Friday, February 16, 2024

Author Interview: Refuge of Grace by Tracy L. Smoak

About the Book

Book: Refuge of Grace: Finding Your Safe Place

Author: Tracy L. Smoak

Genre: Non-Fiction

Release Date: September, 2023

”This book is a life-saving manual meant for any soul who has bottomed out and can only look up for help.” – George Firehammer

Need a stronger connection with God? A safe place?

Anyone hoping for straight talk to bring Jesus close will find refreshment in Refuge of Grace. Learn from a fresh look at 22 little-told Bible passages via Tracy L. Smoak’s engaging storytelling and vivid imagery.

These scriptures offer true comfort in your everyday struggles. From hearing Gomer’s perspective about shame to imagining Jesus arriving in a Rolls Royce for the family reunion, you will know God’s working on your behalf-right now.

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

A native Floridian, Tracy L. Smoak grew up riding horses and climbing citrus trees. Her passion is to encourage others in their faith journey. Smoak writes for Guideposts. Ambassador International released her debut novel, Who Brought the Dog to Church?. Bold Vision published her Bible study about encouragement titled Refuge of Grace: Finding Your Safe Place.

She loves photography and authored two hardcover devotionals with her original nature art (Living Water to Refresh Your Soul – tranquil lake scenes; and Arranged with Love- floral landscapes).

Smoak holds a master’s in Education and a bachelor’s in Communication. At her church home, she leads small-group Bible studies. She is an active member of Word Weavers International.

Author Interview with Tracy

Q: Please give us a little introduction to your book.

Tracy: If you feel discouraged and are facing hard times, this book offers encouragement. There are 22 little-told Bible stories about ordinary men and women who persevered with God’s help. Each chapter features a promise of God’s that they held onto, and that we also can draw strength from to overcome.

Q: What was the most surprising thing you discovered while researching and writing this book?

Tracy: God speaks in an amazing variety of ways. Sometimes, he used a picture, like of medieval armor, to spark ideas about battle. Other times, He drew my attention to nature, like when I saw sandhill cranes literally dancing in an open field at dawn. Each time I slowed enough to listen, God spoke with such tenderness to teach.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from your book?

Tracy: Bad stuff happens and we want to fall apart. Sorrow, disappointment, anger, and failure lurk around many corners. But these obstacles don’t have to destroy our faith. The hardships refine us into hardy soldiers who can go into the fray to help others in the trenches. Our best ministry isn’t from being “perfect.” Our ability to truly comfort others comes from being able to say we also survived the hardship they are going through.

Q: Are you working on another book now?

Tracy: Yes, I am researching scriptures about wisdom and where God would have us invest our time. To go along with this theme, I have taken photographs of foreign coins to pair with Bible verses about how to store up heavenly riches. This devotional is under contract, and I hope will be released in 2024.

Q: What do you wish you’d known when you were younger?

Tracy: After achieving each milestone, there will be another mountain to climb. Life is about stretching and growing. Complacency robs us of the next blessing. I’d tell my younger self not to fear failure. That each attempt to move forward gains new skills.

Q: Any thing else you would like to share:?

Tracy: If you like devotions and birds, this one-minute reel features my nature art photography with a Bible verse at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyGwqfrBIxs.

My website for details: tracysmoak.com.

More from Tracy

When life knocks you down, where do you go for hope?

We all want to be brave, but sometimes circumstances overwhelm us. Health declines, bank accounts empty, and friends disappear. No matter the disappointments, one absolute certainty we can count on is God. He will stand with us through every adversity.

Ideas for Refuge of Grace: Finding Your Safe Place began at 3 a.m. on a January workday in 2021. I tossed and turned in bed, wondering how I could continue teaching in a public school under all the pandemic constraints. We wore masks, developed lesson plans for both in-class instruction and online modules, and juggled a revolving door of student quarantines with absences.

Fear surrounded us on all sides.

Others also struggled. My older son managed an emergency department in a large city and had to find ways to supply unprecedented needs. My younger son worked in the financial industry and watched markets reel. Neighbors lost jobs and income.

How could we model resilience and move forward?

I turned to the Bible for inspiration and studied stories about how believers overcame hardship. Six months and 22 chapters later—all the while teaching full time—this collection renewed hope and kept me going.

My prayer is that reading these Bible promises of God’s faithfulness also will empower you.

