Month: August 2014

A Side of Krista Phillips

Posted on by Jessica R. Patch
@kristaphillips
FACEBOOK 
WEBSITE
Guess who is uber excited today? Me. Why? Because the
hilarious and sweet Krista Phillips is in the house! 
Krista Phillips is the author of Sandwich, with a Side of Romance and A Side of Faith. She enjoys life with
her husband and their four beautiful daughters in Tennessee. She is an advocate
for congenital heart defect and organ donation awareness and blogs at www.kristaphillips.com.
In honor of her newest
release, A Side of Faith, we’re playing a few rounds of Would You Rather with
her and her characters!
Would You Rather….
…Have a car but no shoes or shoes but no car?

Krista:
<— wimp: Car but no shoes… as long as the car has plenty of gas! Momma prefers
not to be stuck stranded… walking… with no shoes!

Cameron:
Shoes. Definitely. He’s has a deep love of soccer and yeah, can’t be kicking
balls barefoot!
 Rachel: Oh, this one is harder. I think it would depend what the
shoes looked like. Not that she’s vain or anything, but she does like to look
snazzy! So ugly shoes = car… pretty shoes = shoes.
…a perfect sense of direction or a perfect sense of time?

Krista:
Neither, but direction more than time!

Cameron:
Definitely time! He’s an investment broker (aka handsome nerd…) so keeps an
eye on the stock markets, so would always know what time it is in relation to
the market open/close.

Rachel:
Probably direction. She knows exactly what she does and doesn’t want in life,
and I think the same would go for “where” she wants to go!
…lie in the sand or the grass?

Krista: Sand.
Grass is SCRATCHY! YUCK!

Cameron:
Grass! Repeat: Soccer player. He is one with the green!

Rachel:
Rachel’s my girl. Her and I would totally be laying out on the sandy beach
together! (She would have a respectable 2-piece tankini… I would have overly
large momma suit complete with skirt…. just bein’ honest here!)
…be the funniest person in the world or the smartest?

Krista:
By
far the hardest question! My humor and my brain are both super important to me!
I guess I’ll say humor, because boring smart people are boo… but that doesn’t
mean I have to be dumb, either, right?

Cameron:
Smartest.
I mean, he can be funny in his own right, but he definitely values a good
brain.

Rachel:
Honestly,
I’ll go with smartest here too. She was super immature and made some really
huge mistakes in her early 20’s, so now that she’s “grown up” she’s
determined to make smarter choices, steering life with her brain and not her
heart.
Oh my word! I loved all these answers. Thank you for being
here today, Krista, you RAWK! 
Here is a peek at Side of Faith: 
Buy the Book! 
Rachel Carter is on top of the world. A new job in a new town, friends, and a house to call her own. Men? Eh, someday. And when the time comes, she’ll go for a nice safe geek or something. She will NOT be repeating the mistakes of her youth.

But then Cameron Foster comes knocking on her door, reminding her of the man she vows never to think of again.

God wouldn’t send her a man who reminds her of everything she is trying to put behind her…would He?


***Don’t forget, I’m on blogging break for awhile and you can sign up for my newsletter at the top on the right hand side! I won’t give your email out or spam you! 


Play
with us and answer one or more of the questions in the comments!

