Easy Way to Give and Get!

Most of you may know that I spent some time in Ukraine--11 months, to be exact. I fell in love with the people, and I fell in love with some precious orphans we used to go visit. That's why this project Jill Williamson is doing is very special to me. She's trying to help a couple raise enough money to adopt an orphan from Eastern  Europe. So, without further ado, I give you the amazing, two-time Christy-Award winning author, Jill Williamson!

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens. She’s a Jesus follower, a Whovian, and a recovering fashion design assistant, who was raised in Alaska. She now lives in Eastern Oregon with her family and a whole lot of deer (and cows).

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s almost Christmas! I love Christmas. I wanted a Christmas wedding. I wanted to carry a bouquet of poinsettias, I wanted a Christmas tree where people could put the wedding gifts, I wanted hooded cloaks for me and my bridesmaids to wear, and I wanted to leave the reception in a one horse open sleigh.

Alas, I got married in June.  But if I could travel back in time, I’d tell myself to do it anyway. Nothing better than Christmas in June, right?

Christmas makes me think of giving. I’m a writer. And writers have a unique opportunity in the giving department. Whenever a person opens one of our books, it’s like we’ve been invited into their home to speak to them. It’s precious. And humbling. Like Spiderman learns: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Writers are charged with doing our jobs well, and respecting the power we are given. And it’s a gift that publishers and readers give to us too. I’m thankful for that.

I recently learned that some dear friends of mine were trying to adopt a girl from Eastern Europe. Adoption is expensive, and until they raise over $40,000, little Sydney can’t come home. Just learning about their desire to adopt and the fact that they’ve been unable to have children of their own put tears in my eyes. I wanted to help. But I don’t have much extra money right now. Plus it’s Christmastime, and we wrecked our van hitting a cow. (We live in free range territory.) So what could I possibly give?

Sydney—soon to be—Haydon

Well, whoever said the only way to give was by donation?

So, I self-published an enovella, which means short ebook. It’s book length is 120 pages. Of course, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo will keep their cut, but 100% of my proceeds will go toward Sydney’s adoption!

Many things had to fall into place for this to happen, and many have given to Sydney’s cause already. Jeff Gerke gave me permission to do this project when Marcher Lord Press holds the rights to my storyworld. In doing so, he also gave up his right to make money off the story. Kirk DouPonce donated a cover, and teens from his church volunteered to model. Rebecca LuElla Miller, the freelance editor I hired, gave me a big discount on editing. As did Kerry Nietz on ebook design. My agent, Amanda Luedeke, waived her right to her 15%. And Chris Kolmorgen had an hour-long, (midnight for me, 2:00 a.m. for him) brainstorming session with me, helping with some last-minute content editing.

The result is Chokepoint: Mini-Mission 1.5. This project is part of The Mission League series with Marcher Lord Press. It takes place after book one and before book two, but reads good on its own too. Here’s a little bit about the project:

Ever since I returned from Moscow, life is a full court press. Mission League field agents are everywhere. All the time. Watching. Waiting for me to fulfill a sixty-year-old prophecy. When some baddies try to guy-nap me, the field agents threaten to move me and Grandma Alice to some random hick town, to give us new fake identities until the prophecy is fulfilled.

Not going to happen.

I’ve got one chance to stay in Pilot Point. I have to prove to the agents that I can stay safe. Have to make this work. For basketball. For Kip. For Beth.

So, bring it, baddies. It’s game on.

100% OF THE PROCEEDS FROM THIS ENOVELLA GO TOWARD THE ADOPTION OF LITTLE SYNDEY FROM EASTERN EUROPE. PLEASE, HELP BRING SYDNEY HOME.

 

Chokepoint is $2.99 and is available on Kindle, Nook, or Kobo. All the proceeds go to Sydney’s adoption.

 

Click here to view Chokepoint: Mini-Mission 1.5 on Amazon Kindle

Click here to view Chokepoint: Mini-Mission 1.5 on B&N Nook

Click here to view Chokepoint: Mini-Mission 1.5 on Kobo

 

And click here to visit Kevin and Wendy’s blog Haydon Family Growing’s On. to learn more about their adoption adventure.

