Guest Post & $10 Gift Card Giveaway: The Marshals of Journey Creek series

JOURNEY'S EDGE

Tagline: 
An auditor seeks protection for her daughter from an ex-fiancé after an irate client threatens. Does it add up to trouble or love?

Blurb: 
A Routine Audit? Hardly.

Red flags—including some goon who's following her—raise McKinley Frasier's suspicions that numbers don't add up at the insurance firm. When someone tries to snatch McKinley's daughter from school, she turns to police officer and ex-fiance, Renner Crossman—the cop who walked out on her a month before their wedding. But Renner's not the same guy who broke her heart ten years ago. He calls himself a "new man." She trusts the new Renner with her daughter's safety...but what about her heart?

JOURNEY’S END

Tagline:
A brutal murder...a devastated life rebuilt...where one journey ends, another begins.

Short Blurb: A Deputy US marshal suffers remorse over his role in an innocent man’s death. A widow finally pieces together the shattered fragments of her life. A runaway teenager brings them together. An angry father wrenches them apart. Can God heal their hearts and shower them with blessings of forgiveness?

Blurb:

Devastated after the brutal murder of her husband, Chelsea Hammond vows never to love another lawman. Intent on rebuilding her shattered life, she turns her focus to helping troubled teens. But when an angry father bent on retaliation, threatens her, Chelsea must turn to the one man she never thought to trust: Deputy U.S. Marshal Trey Colten.

Trey wants only to protect Chelsea, but she blames him for her husband’s death. Trey can relate. He blames himself, also. As danger lurks, Trey begs Chelsea to heed his warnings. He let down one Hammond. He won’t let down another—especially one who now holds his heart.

When Chelsea is snatched from her home, can she put aside her fear, and trust Trey with her life? Can she forgive him for destroying her past and let him help to rebuild her future?

Where one journey ends, another begins…

JOURNEY’S EMBRACE

Blurb:

After an injury forces Deputy U.S. Marshal Sage Michaelson off duty, he heads to his hometown with two things on his mind: recuperating and reevaluating, but Sage can’t refuse his best friend’s plea to keep a protective eye on his little sister after someone ransacks her house. But Delaney’s not so little anymore—and definitely not the young “Dane” Sage remembers.

Flight Medic Delaney Hunt has loved Sage forever. But, he’s all about control and order while she embraces life and takes risks. As much as the idea appeals to her, she doesn’t need Sage looking over her shoulder. But when things go wrong and she finds herself hanging by her fingertips, who does she call to rescue her?

Will Delaney ever be the woman Sage wants by his side? Can Sage learn to live by grace, recognizing that God is in control? Can they overcome their fears to embrace life together?

My Journey into the Literary World

- Guest Post By Dora Hiers

I’m not one of those writers who dreamed of putting words on paper from an early age. I spent my entire life in the job force working my way up from the bottom, starting with a beverage distributor, then the apartment industry, and later a school district. I moved up the corporate ladder, from bookkeeper to Accountant II, where I performed and reviewed hundreds of audits, earning an Associates Degree in Accounting in the process. 

When our oldest son developed an extreme intolerance to school, I dropped out of the workforce to become a stay-at-home mom. When he graduated (thank God!) and my younger son didn’t want me hanging out at school with him anymore, I knew I needed something else to do.

My husband suggested that I should be a travel agent. We could travel around the globe for free or at a reduced cost. Not a good idea for a homebody.

My heart said write.

What? After spending more than ten years writing and reviewing audit reports, why would I want to write? And unlike most writers will tell you, I was not born with a pen in my hand. Unless you count a red pen.

But, ideas bounced around in my head, like angry ping-pong balls and wouldn’t leave me alone.

Have you ever read a book and thought you could write it better?

Well, I actually tried it. I wrote my first manuscript. I sent it out to a handful of publishers and agents, but after a few generic rejections, I tucked it deep in the closet. I was finished.

Mmm. Not quite. You need to practice before you get good at something, right? Well, I told myself that first book was my practice, but it’s still buried deep in the closet.

I soaked up a few online fiction-writing courses and attended a writer’s conference. I joined American Christian Fiction Writers, Carolina Christian Writers, and a critique group.

The writing bug kept stinging. The idea for my second book, Journey’s End, germinated from a newspaper article. Intrigued, I played the “what if” game until I came up with the premise, which ended up nothing like the original article, and I wrote another book.

I submitted Journey’s End and received a few more rejection letters. This time, though, the rejections cited specific issues or problem areas to change and offered recommendations.

I made the changes and pressed on. In 2010, a friend from CCW directed me to White Rose Publishing. I submitted to them, and on New Year’s Eve in 2010 some five years after I started down this crazy writing road, I received this response, “I’d love to add Journey’s End to the White Rose Publishing line-up.” Can you think of a better way to end one year and to begin another? Who needs fireworks?

The first two books in the Marshals of Journey Creek series, Journeys End and Journey’s Edge, are available now. The third book, Journey’s Embrace will release soon.

Life has changed since I started writing. My fire chief hubby seems almost scared to go to lunch with me. 

One day, we were eating at Buffalo Wild Wings. I needed his expertise and contacts in plotting my current book, which at the time was Journey’s Embrace.

“So, honey. I could use your help. I need a way to crash a plane.” I said.

His eyebrows practically arched off his head. His gaze darted around the room. A couple local police officers sat a few tables away. Hubby nodded at them, then leaned back and inhaled, deep and shaky. “OK. Crashing a plane. Hmm.”

“Yeah. Or maybe a poison.” That swirled around in my head for about thirty seconds. “Yeah, poison might actually work better. Just enough of a drug to make the pilot a little woozy, but not enough to kill him.”

My husband scrunched his face and hunched his generous body lower in the bench. In the smallest voice he’s capable of, which would still be booming, he said, “Poison. OK. Give me this afternoon. I’ll make some phone calls and find you something to work with.”

A head from a nearby booth swiveled in our direction and frowned. The man leaned toward his lunch partner and whispered, began frantically punching numbers into a cell phone.

My husband bolted to his feet and held out a hand. “You ready to go?”

He threw a desperate glance over his shoulder, waved apologetically at the police officers, and hustled me out the door.

I’m thankful for my real life hero. And that we live in a small town.

What an exciting journey this has been! Whatever road you’re traveling, I pray God blesses your journey!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meet Dora Hiers:
After a successful auditing career, Dora left the corporate world to be a stay-at-home mom to her two sons. When her youngest son didn’t want her hanging out at school with him anymore, Dora started writing heart racing, God-gracing books. Dora belongs to the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and the Carolina Christian Writers. Her first inspirational romance, Journey’s End, released with White Rose Publishing in 2011, and her second, Journey’s Edge released in March 2012. White Rose also contracted her third book in the Marshals of Journey Creek series, Journey’s Embrace, and her first short romance, Small Town Treasure. Dora and her husband make their home in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

LINKS: Amazon | Pelican Book Group | Autographed Copies

AUTHOR ONLINE: Website | Email | Blog | Facebook | Twitter

GIVEAWAY

Dora will be awarding one $10 GC to http://www.pelicanbookgroup.com/ to one randomly drawn commenter at every stop during the tour as well as to the host with the most comments.

Giveaway open INTERNATIONALLY and ends August 10th, 2012!  All you have to do is comment in this post to enter this giveaway WITH your email ID.