Dawn Crandall and the cast of The Hesitant Heiress

Posted on by Jessica R. Patch
Hey everyone! It’s so great to have Dawn Crandall here! A graduate of Taylor
University with a degree in Christian Education, and a former bookseller at
Barnes & Noble, Dawn Crandall didn’t begin writing until 2010 when her
husband found out about her long-buried dream of writing a book. Without a
doubt about someday becoming traditionally published, he encouraged her to quit
working in order to focus on writing The
Hesitant Heiress. It didn’t take her long to realize that writing books was
what she was made to do. Dawn is represented by Joyce Hart of Hartline
Literary.
Apart from writing
books, Dawn is also a first-time mom to a precious little boy (born March 2014)
and also serves with her husband in a pre-marriage mentor program at their
local church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Dawn is a member of
the American Christian Fiction Writers, secretary for the Indiana ACFW Chapter
(Hoosier Ink), and associate member of the Great Lakes ACFW Chapter.
The Everstone
Chronicles is Dawn’s first series with Whitaker House. All three books
composing the series were
semifinalists in ACFW’s prestigious Genesis Writing Contest, the third book
going on to become a finalist in 2013.
In honor
of her debut novel, The Hesitant Heiress,
she’s here to play a few rounds of Would You Rather along with her main
character Amaryllis and the handsome Nathan Everstone. Let’s get started.
Would You Rather…
…be replaced or
ignored?
Dawn: I like to be alone, so being ignored
would be perfectly fine by me. Before I had my son this spring, I could go for
days without leaving my house. So, I guess I pretty much ignore the world as
much as I would enjoy it ignoring me.
Amaryllis: “I’ve been ignored for so long, and
it’s the only thing I knew for such a long time. Only until I was forced to
take part in my aunt’s society did I realize what it was like to form
meaningful friendships. And then there was Nathan—I totally expected he’d want
to ignore me—which I was completely fine with too… for a while.”
Nathan: “I would rather be replaced—I have no
qualms if someone could take my place in society.”
…make a bad first
impression or a bad second impression?
Dawn: “I would rather make a bad first
impression… and then totally change their mind. I think I do this a lot
actually because I’m a bit scatter-brained and say the silliest things at
times. Hopefully the second impression someone has of me will be accompanied
with the knowledge that I have ADD but don’t take anything for it because I
write better without it.” 
Amaryllis: “I’d actually rather not make an
impression. I’d rather not be noticed at all. Meeting new people in general is
not something I enjoy doing.”
Nathan: “Oh, I’d usually want to make that
first grand impression… I’m so used to giving it, after all! However, that has
to do with the family I was born into, and not truly me.
It seems the only time I wasn’t able to make that first dashing impression was
with the young woman who happened to intrigue me the most… Amaryllis.”
(wink)  
Fun answers, you guys! Dawn, tell us
what inspired you to write this story.
I wanted to write a novel reminiscent
of old classical romantic suspense novels like Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier—but I also wanted to tie in a very
relevant spiritual thread. The heroine of The
Hesitant Heiress, Amaryllis Brigham, thinks she knows what she wants, as
well as how she will achieve it. But as circumstances beyond her control keep
her from her goals, she finds that accomplishing her dreams of founding a music
academy in Seattle are only secondary to finding the peace she desperately
needs pertaining to the events leading to her mother’s death eleven years
before.
Thanks for being here with us today, Dawn!
Here’s a sneak peek of The

Hesitant
Heiress:

After being unjustly expelled from the
Boston Conservatory of Music, Amaryllis Brigham sees her dreams of founding a
music academy disappearing before her very eyes. Now the only way to achieve
her goal comes with high stakes for someone set on avoiding men as much as
possible: marry within the year to inherit her grandmother’s fortune. Amaryllis
reluctantly takes part in her aunt’s society, intent on getting to the west
coast on her own… and without a husband.
Despite her own misgivings, she soon
finds herself falling in love with the most unlikely of men, Nathan Everstone,
whose father not only had a part in her expulsion, but whose ominous presence
has haunted her dreams for a decade since her mother’s tragic death. Nathan
turns out to be much more than he seems and everything she never knew she
wanted. But just as everything Amaryllis has recently hoped for comes to
fruition, it all falls apart when she finds that the real culprit who has been
managing her life isn’t who she thought at all.

CONNECT
WITH DAWN
Facebook: facebook.com/DawnCrandallWritesFirst 
Book Review Blog: APassionforPages.blogspot.com 
GoodReads: www.goodreads.com/dawn_crandall
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/dawnwritesfirst
Email: dawncrandallwritesfirst@gmail.com
Twitter: @dawnwritesfirst

***Join me next Friday with special guest, author Krista Phillips! Until then, have you signed up for my newsletter–Patched In? No? Well, for the love you should! Just click on the link at the top right hand corner of the website! Easy peasy! Don’t you feel better for having done it? 🙂 
Have a great weekend, friends! 

