Saturday, January 27, 2007

If The Shoe Fits Blog Tour

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is posting about If the Shoe Fits (Steeple Hill Cafe', 2007) by Marilynn Griffith (fellow CFBA member, blogger, writer, and mother of seven).


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marilynn Griffith is wife to a deacon, mom to a tribe and proof that God gives second chances. Her novels include Made of Honor (Steeple Hill, Jan. 2006), Pink (Revell, Feb. 2006), Jade (Revell, June 2006), and Tangerine (Revell, January 2007). Her other credits include Chicken Soup for the Christian Woman’s Soul, Cup of Comfort Devotionals and her Shades of Style series (Revell, 2006). She lives in Florida with her husband and children. To book speaking engagements or just say hello, email: marilynngriffith@gmail.com.


ABOUT THE BOOK:

Have Glass Slipper, Need Prince...


If the Shoe Fits is the second book in the Sassy Sistahood Novels. The first in the series was Made of Honor (Steeple Hill, Jan. 2006).


In all my thirty-five years, I, shoe designer Rochelle Gardner, have never had so many men interested in me! My teen son's dad is back in my life after suffering from amnesia (yes, really). The church deacon has had his eye on me for years (and never said a word). And the young waiter (from the restaurant I've visited for singles' events) is trying to steal my heart. I've been struggling with my faith, trying to figure out which man God has chosen for me and wondering if I have the courage to step forward, on my not-so-pretty feet, to accept love. It's almost too much for the Sassy Sistahood to handle, but my girlfriends always have my back!


Saturday, January 20, 2007

Arms of Deliverance Blog Tour

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is posting about Arms of Deliverance (Moody Publishers, 2006) by Tricia Goyer (fellow CFBA member, blogger, writer, and homeschooling mom!)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Tricia Goyer is one the members of the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance (Tricia's Blog, "It's Real Life" Tricia's Parenting Blog, "Generation NeXt") and we are pleased to be able to review her exciting historical fiction book, Arms of Deliverance. She was named Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference "Writer of the Year" in 2003. Tricia was also a finalist for the Gold Medallion Book Award and won ACFW's "Book of the Year" for Long Historial Romance in 2005 AND in 2006. She has written hundreds of articles, Bible Study notes, and both fiction (three other WWII novels, From Dust to Ashes, Night Song and Dawn of a Thousand Nights. Night Song, the second title in Tricia’s World War II series, won ACFW's Book of the Year for Best Long Historical Romance.) She's and non-fiction books. married to John, and they have three great kids whom she homeschools: Cory (17), Leslie (14), and Nathan (12). They make their home in Northwest Montana with their dog, Lilly.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The fourth and final novel in this exhilarating series capturing the tales of men and women swept into World War II.

EUROPE, 1944

Katrine, a Czech Jew, is so successful in her attempt to pass as an Aryan that she finds herself dating a Nazi officer. Having convinced him of her genetic purity, the officer sends her to stay at a Lebensborn home--a Nazi breeding program in which children are raised and indoctrinated by the state.

Meanwhile, two friends, Mary and Lee, one a socialite, the other a working class girl, land similar reporting jobs at the New York Tribune on the eve of the war’s outbreak. Now rivals with assignments on the frontlines of war-torn Europe, Lee joins troops sailing for Normandy, while Mary's destiny lies in the cramped quarters of a B-17 bearing down on Berlin. Before the presses roll, their lives will be indelibly marked by a caring American navigator, brave French resistors, and a maniacal Nazi officer. Arms of Deliverance is a story of unexpected redemption.

Read Chapter One on Tricia's Blog.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

A Pagan's Nightmare Blog Tour

Ray Blackston of Greenville, South Carolina, worked as a buyer and a broker for eleven years before cashing in his modest 401k and leaving his corporate cubicle in 2000 to write full time. He is a graduate of the University of south Carolina, with a degree in Finance and Economics.

