My next novel, Not Alone, is just as suspenseful as The Beloved Daughter, but it also has a romantic component. That's where you come in! Tell me about a real-life romance you know (could be yours!). Do you have grandparents who have been married for 72 years and still slow dance in the living room with bare feet every evening? Did your spouse pull off some amazing wedding or proposal surprise that still makes you smile? Did your next-door neighbor marry his junior high sweetheart? I want to hear those stories!
Rules:
This is an exclusive contest for newsletter subscribers. Not a subscriber? Just add your email to the upper-right sidebar, or go to alanaterry.com/newsletter.
Tell your storyin the comments section below.
Choose your namesfor the two characters in Not Alone. (Don't use real names without permission!) If you'd like to honor a couple that's truly in love but they want to keep their privacy, you can come up with names that start with the same letter of their real names. Of course you can use your name if you'd like (as long as you have your partner's ok as well.) Include your choice of names in the comments section.
If your story is selected as the winner, the names you chose will be used in Not Alone, and I'll send you either a free paperback copy when the book is released (USA only - ebook for international winners) or an advanced PFD pre-publication!
For more about Not Alone, check out the book trailer! *** Just released ***
About two months ago, my husband and I were stuck in traffic behind a car with a zombie bumper sticker. I made some off-the-cuff comment like, "Wouldn't it be ironic if the events in Revelation really end up looking like some kind of zombie apocalypse?" at which point my husband and I decided we should co-write a novel on the subject.
Turns out we were too late. The novel's been written, and I couldn't be more thrilled with the author. I have read several other works by Pauline Creeden, and so when I heard just a week after that conversation with my husband about her upcoming novel, "Sanctuary," I was ecstatic.
Let me get one thing out there in the open. I don't read zombie novels. I don't read end-times novels. But I made the exception for Creeden, and I'm so glad I did. I'm also thankful for the chance to join up with the "Sanctuary" blog hop to offer my review and point you to a great giveaway sponsored by Creeden herself.
My Review:
I was hooked on the premise of the book from the get-go. The events of
Revelations explained in the context of an alien-induced zombie
apocalypse sounded very intriguing, and it was.
I wasn't sure if
I'd be ok with the book, since I don't like horror or zombies. Even
though there was violence, it was tastefully done and something I
wouldn't mind recommending to the teens in our youth group. I do wish
there was more backstory, as we jump in several weeks after the aliens
first arrived.
The greatest strength of Sanctuary was in the
character relationships. Hints of potential romance, sibling rivalry,
lost loves ... these made the story a lot deeper than I'd expect from a
typical thrasher novel. The only character I wasn't thrilled with was
the protagonist's younger brother. His acceptance of aliens coming and
terrorizing his family seemed a little too toned down. On the other
hand, no one likes to read about young kids getting traumatized, so in
some ways I'm thankful the author didn't play this particular plotline
up to its full potential.
Readers should know before picking up
Sanctuary that it's the first in a series, or else the ending might feel
a little abrupt. I do look forward to reading more about the characters
however and commend the author for this original piece of work.
EXCERPT:
When Jennie reached the back door, she saw them. Four large dog-like creatures with pinched faces like bulldogs and lion-like manes. They snarled, and one of them leapt at the window on the top half of the door when it saw her. Jennie jumped back and fell hard on the cold tile floor. The bottle of painkiller bounced across the kitchen tiles. The creature slammed against the window a second time, cracking it. She blinked hard. Her heart sunk, and the hairs on her arms stood on end. A horrendous gargling howl rent the air, causing a shiver down her spine. She held her breath and waited for the creature to slam into the door again.
“What on earth?” she whispered to herself.
When the third attempt never came, she scrambled toward the door. Blinking hard, she used the door knob to help herself stand. Out the cracked window, her mother was still out of sight, but the last of the dogs headed across the field behind her backyard.
“MOM?” Jennie called out.
The rumbling faded, and the vibrations in her chest receded with the dogs. She pulled open the door and rushed onto their back deck. “Mom, where are you?”
When she reached the banister, she looked over the side. Her mom lay sprawled with one hand on the lattice. Blood gushed from Mom’s leg and her opposite arm. Jennie’s ears rang and flooded with every beat of her heart.
