Monday, January 20, 2025

Charlotte McMaster and the Messenger Angel by Terry Overton

About the Book

Book: Charlotte McMaster and the Messenger Angel

Author: Terry Overton

Genre: Middle Grade Reader Fiction

Release date: November 26, 2024

Charlotte McMaster is in trouble. Some innocent memes shared to the whole school have resulted in community service at a rehabilitation center for the elderly. But her time with Mrs. Abigail Hooper will at least get her out of the tension at home, where her father stays out late working and her mother spends a lot of time worrying.

But when Mrs. Hooper invites Charlotte to spend time in her garden, she tells Charlotte about an angel that appeared to her when her husband died. Charlotte is drawn to the elderly woman and soon finds herself bringing her best friend, Ellie, on her visits as well. Seeking for answers about her adoption and her biological parents, Charlotte continues to be drawn to the garden to see if she can see the angel for herself.

Will Charlotte ever be able to find the answers she is searching for? Or will her search tear her family apart?

Click here to get your copy!

I received a complimentary copy of this book, and all opinions given are my own and not an endorsement of all author’s opinions.

Author Interview

●What was your process to align your book with your target audience? This. Book was written when my youngest granddaughter was in middle school. Hanging around her and her friends helped me to see the world of middle school through the eyes of a middle schooler.

●What was the most challenging part of writing your book? This book covers topics such as foster care, adoption, family arguments and irregular parenting. It is hard to write about these topics in a manner that conveys what is happening in the family without making it sound too raw or too rough. It was my desire to convey how difficult these situations can yet hopefully not to trigger any readers who face similar issues. For this reason, humor and sympathy were used in an effort to keep a light tone.

●What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book? I always love using cross-generational characters to tell the story and inform the reader about scripture. In this book, an elderly neighbor is the one strengthening the faith of the younger characters.

●How do you weave Biblical truths into your writing? By using plot, subtext, and dialogue, young readers can learn about Scripture and Christian values.

●Are any of your characters based off of yourself or those close to you? Not based upon those close to me but the topics of adoption and fostering were inspired by my daughter who has fostered eleven children and adopted one to be raised alongside her own children.

●Was your writing process spontaneous as it came to you or very planned and organized? Why? Always a pantser writing spontaneously.

●Do you have a favorite time of day you are most productive in your writing? These days anytime it is quiet in my house-usually from 3:30 AM until midmorning.

●Why did you pick this genre for your book? I have been focusing on middle-grade Christian fiction for a while. It's not just fun to write, but it's a genre that allows me to reach young middle grade readers through entertaining characters and exciting plots, which I find incredibly rewarding.

●How many books do you personally own? I have no idea! We are still unpacking boxes from a recent move and the entire upstairs has boxes of books wall-to-wall in one large room.

●What is your next big goal as an author? Right now I am mulling over a new series…more to come on that in the future. I'm excited to share more about this new series and I hope it will be something that my readers will enjoy.

About the Author

Terry Overton is a retired university professor of educational and school psychology. She has an Ed.D. in Special Education and a Ph.D. in Psychology. Her professional experience includes teaching public school, teaching at the university level, and being a college dean. She has two children, seven grandchildren, one great granddaughter. Her writing and publication experiences include textbook and journal articles in the fields of special education and school psychology. She seeks to answer God’s call to share the good news and grow the church by writing Christian books and devotionals. Her books have won Firebird Book Awards, American Writing Winner Awards, Bookfest Winner Awards, Reader Views Silver Reviewers Award, and International Book Award Finalist. Her books examine real world events with a Christian worldview. She enjoys writing for young children, middle grade readers, YA fiction, and adult level novels. She and her husband live in the southern tip of Texas where they enjoy semi-tropical weather and spending time with their friends and family.

More from Terry

My daughter is an amazing person. After having three children, she and her husband felt God calling them to do more for children without parents. They fostered eleven children. But one year, they were asked to foster a newborn infant whose mother was no longer able to care for any of her children due to drug addiction. It was not that the child was rejected by his mother but that she could not care for him. My daughter brought him home from the hospital at the age of three days while he was having withdrawal symptoms from meth. After a few months, they decided to adopt the child. The process took a while because, for a short time, the child was allowed to return to his birth mother. He now lives with my daughter’s family, and he is an absolute delight and a great addition to the household. Charlotte McMaster and The Messenger Angel is dedicated to my daughter. It is a middle-grade reader about a middle school girl who, while wrestling with the question of being adopted and being rejected by her birth mother, meets a fascinating elderly lady. The vision of an angel provides help and guidance as this young girl comes to realize her adoptive parents were selected for her by God. This story conveys themes of healing, hope, and spiritual discovery. Through the character of Charlotte McMaster, the novel explores how a young girl, navigating the challenges of family tension and personal identity, seeks guidance from earthly and Heavenly sources. The elderly Mrs. Abigail Hooper tells Charlotte about her own experience with an angel. This introduces Charlotte to the idea of divine presence, sparking her curiosity about her past and adoption.