He serves on the drama team at his church, participates in a weekly men's accountability group, serves on the missions committee of his church, has traveled to rural Ecuador on a summer missions program, and coaches his seven-year-old nephew, Action Jackson, in T-Ball.

When he is not crafting a new novel, is exploring south Carolina beaches with friends and family. He competes in golf tournaments, leads a writers' critique group, and relives his youth through a large collection of eighties music!

His first novel Flabbergasted was one of three finalists for the Christy Award for best first novel, and was chosen as Inspirational Novel of the Year by the Dallas Morning News

ABOUT THE BOOK

A Pagan's Nightmare
Christians can buy gas for twelve cents a gallon, while everyone else (the pagans, that is) have to pay $6.66. The radio stations alter all song lyrics to conform to "Christian" standard--the Beatles belt out "I Wanna Hold Your Tithe"; ABBA's "Dancing Queen" becomes "Dancing's Wrong". Even French fries, newly labeled "McScriptures", are tools for evangelism.

Larry's novel is a big hit with his agent, Ned. But Ned's wife..a committed Southern Baptist...is less than amused. And Larry has yet to show the manuscript to his new girlfriend, even though he's made her the unsuspecting heroine. It will take deft handling from both men to keep their lives and their relationships intact when the world witnesses A Pagan's Nightmare.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Tangerine by Marilynn Griffith

This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is posting about Tangerine (Revell, January 2007) by Marilynn Griffith (fellow CFBA member, blogger, writer, and mother of *GULP* seven!)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marilynn Griffith is wife to a deacon, mom to a tribe and proof that God gives second chances. Her novels include Made of Honor (Steeple Hill, Jan. 2006), Pink (Revell, Feb. 2006), Jade (Revell, June 2006), and If the Shoe Fits (Steeple Hill Cafe', 2007). Her other credits include Chicken Soup for the Christian Woman’s Soul, Cup of Comfort Devotionals and her Shades of Style series (Revell, 2006). She lives in Florida with her husband and children. To book speaking engagements or just say hello, email: marilynngriffith@gmail.com.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Tangerine is the third book in the Shades of Style Novels.
Fans of Pink and Jade will eat up Tangerine, the third book in the cutting-edge Shades of Style series. Jean Guerra, a designer at Garments of Praise design firm, doesn't like surprises. These days though, the unexpected meets her everywhere. Since Jean's return to the church a year ago, her God-encounters occur with increasing frequency, along with thoughts of her husband-the one she vowed to divorce and gave up on long ago. The one nobody at work knows about, not even her best friend, Lily, or her boss, Chenille. But when the designer assigned to work with Jean on a line of men's suits shows up, her heart flips. It's her husband, Nigel Salvador. Jean is finally rendered speechless. Can her bruised heart become whole enough to love again? Or will she remain in the trenches of loneliness forever?

Monday, January 01, 2007

Hell in a Briefcase FIRST Tour



HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
It is January 1st, time for the
FIRST Day Blog Tour! (Join our alliance! Click the button!) The FIRST day
of every month we will feature an author and their latest book's FIRST
chapter!



Leave a comment and you can win a free copy of the book!


This month's feature author is:
Phil Little with
Brad Whittington
and their book:
(A Matt Cooper Novel)



ELEVEN BRIEFCASES AND ONE UNLIKELY HERO...CAN MATT
COOPER FIND ELEVEN NUCLEAR DEVICES AND HIS FAITH BEFORE DISASTER
STRIKES?