Jennie didn’t know how she got to the second floor of her house, but she found herself shaking her sleeping father. How had he slept through the rumbling? “Outside, it’s Mom…”
Her father leapt from the bed. Mickey, her little brother, lay asleep and undisturbed. Dad ran down the stairs and outside in his flannel pajama bottoms and white t-shirt. He scooped Mom up to his chest and carried her inside. Blood stained his shirt in crimson.
“Jennie, call 911!” Her father had said it at least three times before it finally registered in her brain.
She pulled the cell phone from her pocket, but it refused to connect. With a groan, she grabbed the cordless from the wall receiver, glad her heart stopped pounding in her head so she could hear.
“All operators are busy at this time,” a mechanical voice deadpanned, “Please stay on the line, and the next available operator will take your call.”
“They have me on hold, Dad. Should I hang up and try again?” She held the phone in both hands away from her face.
“No, just stay on the line.” Her father lifted the shredded jeans from Mom’s leg. “It looks like a shark bite. What on earth happened?”
Jennie took in the damage through tear-filled eyes. A huge chunk was taken from her mother’s calf, exposing the fibrous tendons that covered the bone in her leg. A bloodstain grew on the beige couch. Was she going to die? Panic rose up.
“What happened, Jennie?”
“I...I...They looked like lions, or dogs, or something. The rumbling shook the whole house…I tried to go outside to get Mom, but—” A sob blocked her throat.
Her father grabbed a throw pillow and held it against the leg. Mom’s exposed forearm laid across her chest in much the same condition as her calf.
“Grab me the duct tape.”
Jennie suddenly remembered the phone, put it back to her ear, and headed to the hall closet. She reached for the shelf above the jackets and grabbed the junk basket next to the toolbox.
“Please stay on the line. An operator will be with you shortly.”
She shoved the phone in the crook of her neck and fished through the box. Half the contents dropped around her feet. Who cares? When her fingers wrapped around the silver duct tape, a short-lived relief sent prickles down her arms. But the urgency gripped her chest in less than a heart beat, and she threw the junk basket on the ground with the rest of the items.
“Hurry, Jennie!” her father called from the living room. “And turn on the TV. Maybe they’ll have something about what’s going on.”
She handed her father the tape and turned toward the TV. The mechanical voice on the phone came through again, followed by more easy listening.
When she clicked on the TV, the shouting and wailing began before the picture warmed up on the screen. A sideways picture of New York City broke through, with the shaky voice of the newscaster voicing over.
“What we are watching now – I can’t believe it – is live footage of Times Square,” the newscaster’s voice paused for a deep breath. “We’ve lost our man on the scene and his camera man to what appears to be some kind of new alien creature. Just a short half-hour ago, the doors to the ship that hovered above Central Park opened and these dog-like creatures flooded out.”
Jennie couldn’t pull her eyes from the screen. She straightened and dropped the phone on the hardwood. The battery popped out and skidded across the floor.
NOTE: "Sanctuary" has been pushing the charts ever since its release. The kindle version is only 99 cents, so get it while you can!! And don't forget to enter the giveaway above.
It's WIPpet time! Time for me to pull out nine paragraphs from "A Boy Named Silas," the Work In Progress (A Second Time) I've been touching up. Silas, by the way, is now a healthy almost-six-year-old. At the time this part of the story takes place, my husband and I are trying to decide whether we will withhold life-saving medical care or not for our little nine-month-old.
***
I never saw my son struggle like he did that night. Silas was working so hard to breathe that he bent his legs with each exhalation to try to force the air out of his sickly body. He was drenched with sweat from the effort. Even with my lack of medical training, I could tell Silas was going to wear himself out if things didn’t get improve quickly.
And then the doctor touched my shoulder and told me I needed to decide whether to put Silas back on the ventilator.
Or not.
The fated moment had come. Philip and I understood from his birth that Silas might not survive. Still, we pleaded with God that we would never have to make that decision of life or death ourselves.
When the doctor asked me what I wanted to do, it was two in the morning. I called my husband.
“You’d better wake up Nate and get over here,” I said. “It’s time to decide.”
By the time Phillip arrived, Silas' oxygen saturation refused to rise above 80%. His lungs just weren't working by themselves. As I heard Phillip and a now very-awake Nate coming down the hall to our room, I wondered if this little reunion was really going to be our family's last time with Silas on earth.