Beyond I Do with Jennifer Slattery

Posted on by Jessica R. Patch
@JenSlattery
WEBSITE

Ever been homeless?
Ever known anyone who has? Jennifer Slattery is here to share the inspiration behind
her debut novel, Beyond I Do, and some fun facts about herself. Thanks for
being here, Jennifer. Take it away!

Have you ever been
surprised by something, only to find everyone else around you knew of this
*thing* all along? I wonder if that’s how a writer’s voice emerges. If one
begins to write something into every novel
without realizing it because that *thing* is as much a part of them as writing
itself.
That’s how it was for
me. One day, as I was chatting about one of my books with a friend, I paused
for an extended moment and said, “Have you noticed I’ve had a homeless person
in each of my novels?”
My friend gave a
knowing smile and nod, and it was then that it hit me, “Yeah, this is kind of a
big deal to me.”
Which will probably
sound strange, once you learn that I was once homeless. I mean, of course it’d
be a big deal, right? Homelessness had affected my life greatly!
But that’s the funny
thing about self-deception and hiding. You see, homelessness affected who I
once was, not who I am now. (Or so I thought.) Ashamed by my
past, I had pushed it so far from my mind I could easily forget that period
entirely. I certainly never thought about it. Except on those quiet, lonely
nights when old demons would rise up, “Remember when?” But then I’d just push
the memories down all the harder, trying to play the part of the perfect,
church-going, suburban housewife.
But God never forgot,
and the God who brought me from my deepest pain and shame wanted to turn it
into something beautiful.
That’s grace.
And as a recipient of
grace, God now wanted me to show others how to grab hold of that same
life-transforming, shame-lifting power.
Though it goes a bit
deeper than that. Now, decades later, camped out in mid-America suburbia with
my middle class friends, many who have never truly encountered a homeless
person; many who perhaps don’t even give them the time of day, God has called
me to another task. That task is helping to call others to action.
I believe that’s why
He birthed the idea for Beyond I Do
within me.
And that’s the impact
I hope this novel has on my readers. For those suffering from material,
emotional, or spiritual poverty, I hope they can see that the same God that
reaches out to the least-of-least is also, always, reaching out to them.
For those of us who
have been rescued, I hope this novel encourages them to look around and see how
they can bring God’s hope and grace into the broken lives they encounter.
On a lighter note…
Jessica asked me to share three fun facts about me. Here goes:
1     I’m
terrified by heights but once took up rock climbing with my hubby. This, of
course, meant there was always more than a few shrieks (and broken nails! Hence
the shrieks.) involved.
2   
          Apparently
my head bobs at neck-breaking speed when I’m writing an intense or humorous or…
okay, when I’m writing period. Imagine the entertainment Starbucks’ patrons
gain from my presence. 
      
             I can
turn many a-heads during the Sunday worship service, and not in a good way. (I
was kicked out of campus choir in high school Enough said.)
I loved these fun
facts and the inspiration behind your novel is moving! I can’t wait to read it! 

Here’s a peek at:



Beyond I Do:


Will seeing beyond
the present unite them or tear them apart?

Marriage . . . it’s
more than a happily ever after. 

Eternally more.

Ainsley Meadows, raised by a hedonist mother, who cycles through jobs and
relationships like wrapping paper on Christmas morning, falls into a
predictable and safe relationship with Richard, a self-absorbed socialite
psychiatrist. But as her wedding nears, a battered woman and her child spark a
long-forgotten dream and ignites a hidden passion. One that threatens to change
everything, including her fiancé. To embrace God’s best and find true love,
this security-seeking bride must follow God with reckless abandon and realize
that marriage goes Beyond I Do.

Purchase link: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-I-Do-Jennifer-Slattery/dp/1596694173/

Jennifer
Slattery writes missional romance for New Hope Publishers, Christian living
articles for Crosswalk.com, and devotions for Internet Café Devotions. She also
maintains a personal blog at http://jenniferslatterylivesoutloud.com and writes and edits for
Christ to the World Ministries, an international ministry that shares the
gospel, via radio waves, with thirty-two countries.






*** I’m going to be taking a blogging break but don’t worry! I have some great guests scheduled on Fridays in August! So I’ll still be around some. 


***Have you signed up for the Patched In? What’s that you say? My newsletter! And I’d love for you to! CLICK HERE