A New Series Is Coming

I have a new series coming out next year. Can you believe that's less than two months away? But A Bird in the Hand, the first book in the Idioms & Cliches series, will release on February 4, 2022. The book is set in Pennsylvania in 1776. Jocelyn Wright would prefer to be outside with her twin brother instead of in drawing rooms and social events. She has had to hide her true self and pretend to be the young lady everyone expects. But as Jonas gets ready to attend Philadelphia College, the colonies’ rebellion against the crown heats up, her family is forced to quarter British soldiers, and Bennet Hart comes into the picture, changes come much too fast for even her. A Bird in the Hand is ready for preorder now, and you won't be charged until you get the book. The audible version is in production.

Link to A Bird in the Hand -  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09JWMLYSP

In Going the Extra Mile, releasing around April 2, Aaron Johnson gets caught in a blizzard in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina on his way home to western Virginia. Aaron is Jocelyn's grandson from the first book. When his horse makes it to a remote cabin, he has frostbite and is in bad shape. Meghan Scott nurses him, but circumstances, including a murder, conspire to keep him from leaving. Maybe God intends for Aaron to do more than make it home as quickly as possible. He's trained in the ministry, but he can minister anywhere.

A Few Bumps in the Road, the third book in the series, moves from western Virginia to Kansas. Judith Johnson, Aaron's daughter, takes her younger brother and goes to Kansas as a mail-order bride after her parents die. Her husband, although handsome and charming, turns out to have a drinking problem and is a womanizer. However, Calvin's older brother is stable and responsible, providing a home for them on the farm. If only Matthew wasn't so shy and withdrawn. This book will release on June 3. I'm still not 100% sure of the cover for this one, but I'll have it worked out by the time it's published.

In Got Your Goat. Robert Johnson, Judith's brother, goes home with his friend from the Civil War after the war ends. The Appalachian Mountains are beautiful, but so is Lomax's neighbor, Emily Rose Howard. When her friend comes from Greensboro to propose, an errant goat helps set things right. But Robert is confused and needs to go home to Kansas to see his family. Will the shadows from the war ever leave them? This book is planned for release on July 15.

The final book in the series, set to release on September 2, begins in Washington D.C. but moves to the Appalachian Mountains as the Great Depression hits. Gage Bradford has his life all planned out. He's a successful lawyer with a bright political future, but then, he loses everything in the stock market crash. Their best option is to go to his wife's property in the Appalachian Mountains.  Allison is Robert Johnson's granddaughter and has never been at home among the social elite of Washington. However, when they get to the Appalachian Mountains, their roles reverse, and Gage is the one who doesn't fit in. 

I am excited about this series. The characters move around, so the settings change, but the Appalachians have a part in each novel. It's the last long series I have planned. There's a western trilogy in the works for the end of 2023, but there probably won't be a series in 2024. That's as far as I have planned so far. I have all the books written for the Idioms & Cliches series, and my editor will be starting on Going the Extra Mile soon. Right now, I'm writing the rough draft for the first MAP (multiple-author project) I have coming out in February of 2023. I like working ahead like this. It allows me to have the audible book ready around the same time as the other versions and gives me plenty of time to tweak the books and get them right.

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Who Were the Samaritans?  

Read Luke 10:25-37

The Samaritans were a mixed ethnic group that included both Jews and Gentiles in their ancestry. The group appears after the Assyrians captured the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 BC. Eventually, the Jews were allowed to return to Israel. However, many of the Jews decided not to make the journey and stayed in Assyria. They often married Assyrians and adopted some of their culture. Yet, they retained some of their Jewish customs, also, had their own temple, and studied the Torah. And this was only the start of their intermarrying.

Most of the Jews hated the Samaritans. They thought the mixed-heritage group had compromised their faith by marrying Gentiles. As discrimination and mistrust grew, neither group liked the other. Unkind acts abounded between the two groups and the resentment grew.

This is one reason why Jesus' parable about the Good Samaritan was so meaningful. His listeners must have been shocked at the contrasts, but Jesus was both showing them how to live a life of faith as a believer and trying to break the stumbling block of prejudice. He does the same for us if we will only hear him.

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Preordering a Series

Did you know that when you preorder a book on Amazon, you don't pay for it until it's released and they send it to you? So, if you want all the books listed for preorder in a series, you can order them all at once, and the money you pay will be spaced out throughout the series, according to the release dates. 

Most fans of MAPS ( multiple-author projects) seem to know this because my first venture into MAPS, where different authors write one or more books in the series, reflects this. Walnut Cake by Wylene, part of the Old-Timey, Holiday Kitchen series, has a lot of preorders, although it doesn't release until December 6th. This will also help move it up in the rankings on release day -- a win for both readers and the author.

Link to Walnut Cake by Wylene: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0964JF3P9

I will also be doing another book (Forget-Me-Not-Cookies by Fern) in this series next year. And Candace will release as part of the Runaway Brides of the West MAP in December of 2022. I'm already signed up to write two more MAPS books in 2023 and two different ones in 2024. I'm excited about all of these. So, if you see a series where you like all the books, buy them. You will be billed a little at a time as the books are published. After all, at about $2.99 per book, this is one of the greatest bargains around.