Even though Phillip and I had discussed this kind of scenario in full detail, both with Silas' pediatrician and with each other, I was unprepared to make the decision final. What if Silas actually did die? Phillip and I would have to live every day with the knowledge that we let him go. Should we have fought more for him? Should we have given God another chance to work that miraculous healing we had hoped for in our son's life?
Would our marriage survive the grief of losing our child? Would we wake up one day and blame each other for Silas' death? We did believe that Silas would be better off if we denied drastic measures, but was our choice truly in Silas' best interests? Or were we so exhausted from raising such a medically-fragile baby that we wanted to take the easy way out?
***
So, that's my WIPAST submission. I look forward to reading all of yours! Oh, and if you're feeling lucky, check out my giveaway this week for a chance to earn a Bath and Body Works gift card or a collection of adventure books for kids.
Thanks for helping me get my Kickstarter campaign fully funded. (You know who you are!!)
Today's random fact: Eleven years ago, I was a click of the button away from applying to med schools. So glad that never materialized!
Thanks to our fearless WIPpet leader, Kathy Schwengel! Can't wait to see what you've got coming off the press next!
Someone trying really hard to be profound once said, "Good things take time, but great things
happen all at once." It's probably from some chick flick I've since forgotten. In my experience, good things take time. Great things take even longer.
It would require a whole book (which I would love to write one day) to narrate how Phillip and I met, fell in love, and wound up sharing our lives together. The falling in love part didn't take all that long (just ask my college roommate), but getting to the whole sharing our lives thing certainly did.
Starting our family didn't happen "all at once," either, since we experienced two miscarriages before our first son was born.
Looking back on Silas' birth history, I might rewrite the above quote altogether. Does this resonate with anybody? "Good things take time, but horrible things happen in an instant." All it took was a few short minutes in the delivery room for our lives to be thrown into complete chaos, a kind of chaos it took years to recover from.
But know what? We have recovered. This morning we took Silas to the dietician, and she decided to wean him off his formula. Silas hasn't used his feeding tube in five months, but he still gets about half of his calories from drinking thickened pediatric formula.
Until today, that is.
That appointment might be one of those moments I look back on in ten years as a major turning point in our family history. No one who's been following Silas' story would deny that our report from the dietician qualifies as a monumental achievement. Basically, aside from needing his drinks thickened, Silas has just graduated to become a "normal" eater.
On one hand, it just took a thirty-minute doctor visit to get to this point. On the other hand, it took five long years and eleven arduous months.
Great things are happening in our family. But they didn't happen overnight. They started happening the day Silas was born. They continued on as God spared our child from a premature death and sustained him through countless bouts of pneumonia and lung illness. Silas' road to oral eating took the cooperative effort of half a dozen skilled therapists, the input of several involved specialists, and the prayers of thousands of believers who loved our son and cared for our family enough to intercede on is behalf.
Great things have happened since the moment Silas was born, but today we get to more deeply experience that awesome work God promised. He's the one who started the miraculous healing in Silas, and he's the one who has carried it on to completion.
And now, amidst my rejoicing, I can almost sense the smile of the Almighty as he whispers to my spirit, "Just wait and see what I'm about to do next."
Happy Wednesday the 18th! Here are 18 sentences from my current WIPAST (Work In Progress A Second Time)... If you haven't tried sounding out WIPAST phonetically, I suggest you do so now. You're welcome.
I am re-editing "A Boy Named Silas," a memoir about my son's traumatic birth and subsequent medical issues. I wrote it for family and friends and am now re-doing it with the general public in mind.
***
I am ashamed to admit it, but early on I imagined my life might have been easier if Silas hadn’t survived his first day. I had absolutely no idea that something was wrong in the delivery room. If Phillip didn't finally get the doctor, there is no doubt Silas would have passed away, and we might have never even known why.
It would be devastating, of course. But I couldn't help wondering if losing a baby would be easier than caring night and day for a child who might always be a vegetable.
At that point in Silas' life, I didn't know what level of functioning to expect from my son. In fact, I didn't know if he would survive at all. And, in my worse mommy moments, I found myself resenting the time Silas took away from my able-bodied toddler, who looks perpetually lost and bedraggled in all our photos from that season.