Blog Stops

Leslie’s Library Escape, January 18

Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, January 19

A Reader’s Brain, January 20 (Author Interview)

Library Lady’s Kid lit, January 21

Back Porch Reads, January 22 (Author Interview)

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, January 23

Simple Harvest Reads, January 24 (Author Interview)

Bizwings Blog, January 25

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, January 26

Texas Book-aholic, January 26

Artistic Nobody, January 27 (Author Interview)

Locks, Hooks and Books, January 28

Guild Master, January 29 (Author Interview)

For Him and My Family, January 29

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, January 30

Fiction Book Lover, January 31 (Author Interview)

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Terry is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon gift card and a copy of the book!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/00adcf54134

Friday, January 17, 2025

Trekking Toward Tenacity by Chris Morris

About the Book

Book: Trekking Toward Tenacity: Your Family’s Roadmap to Stronger Mental Health

Author: Chris Morris

Genre: Parenting / Christian Living / Mental Health

Release date: September 24, 2024

Empower your children with the gift of tenacity through these practical, meaningful tools for their mental and spiritual health.

Trekking toward Tenacity walks through Psalm 139 verse by verse, discovering how we can help our children develop mentally healthy habits. The goal is to coach our kids to be more tenacious because we live in a tumultuous world. It can be hard to stay focused on God and on mentally healthy habits in that tumult, but this book gives concrete ways to help kids to do just that.

By teaching parents practical application steps to implement with kids of all ages, ranging from preschool to adolescent, this book will give them new tools to support their families in the quest for better mental health. It will provide rock-solid encouragement for parents who are stressed out and wondering if they’re making the right choices for their families. It provides counterintelligence against the onslaught of increased risks of mental health challenges for children and young adults today.

Click here to get your copy!

I received a complimentary copy of this book and all opinions given are my own and not an endorsement of all author’s opinions.

Author Interview

● What was your process to align your book with your target audience?

My target audience is parents of children from preschool to high school. The biggest thing that I did to align my book with this audience was to identify different application points for each age range. As you might imagine, having a conversation with a five-year-old is drastically different than having a conversation on the same topic with a fifteen-year-old. So every chapter has distinct, age-appropriate activities to help the various age ranges grasp the topics at hand. This was a bit of a challenge to come up with, for the simple fact that I’m not a child development expert. Instead, I had to do a deep dive into all the facts around child development, then apply my learning to the topics at hand. These application activities were definitely theparts of every chapter that took me the longest to write. I don’t mean to say that they were hard necessarily, but it took me using my brain a bit differently than I normally do. Typically, I am a storyteller with a pastoral heart, so I integrate Scripture and stories together for my audience. In this book, there were really two audiences: the parents AND their kids. That required some additional thoughtfulness and time.

● Did you learn anything new during your writing process?

This is a weird one, but I learned that if I hole myself up in a room with almost nothing else to do, I can accomplish remarkable things as an author. Trekking Toward Tenacity was drafted over the course of eight days at an Air BnB in Portland, Oregon. I was feeling some stress about finding the time to pen this book for a lot of reasons that I won’t get into, and then my wife pitched the idea of doing a very serious writing retreat. Not the kind of retreat where you eat popcorn, reminisce with friends about the good old days, and get a little bit of writing done every day. No, she suggested that I plan to write a minimum of seven hours a day for about a week and see how much I can get accomplished during that type of compressed schedule. Well, Trekking Toward Tenacity is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 words. That’s the amount of writing work I can get done in eight days of focused energy. I never would have imagined in a million years that such a thing would be possible for me. I know that I’m a quick writer, but this honestly astonished me.

● Was your writing process spontaneous as it came to you or very planned and organized? Why?

The nature of Trekking Toward Tenacity is such that it lends itself to a very planned approach to writing. It is a verse-by-verse walk through Psalm 139, drawing from the deep theological wells that are found in this beautiful passage and then applying those truths to raising children of all ages to be resilient in their faith and their mental health. Because of the way this book is laid out, staying organized was pretty easy, to be honest. I also had a short outline in place before I ever started writing the book, where I captured all the key concepts I wished to cover in each chapter. Armed with these two things, I was able to fairly quickly execute the plan that I had already established for the book’s content.

● How many books do you personally own?

Hahaha, more than I can count. Especially when you include e-books. I did downsize about a year ago when we moved into our new house because we lost two bookshelves. That was incredibly painful. If you can believe it, I have repurchased several of the books I got rid of last year. If I were to put a random guess together of the number of books I own between physical books and e-books, I’d say around 1,200.

● What is your next big goal as an author?