With violence in the Middle East escalating daily, Americans are glued
to their televisions wondering what will happen next. Meanwhile, Matt
Cooper, jet-setting star of Phil Little's debut novel Hell in a
Briefcase
is doing something about it. A private security executive, his
adrenaline-junkie days consist of last-minute first-class overseas
flights, Hollywood parties with his actress girlfriend, and direct calls from
top CIA brass.
A chance meeting with Mr. Roberts, “an old broken-down millionaire” and
uncommon Christian, sends Cooper on a trip to Israel that will change
his life. Matt goes behind the curtain of Middle East terrorism,
witnessing firsthand the untold ravages of holy war. The deeper he goes, the
closer he gets to a plot involving eleven stolen briefcase nukes and a
plan infinitely more sinister than 9/11.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Phil Little, president of West Coast Detectives and a recognized expert
in counter-terrorism, provides bodyguards to the stars and runs a
detective agency that has served ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, Paramount, MGM,
and hundreds of others (www.westcoastdetectives.us). He draws on this experience in crafting the
tightly wound plot of this international thriller. In addition to his
duties as a security expert, Phil has also written Hostile
Intent
, Protecting Yourself from Terrorism and will soon be the
subject of a television pilot. In the meantime, you can read more about
Matt's adventures in his blog, http://detectivemattcooper.blogspot.com.

In addition, Phil is available for comment on all aspects of
international terrorism, both at home and abroad, and he makes for an interesting
and colorful guest. His expertise in the area of international issues
combined with his personable on-camera style would make for a great
interview on this hot topic. From Lebanese terror camps in the 1970’s to
American airports in the months before 9/11, Phil Little has witnessed
the terror threat up close and can share eye-opening stories and
information that all Americans should know.

THE FIRST CHAPTER:


Marjeyoun, Lebanon.

Thursday, 21 November 2002. 01:30.


A full moon. A glow seemed to rise from the sand, allowing them to
drive with their headlights off. The five Jeeps kept to 40 kph on the dark
road that wound southward between hills and wadis. In the third Jeep,
Major Skaff allowed himself the brief luxury of picking out Pegasus in
the sharp winter sky before he compulsively scanned the rocky terrain
for signs of Hezbollah fedayeen. He was leading this patrol to check out
rumors of increased activity near Shaaba Farms, the disputed area where
three Israeli soldiers had been kidnapped two years before.

The ridge road ran from the town of Marjeyoun down to Qlaia’a
under the ominous gaze of Shqif Arnoun-the castle called “Beaufort” by
the Crusaders-to the west. Christians and Muslims had fought for this
ground for centuries, trading possession of the castle as their fortunes
rose and fell. In the 1970’s the Palestinian Liberation Organization had
used the strategic placement of the castle to shell civilian
settlements in northern Israel.

That was when Skaff, then a young recruit of the Southern
Lebanese Army, had been a driver in a similar convoy, shortly before the
civil war broke out between Christians and Muslims in 1975. Traversing this
very ridge on a mission, he had come under fire from the castle. His
evasive driving had saved the convoy and drawn the attention of General
Lahd.

The intervening thirty years had been a generation of
unremitting war. Israel, tiring of mounting civilian casualties and the Lebanese
government’s refusal to expel the terrorists, invaded southern Lebanon
in 1982 and captured the castle. Eighteen years of occupation followed,
during which Skaff had risen through the SLA ranks while working openly
with the Israelis to keep the various Muslim factions at bay. When he
had started, Hezbollah did not exist. Now the radical Muslim army
controlled the south and dealt severely with the Christian resistance.

As the occupation had grown increasingly costly and casualties
mounted, the pressure increased for Israel to withdraw. When the SLA
collapsed in 2000, Israel destroyed what was left of the castle walls and
pulled back behind the Blue Line specified by the UN. The SLA
scattered. Thousands fled to Israel or went into hiding. Those who didn’t were
imprisoned and tried as enemy collaborators. As Hezbollah gained control
of the area, the anticipated slaughter of Christians didn’t
materialize. But any SLA militiamen emboldened to return were also imprisoned.