Blog Stops

Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, February 9

Artistic Nobody, February 10 (Author Interview)

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, February 11

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, February 12

Fiction Book Lover, February 13 (Author Interview)

Girls in White Dresses, February 14

Its Mama Safe, February 15

Beauty in the Binding, February 16 (Author Interview)

By The Book, February 17 (Author Interview)

Mary Hake, February 17

Cover Lover Book Review, February 18

A Modern Day Fairy Tale, February 19 (Author Interview)

Texas Book-aholic, February 20

Simple Harvest Reads, February 21 (Author Interview)

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, February 21

Locks, Hooks and Books, February 22

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Tracy is giving away the grand prize package of a paperback copy each of Who Brought the Dog to Church? and Refuge of Grace: Finding Your Safe Place!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for nine extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

Link for giveaway: https://promosimple.com/ps/29c57/refuge-of-grace-celebration-tour-giveaway

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Author Interview: Nellie by Amy Walsh

Nellie Blog Tour

Welcome to the Blog Tour for Nellie by Amy Walsh, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

About the Book

Title: Nellie
Series: Apron Strings #2
Author: Amy Walsh
Publisher: Walsh Mountain Publishing
Release Date: February 15, 2024
Genre: Historical Romance

Finances are tight for the O’Dwyer family who live on a mountain outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1931. Life gets even harder when their beloved Dadaí must cease work as a coal miner to become a patient at the West Mountain Sanitarium.

Nellie is her preferred name, but family and friends have heard Mam shout “Fenella Aileen O’Dwyer!” all too often with the countless predicaments she got herself into throughout childhood. So, it’s not altogether surprising when Nellie impulsively accepts a job as an assistant cook at the Clarinda House in a case of mistaken identity -- though she’s the last person her family would ask to prepare a meal.

Fortunately, along with determination, a talent for acting, and the gift of blarney, Nellie has Mrs. Campbell’s Cookery Book, a treasure she discovered at a Red Cross drought relief sale.

As her reluctant admiration for her employer grows, Nellie wishes she could be the sort of truthful woman of faith that Mr. Mason Peale esteems. If she confesses all, will she lose her job along with the friendships she’s formed at Clarinda House?

PURCHASE LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon

Excerpt

Through the small window, she caught glimpses of Mason conversing with Mam, as on the straight stretches he turned his head to smile at Mam and even laughed a couple of times.

How she wished she could hear what Mam was saying. Was she telling him stories about her antics over the years? Nellie cringed, thinking of a few tales her father often told when company came. One of Daidí’s favorite memories took place when she was Johny’s age, and she replaced Father Doyle’s prayerbook with her cousin’s volume of Grimm’s Tales within the pulpit. With its cover being a similar shade of brown, the priest hadn’t noticed before he started his homily. Father must have been quite distracted that day, for he began reading the page where Nellie had marked her favorite tale with his bookmark. He read all the way down to the part of “Sleeping Beauty” where the frog appeared to the queen while she was bathing and promised her a babe would be born within the year before he slammed down the volume and shouted, “What heresy is this?” Later a fearful Nellie confessed she had just been trying to help him make his sermons more interesting.

About the Author

Amy Walsh

Amy Walsh writes historical and contemporary romance, mysteries, speculative fiction, and women’s fiction. She is a 5th-grade writing teacher in an urban public school. Amy and her husband, Patrick, have three children. Amy considers herself greatly blessed in the roles God has given her as an earthling, including aspiring wordsmith, teacher of youngsters, nature appreciator, tea aficionado, avid dessert fan, book fanatic, lover of family and friends, and Christ-follower.

Connect with Amy by visiting walshmountainpublishing.com to follow her on social media and sign up for email updates.

Author Interview with Amy

Q: What was the inspiration behind Nellie?

Amy: Sometimes stories just pop into my head, inspired by a Bible verse, a house we drive by, song lyrics – you name it. But in the case of Nellie, since this was a multi-author project, I was assigned a decade, and there were series requirements. For example, I needed a character to show spiritual growth, and she had to live in a small town or outside of a city. She had to be in need of a cookbook. I also had my own bucket list of things to try. I’d wanted to experiment with twins and mistaken identities – and with the age gap trope. I thought how fun it would be to have a character who would have been labeled with ADHD if she was in a 2024 classroom. Additionally, I wanted to include real life characters I had fallen in love with while writing my last book, Voices in the Sanitorium, and I wanted an Irish heroine. To all these variables, I also added nuggets I found in old newspapers and in files at the Lackawanna County Historical Society. The last piece of the puzzle was when I saw the cover model. She looked like she would be mischievous and a tad dramatic. That’s when I knew I wanted Nellie to be an aspiring actress, and all of the variables settled into a storyline in my mind.