How about you? Do you do something to give to a cause each year? What are some other ways you give? Please share in the comments.

Excerpt from Talking to the Dead by Bonnie Grove

I wanted to share with you this new book by Bonnie Grove, Talking to the Dead. My friend read the book and loved it so much, she decided to create a blog tour for it! I figured if she liked it THAT much, it must be good! So I agreed to help get the word out about this book!

First, here's a bit about Bonnie:

Bonnie Grove started writing when, as a teenager, her parents bought a typewriter (yes, during the age of dinosaurs). She clacked out a terrible romance novel filled with typos and bad grammar that her mom loved, and she's been turning out improving prose ever since.

Her non-fiction, Your Best You: Discovering and Developing the Strengths God Gave You, came out of her experience working with families in crisis. She believes people have the knowledge and ability to make changes in their life without being told what to do or how to do it. And, oddly enough, has managed to write a book that helps people do just that.

Her novel, Talking to the Dead, came out of that crazy place inside her head that has more questions then answers. Questions about grief, love, sex, God, therapy, and how laughter can make everything seem okay--even if just for a moment or two. It has won a few awards, and has been internationally published in languages she doesn't speak.

Bonnie has completed several novels since Talking to the Dead, and is currently working her butt off to ensure they see they make their way into your hands.

Bonnie is married to a cute guy named Steve, they have two children, and they make their home in Saskatchewan.

Now here is the excerpt from Talking to the Dead.

Chapter 1

Kevin was dead and the people in my house wouldn’t go home. They mingled after the funeral, eating sandwiches, drinking tea, and speaking in muffled tones. I didn’t feel grateful for their presence. I felt exactly nothing.

Funerals exist so we can close doors we’d rather leave open. But where did we get the idea that the best approach to facing death is to eat Bundt cake? I refused to pick at dainties and sip hot drinks. Instead, I wandered into the back
yard.

I knew if I turned my head I’d see my mother’s back as she guarded the patio doors. Mom would let no one pass. As a recent widow herself, she knew my need to stare into my loss alone.

I sat on the porch swing and closed my eyes, letting the June sun warm my bare arms. Instead of closing the door on my pain, I wanted it to swing from its hinges so the searing winds of grief could scorch my face and body. Maybe I hoped to die from exposure.

Kevin had been dead three hours before I had arrived at the hospital. A long time for my husband to be dead without me knowing. He was so altered, so permanently changed without my being aware.

I had stood in the emergency room, surrounded by faded blue cotton curtains, looking at the naked remains of my husband while nurses talked in hushed tones around me. A sheet covered Kevin from his hips to his knees. Tubes, which had either carried something into or away from his body, hung disconnected and useless from his arms. The twisted remains of what I assumed to be some sort of breathing mask lay on the floor. “What happened?” I said in a whisper so faint I knew no one could hear. Maybe I never said it at all. A short doctor with a pronounced lisp and quiet manner told me Kevin’s heart killed him. He used difficult phrases; medical terms I didn’t know, couldn’t understand. He called it an episode and said it was massive. When he said the word massive, spit flew from his mouth, landing on my jacket’s lapel. We had both stared at it.

When my mother and sister, Heather, arrived at the hospital, they gazed speechlessly at Kevin for a time, and then took me home. Heather had whispered with the doctor, their heads close together, before taking a firm hold on my arm and walking me out to her car. We drove in silence to my house. The three of us sat around my kitchen table looking at each other.

Several times my mother opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Our words had turned to cotton, thick and dry. We couldn’t work them out of our throats. I had no words for my abandonment. Like everything I knew to be true had slipped out the back door when I wasn’t looking.

“What happened?” I said again. This time I knew I had said it out loud. My voice echoed back to me off the kitchen table.

“Remember how John Ritter died? His heart, remember?” This from Heather, my younger, smarter sister. Kevin had died a celebrity’s death.