As he scanned the distant ruins of the castle in the moonlight,
Major Skaff reflected on change and constancy. Where PLO guns had once
rained death on Israel and Lebanese Christians, now tourists snapped
pictures and rushed home to post them on the Internet. And the same
General Antoine Lahd who had brought him up in the ranks and fought beside
him for decades had fled to Paris. Only a week ago he had opened a fancy
restaurant in Tel Aviv called Byblos. It had a nice ocean view.

True, Lahd had a death sentence hanging over him for treason and
war crimes, but so did Skaff. And so did many of the two thousand SLA
in Lebanese prisons.

But some things had not changed. Southern Lebanon was just as
dangerous for the men in these Jeeps as it had been when Skaff was
driving instead of commanding.

Skaff was drawn from his reflections by a dark shape ahead. At
the end of the ridge the road snaked through an outcropping of rock. He
had passed through it many times, always with reluctance. This night he
felt a peculiar sense of revulsion as he squinted at the misshapen lump
of stone looming before him.

He nudged his driver and nodded toward the rocks. Hassan nodded
back. He could feel it too. Skaff reached for the radio to signal the
lead Jeep. A lifetime of guerrilla fighting had convinced him that such
premonitions were not without merit. His transmission was brief, but
they were already entering the outcropping when he put the radio down.

Five seconds later a rocket hit the grille of the lead Jeep. The
explosion lit the rocks towering over them. He saw the silhouettes of
two men blow out on either side of the vehicle, which was tossed onto
the nose of the next Jeep. Hassan narrowly missed them, skidding left and
stopping next to the driver of the lead Jeep, who was lying half off
the road.

The two Jeeps behind slid sideways to a stop in the road as
machine gun bursts echoed from beyond the lead Jeep. Skaff was exposed to
the attack. He dove from his seat to the rear of the second Jeep,
between two men already returning fire with an Uzi and an M-16.

He rolled to his feet and yelled to the two back Jeeps,
motioning for them to form a double barricade with their vehicles, keeping the
men covered both in the front and the rear in case the attackers
attempted to sandwich them in the gap. Skaff turned back, confident that his
men needed no further direction. This mission called for
battle-hardened veterans, and he had personally selected the nineteen men who were
with him now. Every man among them had proved himself in years of combat.
Some even owed their life to his cool command in battle. Some had
returned the favor multiple times.

Skaff scanned the forward battle to account for the remaining
eleven men, his position shielded by the lead Jeep transfixed on the
grille of the second. To the left, Hassan was pulling the driver of the
first Jeep to safety. The other two men from Skaff’s Jeep were covering
him with sporadic fire from their Uzis. Ahead, the driver of the second
Jeep was placing a case of grenades handy to his partner, who had fitted
his M-16 with a grenade launcher and was set up in the backseat. Skaff
was standing beside the other two passengers in the second Jeep. That
left the three passengers from the lead Jeep.

He spotted Saif on the right. He had been thrown clear onto the
sand without apparent injury. He was crouched behind a boulder,
occasionally returning fire with his Desert Eagle .50-caliber side arm.
Failing to sight the other two, he shouted to the driver, who had acquired an
Uzi.

“Rafik? Sayyed?”

He nodded forward. Skaff crawled over the middle of the jeep to
the hood. Sayyed was wedged between the lead Jeep and the grille of the
second Jeep, most likely dead. Rafik was lying on the hood of the
second Jeep. Skaff checked for a pulse. Nothing. He closed Rafik’s eyes and
whispered a short prayer. Skaff couldn’t play favorites with his men,
but this loss was harder than any other would have been. At nineteen,
Rafik had already spent four years with Skaff, rarely more than fifty
yards from his side. Four years of relentless, driven hate. Skaff had been
Rafik’s ticket for revenge. Perhaps now he had found the peace revenge
had not been able to bring him.

Skaff was crawling back to get a weapon when the second rocket
hit the bottom of the lead Jeep. The gas tank exploded, sending most of
the shrapnel back toward the attackers. The force of the blast threw
the second Jeep back five feet, knocking over the two shooters behind.
The grenade launcher and the man with it fell into the front seat. The
driver was standing to the side. He returned fire with the Uzi.