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 The Promised Land 

The Promised Land was the geographic location that God promised Abraham He would give to his descendants. It was an area in ancient Canaan on the eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea. Numbers 34:1-12 gives more details about the location. Prior to going to Egypt and then eventually becoming slaves there, the Jews had been nomads, wandering sheepherders. 

Having the land as a permanent possession was a real blessing to the Israelites. Here they could build solid homes and have inheritances to leave to their children. However, this blessing came with responsibilities. God told them in order to keep the land they needed to trust and follow Him, being faithful and worshipping nothing else. He would not bless those who turned to idolatry.

God kept all His promises, but through the years, Israel did not. When they fell away from God and into idol worship, God sent prophets to point out their failures and lead them back to God. If that didn't work, they often succumb to conquering armies. But the greatest promise was fulfilled when Jesus Christ went to the cross to offer us salvation and a relationship with God that sin had severed. We have the greatest promise of all to offer us an eternal, glorious home.

Our society today is more like the wayward Israelites than we'd like to admit. We turn from our Maker who offers us marvelous promises for the asking. We worship idols (ourselves, wealth, power, success, or a myriad of other things) other than the only One who deserves any worship at all. We allow Satan to lead us astray with his lies and deceit. But God gives us every opportunity to change and choose Him above all else. He wants us to come home to Him and our true Promised Land.

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Returning Neighbor Audible

The fourth book in the Cactus Creek series is now available on Audible. In the book, Laura Holt goes home to Cactus Creek to care for her ailing father whose health is failing after years of drinking. She's longed for her desert home for fourteen years. To her surprise, her childhood infatuation with Logan King has not faded as much as she'd thought. But Logan is struggling with problems of his own after losing his first wife in a fire, and her father is pushing her to marry the saloon owner she'd rather avoid. Soon, Laura finds herself going to her favorite fishing spot to find peace, but it's still Logan's favorite spot, too.

Again, my dual team does an excellent job of narrating the novel. I knew when I started to put this series on Audible that I'd need to do something different with so many characters in this five-book series. It was unrealistic to expect any one producer to vary his or her voice that much. Douglas Birk and Jennifer Groberg, who have recorded other books for me, have teamed up on this series to bring the characters to life. Listeners are telling me that they really enjoy the dual narration.

The team is already scheduled to produce the last book in the series, Southern Belles, and should begin work in the next few days. I hate to see this series come to an end. However, I have another five-book series (Idioms & Cliches) scheduled for next year. The generations in this one are more spread out, and it will likely require a different narrator for every book since each one is set in a different location with different characters. They are all written but not yet completely edited. At least my fans and I have something to look forward to.

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The Walls of Jericho 

(See Joshua 6)

Jericho was one of the first strongholds the Israelites needed to conquer in order to possess the land across the Jordan River that God promised to them. The city was one of the oldest settlements, dating back to 9,000 B.C., and it had the oldest wall in the world built for protection that we know of. Nearby springs made it appealing -- an oasis in the desert area. 

In the early settlement, the wall around Jericho was almost twelve feet high and six feet thick at its base. It had a twenty-eight-foot tower that was thirty feet wide at ground level and surrounded more than seventy homes. However, the city was abandoned several times and later reestablished. The Amorites had it in 2,600 B.C., and the Canaanites occupied it in 1,900 B.C. It was destroyed by an earthquake and fire in 1573 B.C., but again, it was rebuilt.

The Israelites came to Jericho around 1400 B.C. Two spies were aided by Rahab, a harlot, and escaped capture. The Israelites followed God's directions through Joshua and marched around the wall for seven days carrying the Ark of the Covenant. On the seventh day, they blew their trumpets made from rams' horns, called shofars, and shouted. The walls fell, and the city was taken. Rahab and her family were saved and taken into the Hebrew culture.

There are many lessons from what happened at Jericho. God can break down the strongest walls. Our God is a God of miracles, things often turn out for the best when we follow God's plan, no person is beyond God's reach, and anyone can put aside his or her old life and enter into a meaningful new life through faith. How great is our God!

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A Comedy of Elopement

The Greatest of These Publishing has released another book by Christian Reid. A Comedy of Elopement is set in Florida and Italy. In it, Fanny Berrien sends her younger cousin to tell Lennox Kyrle she won't elope with him as promised and sets off a series of events that none of them could have anticipated. These situations begin at once and continue, reaching all the way to Italy when Fanny, Aimee, and Lennox meet in Venice, along with a greedy family bent on causing trouble.

This delightful nineteenth-century novel is reminiscent of Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, and other authors of this period.  However, it has a charm all its own. Christian Reid is a pen name for Frances Fisher Tierman, an American author who penned more than fifty novels. She was a native of North Carolina but also lived in New York and Mexico for a while.

This edition is very lightly revised to appeal to a wider inspirational audience. However, much of the text reads just as it was originally published. It is available now in print and Kindle editions, and work on the Audible edition is underway. I think it will touch readers' hearts the way it has touched mine, and I'm glad to be able to share it with readers that may not know of this gifted writer.

Get it at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Comedy-Elopement-Revised-Christian-Reid-ebook/dp/B09J5F1QXR

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