Q: How long did it take you to write this story?

Amy: It probably took me about a month to write the rough draft of Nellie last summer. As a schoolteacher I have the summers off. A few of those days I was probably typing twelve to fourteen hours straight. It takes me much longer to write during the school year.

Q: Do you have a favorite quote from this book?

Amy: I do! I think it’s extra special because it stemmed from a “God sighting” during a moment when I needed to be reminded that God must delight in variety. I was beating myself up a little, wishing I could be more detail-oriented, more serious. I probably had lost a piece of mail or something–I can’t remember. But I looked up the hill from our house and for the first time I noticed that a poplar tree looked like it was whirling with activity even though it wasn’t the least bit windy. The surrounding trees appeared very somber, still, and stately. That inspired this passage:

She rolled onto her back again and rested her hands under her head. Why had God decided to create poplars just as He had? With leaves that bristled and danced in the faintest wind even when other trees stood solemn and immovable. Was there a message from the Creator in these heart-shaped leaves with silver underbellies? In how from a distance, these trees looked like a swarm of joyful fairies celebrating sunlight?

Q: In the story, Nellie uses Mrs. Campbell’s Cookery Book. Can you share a favorite recipe of your own?

Amy: I do have a favorite recipe of my own. I wanted to invent a recipe to go with my novel Elsie Whitmore about a schoolteacher whose YouTube video goes viral and captures the attention of Graham Thurston, a former teen superstar now producer. In his attempts to woo her, Graham Googles ‘world’s most loved dessert’ and has his housekeeper make it (Sticky Toffee Pudding). I wanted to make a Pennsylvania version of the dessert that included apples. This is what I came up with, “Mrs. Whitmore’s Upside-Down Apple Sticky Toffee Cupcakes”: https://walshmountainpublishing.com/2021/10/31/a-recipe-inspired-by-elsie-whitmore/

Q: What do you hope readers take away from Nellie?

Amy: I’ve already alluded to one takeaway with my poplar tree quote – to appreciate the variety of personalities God created, and to stop comparing oneself with others. Piggybacking on that is that message that God can use us as we are, both our gifts and our deficits, to bring Him glory, and to help others. The hero of the story has his own lessons to learn. In the midst of the Great Depression, Mason sees acting as a frivolous aspiration. He thinks differently after the Actor’s Guild of Scranton donates the proceeds of an entire weekend of performances to the Drought Relief Fund. (Which actually happened!)

Q: Would you share something about yourself that most readers would not know?

Amy: Something random. I am allergic to newsprint. How inconvenient! I have to take a Zyrtec to read a newspaper. And if it’s an old and dusty book, I have had to take Benadryl on occasion. To follow up with the allergy theme–I adore cats. My husband is severely allergic to them so for several years of married life I was catless. However, we discovered there were “hypoallergenic” cats when my youngest was a toddler. We’ve had cats ever since!

Q: How long ago did you start writing?

Amy: I started writing poems, songs and short stories by the end of first grade. I wrote a short YA novel in high school but never showed it to anyone but my writing teacher. I wrote my second novel, A Misplaced Beauty, while I was on maternity leave for my youngest child. (She just turned eighteen, so that was quite some time ago.) This time I shared it with friends and family. Once I went back to teaching, I needed to focus on my home kids and my school kids, so I went back to writing songs, poems, and short stories. It wasn’t until Election Night of 2020 that I began another novel. I had been teaching online for months due to COVID, all my children’s activities, and my ladies ministry activities had been curtailed, and there I was crawling out of my own skin with stress over what would be the outcome of the election. I remember thinking, ‘I need a break from reality. Time to take on a big writing project.’ I stayed up most of that night, and by early morning I had almost ten thousand words written of Elsie Whitmore. It’s been one writing project after another ever since!

Q: What is your favorite thing about being a writer?

Amy: I have many favorite things, but one is that just like writing has been a break from reality for me, I like giving readers the same respite. I’ll never forget the reaction of a dear older woman from my church after reading A Misplaced Beauty. She wasn’t in the habit of reading novels, but she gave the book a try to support me. After reading it, she was just about glowing as she talked about the characters as if they were real people, and was just so excited to talk about some of the happenings in the novel. I realized that I had given her the gift of forgetting her health issues and her grief over having lost her husband while she was living within the pages of the novel.