Skaff helped reposition the grenade launcher and crawled out of
the Jeep. The two in back were already firing again. He scanned the
area and then dove toward the two Jeeps in the rear. Of the eight men
between the jeeps, one had taken a round in the right shoulder but was
still firing left-handed, propped against a door. Three were facing the
rear but indicated they hadn’t seen any action, yet. Two were covering the
walls on either side with M-16s, but also hadn’t seen action. The final
two had grenade launchers on their M-16s. They waited until they saw
several volleys of tracer bullets originating from a single location.
Then they fired three seconds apart at the source. The machine gun fire
stopped. Skaff slapped them on the back. Perhaps they would get out of
this thing alive.

Then a rocket hit Skaff’s Jeep. Hassan was behind a curtain of
stone, firing with an Uzi, having propped the injured driver in a cleft
in the rock. But the other two were using the Jeep for cover. One
tumbled backward, clear of the Jeep. The other was knocked down as the Jeep
rolled over, pinning his leg under it. Skaff ran through a volley of
automatic weapons fire and pulled the first man to his feet. They raced
to the Jeep, joined by Hassan, and rocked it back over. Then they
dragged the injured man to safety next to the injured driver.

Skaff felt a shudder of unease ripple through the
adrenaline-laced focus that always came over him in combat. If this kept up, the
whole team would be shredded before they had used half their ammo. He
grabbed Hassan’s arm and yelled into his ear over the din.

“We have to take out that rocket launcher or we don’t get out of
here. Take those three and circle around.” Hassan nodded and stepped
away but Skaff grabbed his arm. “Take a radio.”

He let go, and Hassan ran to the rear while the others laid down
covering fire. Skaff used the opportunity to race to the front two
Jeeps and get the four there away from the vehicles and behind the cover of
the rocks. As they ran for cover, another rocket hit the top of the
lead Jeep, sending fragments of the grille and fenders flying in all
directions. Skaff ran through the explosion back to the rock curtain. When
he fell against a boulder the injured man pointed at Skaff’s leg. He
looked down and saw that his left trouser leg was slashed in three places.
Blood was seeping down to his boots. He looked around to see how the
others had fared.

Saif seemed to have been hit in the arm by something. He was now
firing the Eagle while holding his upper arm with the other hand. The
other four seemed to have escaped unscathed. Skaff’s radio had not
survived the rocket. He nodded to the man next to him, who wielded an Uzi
while he made it to the two back Jeeps, getting an Uzi and a radio. He
turned it up all the way and slung it over his shoulder. Then he began
firing at the source of tracers beyond the rubble of the Jeeps.

Looking for some encouragement, Skaff probed his memory. In
almost three decades of fighting, he didn’t recall anything quite as dire
as the current circumstance. He had two confirmed dead, one unconscious,
three wounded but still firing. Almost a third of the force. The
numbers were bound to increase as long as that rocket launcher was working.
His calculations were interrupted by Hassan’s voice squawking through
the pandemonium.

“We got the rocket launcher, but I think they have another on
the left. And now we’re pinned down, so we’re going nowhere.”

The last word was drowned out by a rocket blast on the rock
curtain above the injured men. Skaff doubted he could get a team around the
other side. Even if he did, the enemy would be expecting them. No way
around. No way through. He scanned the sheer rock walls on either side.
No way over. The fedayeen had chosen their positions well and appeared
to have ample men, weapons, and ammo. It seemed likely that most of
this team would share the fate of Rafik and Sayyed. Probably all. The
thought sickened Skaff, turning the adrenaline in his veins to bile in his
throat.

There was one last hope, but it might be too late. He selected
another frequency on the radio and shouted over the gunfire, “Lehafil
Levanon Sanctzia. Lehafil Levanon Sanctzia.
(Activate Lebanon
Sanction.)”