very end.”—Kathy Herman, author of The Grand Scheme

 

“Mills creates extraordinary characters wrestling with profound life issues in the face of immediate danger. A surefire recipe for a great read!”—Jill Elizabeth Nelson, author of Reluctant Smuggler

 

 –What people are saying about Breach of Trust:

 

“DiAnn Mills certainly knows how to stay one step ahead of her readers in Breach of Trust!” Kim Ford, CFBA

 

“Readers who enjoy the works of Dee Henderson, especially her O’Malley series, will love Breach of Trust.” – Harriet Klausner

 

“If you have been waiting for a story to match Dee Henderson’s O’Malley series or Susan May Warren’s Team Hope, look no further than Breach of Trust, the first in the Call of Duty series. Breach of Trust is romantic suspense at its finest.” Rel Mollet – Relz Reviewz

 

–DiAnn has Chapter 1 of Breach of Trust, Discussion Questions suitable for Book Clubs, Reviews, etc. available on her website: www.diannmills.com

 

You can purchase your own copy of Breach of Trust at bookstores everywhere including:
www.tyndale.com,
www.bn.com,
www.amazon.com,
www.christianbook.com
and at your favorite Christian bookstore.

 

DiAnn Mills

Award-winning author DiAnn Mills launched her career in 1998 with the publication of her first book. Currently she has over forty books in print and has sold over 1.5 million copies.

 

DiAnn believes her readers should “Expect an Adventure.” Six of her anthologies have appeared on the CBA best seller list. Three of her books were selected by Heartsong Presents as best historical of the year. Five of her books have placed in the American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year awards from 2003 to 2007. She also received Inspirational Reader’s Choice awards in 2005 and 2007. She was a Christy Award Finalist 2008.

 

DiAnn is a founding board member for American Christian Fiction Writers, a member of Inspirational Writers Alive, Romance Writers of America’s Faith, Hope and Love, and Advanced Writers and Speakers Association. DiAnn is also a mentor for the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild. DiAnn’s home is in Houston, Texas.

 

www.diannmills.com - Expect an Adventure

 

WHEN LOVE BLOOMS

WHEN LOVE BLOOMS
by Robin Lee Hatcher
Zondervan, February 2009

She could say what she wanted. Emily Harris didn’t belong in the hard life of the Blakes. She would wilt there like a rose without water. He’d be sending her back to Boise before the first snows. He’d be willing to bet on it.
From the moment Gavin Blake set eyes on Emily Harris, he knew she would never make it in the rugged high country where backbreaking work and constant hardship were commonplace. Beautiful and refined, she was accustomed to the best life had to offer. Heaven only knew why she wanted to leave Boise to teach two young girls on a ranch miles from nowhere. He’d wager it had to do with a man. It always did when a beautiful woman was involved.
Emily wanted to make some sort of mark on the world before marriage. She wanted to be more than just a society wife. Though she had plenty of opportunities back East, she had come to the Idaho high country looking to make a difference. Gavin’s resistance to her presence made her even more determined to prove herself. Perhaps changing the heart of just one man may make the greatest difference of all.
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REVIEWS:
Penned with the descriptive nibs of all the five senses, Robin Lee Hatcher transports the reader to the magnificent high country of Idaho in a thoroughly engaging tale of love and wounded heroes. When Love Blooms is layered with appealing characters, and I was so at home with the story’s cast, I felt like I was like viewing my own family history. I have yet to read a Hatcher novel that didn’t entrance me from the first page, and with a unique plot for a romance, When Love Blooms is no exception. Novel Reviews and I give it a high recommendation.
— Novel Reviews
Christy Award winner Hatcher’s (Wagered Heart; Catching Katie) latest novel is a historical romance set in the rugged high country of Idaho in the late 1800s… Populated with lively characters, this delightful title deserves a place in [Christian Fiction] and historical romance collections and will appeal to those who enjoy Lori Wick or Lori Copeland. Recommended for Public Libraries.
— Library Journal
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robin Lee Hatcher discovered her vocation as a novelist after many years of reading everything she could put her hands on, including the backs of cereal boxes and ketchup bottles. The winner of the Christy Award for Excellence in Christian Fiction (Whispers from Yesterday), the RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance (Patterns of Love and The Shepherd’s Voice), two RT Career Achievement Awards (Americana Romance and Inspirational Fiction), and the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award, Robin is the author of over 60 novels, including Catching Katie, named one of the Best Books of 2004 by the Library Journal.
Robin enjoys being with her family, spending time in the beautiful Idaho outdoors, reading books that make her cry, and watching romantic movies. She is passionate about the theater, and several nights every summer, she can be found at the outdoor amphitheater of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, enjoying Shakespeare under the stars. She makes her home on the outskirts of Boise, sharing it with Poppet the high-maintenance Papillon.