I am focused for the next year or so on developing myself as a speaker. I believe that the content I have created and released in 2024 can make me a very appealing speaker for a variety of settings. Once I have established a decent track record there, it will be time to go back to the creative hub and find a new book idea. I have several rumbling around in my head right now, but trying to decide which to move forward with is really tricky. Right now, I have two book ideas related to mental health awareness and one devotional idea that I am toying with seriously. Only time will tell if these are publishable ideas, but I have a good feeling about all of them right now.

About the Author

Chris Morris is a certified mental health coach dedicated to promoting understanding of mental health issues within the church. Because of a lifelong struggle with depression and suicidality, Chris became committed to breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health and encouraging others to seek after holistic health.

As a writer and speaker, Chris has shared his personal story and insights with audiences across the country, inspiring many individuals to take control of their own health, break free from poor theological teaching placed upon them, and seek the support they need. He has published several books on mental health, the most recent being Resilient and Redeemed. His work has been featured in a number of media outlets, including CrossWalk, The Mighty, and Fathom Magazine.

Chris is deeply committed to creating a more compassionate and supportive world and church for individuals living with mental health issues. Through his writing and speaking, he is a powerful voice for change and a beacon of hope for those in need.

More from Chris

I literally wrote the book that I wish I had 20 years ago when I was raising my kids. Being a parent today is tumultuous. Especially in a post-COVID world, mental health is a strong contender for the biggest challenges facing our kids. There are plenty of books out there that give us theories on how to raise our kids, and plenty of books that are full of devotionals to walk through with our kids, but shockingly few books dedicated to coaching our kids to have tenacity.

In my experience, tenacity might be the biggest difference maker between seeing our kids move successfully through life and floundering. It’s a given that challenges will come, whether those struggles look like not making the varsity basketball team or something more serious. We simply have to help our kids know how to walk through the missed opportunities and hard times that will inevitably come into their lives.

Trekking Toward Tenacity does just that. We walk through Psalm 139 verse by verse and pull out practical, meaningful tips, tricks, and conversations to have with our kids to help them develop resilience. News flash: there’s no magic potion we can give our kids that gives them bounce-backability. Instead, this is found through conversation about life and God.

My favorite part of this book was writing the age-appropriate activities in the center of each chapter. Instead of only giving you theology or child psychology data without any practical application, Trekking Toward Tenacity includes specific activities you can try out with your kids. There’s obviously no guarantee that these ideas will work, but I can tell you that they worked for other kids. These are pie-in-the-sky concepts, but activities that have been tried in the real world.

If you’re looking for a book that will arm you with skills to coach your kids on how to develop tenacity in their lives, this is the book for you!

Blog Stops

Its Mama Safe, January 16

Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, January 17

A Reader’s Brain, January 18 (Author Interview)

Guild Master, January 19 (Author Interview)

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, January 19

Artistic Nobody, January 20 (Author Interview)

Texas Book-aholic, January 21

Aryn the Libraryan, January 22

Back Porch Reads, January 23 (Author Interview)

Locks, Hooks and Books, January 24

Simple Harvest Reads, January 25 (Author Interview)

Mary Hake, January 25

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, January 26

Fiction Book Lover, January 27 (Author Interview)

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, January 28

A Modern Day Fairy Tale, January 29 (Author Interview)

Giveaway

To celebrate his tour, Chris is giving away the grand prize of a $75 Amazon gift card, a copy of Trekking Toward Tenacity, and a free Audible copy of my previous book Whispers in the Pews: Voices on Mental Illness in the Church!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/00adcf54132

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Honeymoon’s Over by Carol McClain

About the Book

Book: Honeymoon’s Over

Author: Carol McClain

Genre: Contemporary Christian Fiction

Release date: September 27, 2023

Honeymoon’s Over

For better or worse.

Easy vows for newlyweds Chantel and Charlie. Having been widowed, they knew the worst of love was years away. Furthermore, at fifty, they wouldn’t live long enough for the bad to blossom.

Then they came home from their honeymoon.

Chantel’s pregnant daughter Sissy, living with them during her husband’s deployment, must remain on bed rest. Histrionic and bored, she’s a … challenge.

Chantel’s vegetarian son Graham moves in for a few weeks to help with his sister, but something doesn’t seem right. He never got along with his military-loving, meat-eating sibling. He didn’t have ulterior motives for coming to help, did he?

Charlie’s married daughter, Margo, could certainly enumerate the issues these adult children her father’s new wife had. On top of everything, how could her father have chosen that woman?

Then there’s Charlie’s father—lost in old-age absentmindedness. Certainly, he was only forgetful.

Thank heavens for jobs they love that get them out of the house. Except …

Should they have vowed for worse or better?

Click here to get your copy!

I received a complimentary copy of this book and all opinions given are my own and not an endorsement of all author’s opinions.

Author Interview

Are any of your characters based off of yourself or those close to you?