From the moment I had received the call from the hospital until now, I had allowed other people to make all of my bereavement decisions. My mother and mother-in-law chose the casket and placed the obituary in the paper. Kevin’s boss at the bank, Donna Walsh, arranged for the funeral parlor and even called the pastor from the church that Kevin had attended until he was sixteen to come and speak. Heather silently held my hand through it all. I didn’t feel grateful for their help.

I sat on the porch swing, and my right foot rocked on the grass, pushing and pulling the swing. My head hurt. I tipped it back and rested it on the cold, inflexible metal that made up the frame for the swing. It dug into my skull. I invited the pain. I sat with it; supped with it.

I opened my eyes and looked up into the early June sky. The clouds were an unmade bed. Layers of white moved rumpled and languid past the azure heavens. Their shapes morphed and faded before my eyes. A Pegasus with the face of a dog; a veiled woman fleeing; a villain; an elf. The shapes were strange and unreliable, like dreams. A monster, a baby—I wanted to reach up to touch its soft, wrinkled face. I was too tired. Everything was gone, lost, emptied out.

I had arrived home from the hospital empty handed. No Kevin. No car—we left it in the hospital parking lot for my sister to pick up later. “No condition to drive,” my mother had said. She meant me.

Empty handed. The thought, incomplete and vague, crept closer to consciousness. There should have been something. I should have brought his things home with me. Where were his clothes? His wallet? Watch? Somehow, they’d fled the scene.

“How far could they have gotten?” I said to myself. Without realizing it, I had stood and walked to the patio doors. “Mom?” I said as I walked into the house.

She turned quickly, but said nothing. My mother didn’t just understand what was happening to me. She knew. She knew it like the ticking of a clock, the wind through the windows, like everything a person gets used to in life. It had only been eight months since Dad died. She knew there was little to be said. Little that should be said. Once, after Dad’s funeral, she looked at Heather and me and said, “Don’t talk. Everyone has said enough words to last for eternity.”

I noticed how tall and straight she stood in her black dress and sensible shoes. How long must the dead be buried before you can stand straight again? “What happened to Kevin’s stuff?” Mom glanced around as if checking to see if a guest had made off with the silverware.

I swallowed hard and clarified. “At the hospital. He was naked.” A picture of him lying motionless, breathless on the white sheets filled my mind. “They never gave me his things. His, whatever, belongings. Effects.”

“I don’t know, Kate,” she said. Like it didn’t matter. Like I should stop thinking about it. I moved past her, careful not to touch her, and went in search of my sister.

Heather sat on my secondhand couch in my living room, a two seater with the pattern of autumn leaves. She held an empty cup and a napkin; dark crumbs tumbling off onto the carpet. Her long brown hair, usually left down, was pulled up into a bun. She looked pretty and sad. She saw me coming, her brown eyes widening in recognition. Recognition that she should do something. Meet my needs, help me, make time stand still. She quickly ended the conversation she was having with Kevin’s boss, and met me in the middle of the living room.

“Hey,” she said, touching my arm. I took a small step back, avoiding her warm fingers.

“Where would his stuff go?” I blurted out. Heather’s eyebrows snapped together in confusion. “Kevin’s things,” I said. “They never gave me his things. I want to go and get them. Will you come?”

Heather stood very still for a moment, straight backed like she was made of wood, then relaxed. “You mean at the hospital. Right, Kate? Kevin’s things at the hospital?” Tears welled in my eyes. “There was nothing. You were there. When we left, they never gave me anything of his.” I realized I was trembling.

Heather bit her lower lip, and looked into my eyes. “Let me do that for you. I’ll call the hospital—” I stood on my tiptoes and opened my mouth. “I’ll go,” she corrected before I could say anything. “I’ll go and ask around. I’ll get his stuff and bring it here.” “I need his things.”

Heather cupped my elbow with her hand. “You need to lie down. Let me get you upstairs, and as soon as you’re settled, I’ll go to the hospital and find out what happened to Kevin’s clothes, okay?”

Fatigue filled the small spaces between my bones. “Okay.” She led me upstairs. I crawled under the covers as Heather closed the door, blocking the sounds.

End of excerpt.

I forgot  to mention, this book is on sale for a limited time for $2.51 on Kindle! Check it out!