Q: Do you prefer to read ebooks or physical copies?

Amy: Ooo! Hard question. I love physical copies of books by my favorite authors. I collect antique books, especially children’s books. I also will pick up just about any used hardcover book that is a shade of blue/green since my first floor has a beachy aesthetic. However, most of my reading is done on the Kindle app of my phone – out of convenience.

Q: How many bookcases are in your home?

Amy: Eleven. And sadly, I have boxes of books in the attic. And piles in random corners. I’m a bookaholic.

Q: What do you like to do when you are not writing?

Amy: Read. Ha ha! Even when I am doing chores, driving my car, or exercising, I am listening to audiobooks. I love to walk outdoors. I love racquet sports – ping pong, tennis, and pickleball. I enjoy playing card games and board games with family and friends. Singing – I love practicing with my church’s praise team, and when we have karaoke time. I love entertaining. Oh – and social media. I love interacting with others in my groups on Facebook. I hope you’ll stop by the Apron Strings Book Series group or Wisdom, Whimsy, and Wordsmithing and chat sometime!

Tour Giveaway

(1) winner will win a $50 Amazon gift card, print copies of Nellie and Voices in the Sanitorium, and some historical memorabilia from the West Mountain Sanitarium!

Full tour schedule linked below. The giveaway begins at midnight February 12, 2024 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on February 19, 2024. Winners will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to JustRead Publicity Tours Giveaway Policies.

Enter Giveaway

Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Author Interview: Biblical Finances by Lisa D. Pedriel

About the Book

Book: Biblical Finances Jesus Christ: The Financial Advisor

Author: Lisa D. Pedriel

Genre: Christian, Christian living, Finance, Wealth Management

Release Date: May 3, 2023

The objective of this book is to help readers manage their finances using biblical standards and principles. The main benefit of doing this is that our finances will be built on a sure foundation (Isaiah 33:6), which is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His Word. Jesus is concerned about every aspect of our lives, and the management of our finances is no exception. Throughout His Word, He gives us advice on how to get and manage the wealth He has made available to us. Therefore, it is imperative that we study the scriptures and apply them to our lives and finances. In summary, this book looks at wealth and finances from a biblical perspective.

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

Lisa Pedriel is a child of the King, who serves as an intercessor in the body of Jesus Christ. She gave her life to Him on March 25, 2017, while walking on Lily Drive in St. James, Barbados. She started off her writing journey by penning poems and love notes to the Lord. Lisa is a qualified accountant and an auditor by profession. She currently resides on her native island Saint Lucia and lives a quiet and private life.

Author Interview

Q: Do you have a favorite quote from this book?

Lisa: As believers we are wealthy, prosperous, successful and limitless in Jesus Christ. Jesus is abundance and opulence. Therefore, in Him there is no lack, no poverty and no want. Although, some of us may not have the earthly riches, we have One Who is greater. My encouragement to everyone who reads this book is to set your heart and eyes on the spiritual riches that are in Jesus Christ. This is what truly matters!

Q: What do you hope readers take away from your book?

Lisa: Sound financial principles are important, and the bible speaks about them however Jesus Christ is the true treasure. The bible says in Matthew 6:33 (NKJV) but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. We are spiritually rich in Jesus Christ.

Q: Are you working on another book now?

Lisa: Yes. I am currently working on a new book called Biblical Leadership- Jesus Christ: The True Leader. This book will look at leadership from a biblical perspective.

Q: In what setting do you enjoy writing the most?

Lisa: I prefer to write inside in peace and quiet.

Q: What do you like to do when you are not writing?

Lisa: I love to bake, travel and sleep.

Blog Stops

Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, February 1

Vicky Sluiter, February 2 (Author Interview)

Locks, Hooks and Books, February 3

By The Book, February 4 (Author Interview)

Library Lady’s Kid Lit, February 5 (Author Interview)

Texas Book-aholic, February 5

Simple Harvest Reads, February 6 (Author Interview)

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, February 7

For the Love of Literature, February 8 (Author Interview)

Because I said so – Adventures in parenting, February 9

A Modern Day Fairy Tale, February 10 (Author Interview)

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, February 11

Fiction Book Lover, February 12 (Author Interview)

Beauty in the Binding, February 13 (Author Interview)

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, February 13

Guild Master, February 14 (Author Interview)

Saturday, February 10, 2024