There was really only one word to describe my emotional state: exhausted. I was tired of pumping breast milk around the clock like some kind of dairy cow or human experiment. I was tired of suctioning Silas' throat several times an hour to keep his airway as clear as possible. I was tired of all the paperwork and logistics that were required to get Silas set up with all the services he needed. At that time in my life, I really could have used a full-time secretary. (Now that I think about it, a full-time nurse and housecleaner would have been welcomed too.)
***
I would still welcome a full-time housecleaner, but I don't see that happening any time in the next several decades. O well.
And now for some virtual house-keeping: Congrats to Elaine Jeremiah for launching The Inheritancethis week! Can't wait to read it. Speaking of reading ... do you know anybody who likes audiobooks? (That segue needs work, I know. I guess I need a virtual blog-keeper too.) Anyway, I need one or two more pre-orders for my Kickstarter campaign to be fully funded. If you're not familiar with Kickstarter, it's all or nothing. Not funded fully = no money at all. Please check it out! You can even order a gift copy of The Beloved Daughter audiobook for a friend. It will be releasing in time for Christmas (wink, wink)!
As always, many thanks to WIPpet leader lady Kathy Schewengel! And if you're waiting for a fun, random fact about me, it's that I once had the first 18 chapters of the book of Matthew memorized. Don't ask me to prove it - I can't even get through the genealogy in chapter 1 anymore!
Oh yeah, and remember that video of Regi and me that didn't work? Now it does! Here we are.
Win the first three books in a brand-new adventure series for kids! Paperback OR Audiobook prize!
Join
history-buff lake Otis, musical Genius benson, and their limerick-loving
little brother O'Malley as they learn about their family history with
some help from their zany inventor father in My Solar-Powered History series.
A (sarcastic) humor post for Christian Home Magazine. Check it out!
Do you want to be obnoxious on Facebook? Here's some status update tips from the pros. Write a status update that's chock full of boasts - but covered by a transparent veil of false humility! A proven way to annoy your Facebook friends!
Don't take the credit. Are you a mom? Well, if all you do is talk about how terrific your kids are, you're probably going to get some irate non-friends real soon. So here's what you do. You take the "humble" approach. Try something like: Wow! 14 months old and Johnny is already knows all his colors and shapes?! Where did he get so smart? I know it wasn't from me!
See what I did there? Not only did I point out how brilliant my son is (none of my boys are named Johnny, by the way), but I also was humble enough to admit there's no way he got those genius qualities from me. Humble? Better believe it! Act like your successes are normal for everyone. If you're an author, you've probably read all kinds of helpful blogs that warn you against spamming your followers' newsfeeds just with sales blurbs about your books. But guess what? We authors like to write about our accomplishments. Coming across as humble in doing so, however, takes a little bit of tweaking. Consider a status update like this:
Don't you just love those days when you sell 498 ebooks in twelve hours? Notice how I make it out like selling 498 ebooks in twelve hours is such a normal, everyday occurrence? Because if I act like selling that many books is a common event in the life of every author, I'm not bragging when I say it's happened to me!
Turn your brag into a complaint.This is so frustrating. Now that I've lost 35 pounds, I can't fit into any of my old evening gowns. What am I going to wear to the mayor's gala now? These kind of posts have a two-fold obnoxious component. Not only do they tell your friends the reasons for your boasting, they also tell your friends that you don't even appreciate the blessings you've already received!
Just mention God. Because, let's face it. If you mention God and give him glory, you can basically get away with saying anything and still come across as humble, right? God has blessed me so much with a husband who does laundry, washes the dishes (twice a day), makes the bed, and gives me whole weekends off to spend with my girlfriends while he watches the kids. Thanks, God, for giving me such a terrific hubby! (Ok, so maybe this is going just a little too far. I'll let you be the final judge.)
Unfortunately, there's no real secret formula to internet humility. But if I really come up with one, I'll be the first to let you know. (And I'll give God all the glory too!)
Random Fact: Check out twitter.com/#alanafam if you want to see all my goofy, snarky tweets MINUS the obnoxious book plugs!
MMM...It's Monday! Time for a mirthfully musical YouTube video. How about this one? If there are parents who have a right to boast about their son online, it's this boys' mom and dad! Join Regi for even more MMMs!