Virtually all my characters have characteristics of those close to me—including me. Honeymoon’s Over is a classic example.

I based my latest novel on my brother’s second marriage. He moved his Antifa-loving, vegan son in with him and my new sister-in-law. Kathy had gluten issues, and his son, as a vegan,ate only gluten (exaggeration).

My brother’s daughter didn’t like his new wife—perhaps jealousy dominated her.

His wife also had an aging mother with dementia, and an adult son with OCD.

Add to the mix, three needy dogs

On top of everything, this union was viewed through my lens of humor. How could it succeed?

Don’t worry. It did.

The marriage was loving and successful despite these issues.Best of all, our family has Kathy—a fabulous sister.

In Borrowed Lives, the world of addiction inspired me. For many years, I worked with addicts. In my naiveté, I couldn’t fathom what humans put others through. Thus, gathered from my mentoring, the character Bean didn’t know her real name—based on a woman who didn’t know her name until she was sixteen.

When my characters don’t resemble others, I resembled them. In one book, I became an “addict” for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. In another, I fell in love with Africa. With the next book, I wanted to become a paramedic.

Yep. I live in an alternate universe.

Was your writing process spontaneous as it came to you or very planned and organized? Why?

To my dismay, I’m a pantser. Even as a child, I could not outline. Teachers would tell us to outline an essay and then write it. I couldn’t. I’d ask myself (too timid to confront my teacher), “How can I know what I’m going to write before I write it?” So, I would write my essay, and then form my outline.

I always graded quite well on those outlines.

In my earlier works, seat-of-the-pants worked well. Anything I wrote, I hadn’t written before, so novelty could reign. Now with eight novels under my belt, looking for different directions in my writing becomes a tangled mess.

My friends who outline can complete their works swiftly. I slog through bogs of false starts, and rewrite and refine before release.

Do you have a favorite time of day you are most productive in your writing?

For me, mornings are the greatest time to write. My mind is clear, and my schedule not cluttered with all the “to-do” things we must do. Yes, the busyness of life still exists, but my natural rhythm is to be quiet and to think and dream in the morning.

Why did you pick this genre for your book?

I write women’s fiction because I love people and their messy, beautiful lives. I’m philosophical, so noodling tangled issues intrigues me. The ending in women’s fiction isn’t fixed as in romance. For me, every book is different, ends differently, has different issues.

In other genres? I cannot figure out who the bad guy is in thrillers, nor how to solve the problems. Same goes for mystery. I love suspense, but I have to leave that genre to Steven James and Harlan Coben.

How many books do you personally own?

I’ve never counted. (Plus, counting would take forever and my dyslexic math skills would have me recounting after every seventeen—or was that seventy-one?—books.

Once my bookshelves can’t hold more tomes, I’m off to McKay’s to sell them (and of course come home with a couple of new ones.)

I love books. When I buy a new one, it’s as good as a precious gem piece of jewelry.

And at this moment—I actually own thousands because I discovered the library app Libby, and I own two library cards. So let the world fall away and let me read.

About the Author

Carol McClain is the award-winning author of five novels dealing with real people facing real problems. She is a consummate encourager, and no matter what your faith might look like, you will find compassion, humor and wisdom in her complexly layered, but ultimately readable work.

Aside from writing, she’s a skilled glass artist who has just made a foray into creating high-end jewelry. She’s also an avid hiker. She teaches Bible studies and mentors teens.

She lives in East Tennessee with her husband and too many animals to mention.

More from Carol

Disclaimer #1: Beware.

If we get to know each other, the humor of your life is liable to become fodder for my work. (Of course, with permission. Occasionally!) But don’t worry. I don’t write suspense, so you’ll never be in danger.

Background:

My brother married a widow when they were in their fifties.

He was a meatatarian. “Vegetables have rights,” he’d declare as he reached for a second round of bacon. He’d then heap on fried potatoes. The tubers were his nod to vegetables.

His wife was gluten intolerant and a health food lover of all foods green.

When he moved in with his wife, so did his vegan son who lived on gluten (and very few veggies). Gluten found its way onto her countertops, her refrigerator shelves, and dishes he didn’t wash.

Her son lived with her as well and came arrayed with the eccentricities my nephew lacked. The two sons made a complete, chaotic pair.

Add to them a diabetic mother who was starting dementia and my bet was on the fact this marriage was doomed.

Fortunately, I’m not prophetic. They remained happily married—despite my brother’s eating predilection. However, their situation made me laugh and became the fodder for Honeymoon’s Over.

Disclaimer #2: no HIPPA rules or privacy issues or personal matter have been disclosed. Names have been changed to protect the guilty (just don’t read the dedication, then the name change is mute.)

Disclaimer #3: If you’re expecting a sad, tearjerker, you’ll be disappointed. Oh, you will cry—tears of laughter. You’ll chortle throughout Honeymoon.