Lyn Cote's Blog, page 78
July 28, 2012
Last Week’s Winner &…
Stephanie M won the copy of Sharon Dunn’s ZERO VISIBILITY!
This week Virginia Smith will guest and offer a giveaway. And I’ll be posting another of my reviews. Hope you enjoy the end of July and beginning of August. Where did the summer go?–Lyn
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July 25, 2012
Lyn Interviews Author Melanie Dobson & Why She Loves Cemeteries
Today I have the pleasure of sharing my interview of Author Melanie Dobson. I think you’ll find her replies interesting and her bio impressive. And you might want to look into her latest release, Love Finds You on Mackinac Island. (BTW, that’s pronounced Mak-i-naw.)
**BTW, Melanie isn’t offering just a book giveaway. She’s offering a Kindle Fire! Read the scoop at the end!**
LYN: Tell us a little about your writing and your real life.
MELANIE: Ever since I was a child, I’ve been passionate about reading and writing stories. After I got out of college, I shelved my dream to write fiction for almost a decade. Not long before my thirtieth birthday, God rekindled the fire in me to pursue this desire, but it took almost seven years to publish a novel. In hindsight, the timing of this was perfect for our family. We adopted two children the year before I received my first novel contract, and I’ve been so grateful to be able to stay home with our girls during the day while I write in the evenings and often on Saturdays when Dad is home to play. God grows and stretches me a little more with every book I write, and I’m grateful to Him for the opportunity to be able to share the stories He’s placed in my heart.
LYN: Was there a time in your life when you think God challenged you to become stronger? Please share.
MELANIE: I feel challenged almost every day as a mother and a writer in that I know I am not able to do anything without God’s provision. I’m grateful for His forgiveness, guidance, and grace!
Last year I also went to Haiti with a group of ladies to help lead a retreat to encourage pastor’s wives. I was terrified to go on this trip, not only because of the physical challenges but also because I didn’t think I had anything to offer these ladies who had lost so much in the last two years. I quickly discovered that I didn’t have anything to offer except a lot of hugs, but God did so very much that week. Our entire team came home marveling at all His miracles. He strengthened us when we felt incredibly weak and gave us such joy after our time with our Haitian sisters.
LYN: In what ways does your heroine show strength? And where does she draw this strength?
MELANIE: Elena is a young woman who chooses to fight her own feelings in order to do what she believes is right for her family. She is a strong woman who loves art and beauty. She draws strength from a place—an abandoned lighthouse where she escapes to enjoy the beauty of God’s stars in the night sky. Through the story, she learns that she can find God in other places, but she continues to draw strength from the beauty in His creation.
LYN: Share one fun fact about your life or books.
MELANIE: I love old buildings, ghost towns, and crumbling cemeteries. My husband says I need an “I brake for cemeteries” bumper sticker on my car. ? I enjoy going to these old places and wonder what life was once like in the walls of the abandoned buildings as well as wonder at the stories of people who came before us. In the absence of facts, my mind starts to fill in the blanks.
LYN: I know what you mean! Thanks for a great interview!
Bio: Melanie Dobson has written eleven contemporary and historical novels including five releases in Summerside’s Love Finds You series. In 2011, two of her releases won Carol Awards: Love Finds You in Homestead, Iowa (for historical romance) and The Silent Order (for romantic suspense). Love Finds You in Liberty, Indiana won Best Book of Indiana (fiction) in 2010. Prior to her writing career, Melanie was the corporate publicity manager at Focus on the Family and a publicist for The Family Channel. She met her husband, Jon, in Colorado Springs, but since they’ve been married, the Dobsons have relocated numerous times including stints in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Colorado, Berlin, and Southern California. Along with their two daughters, Karly and Kiki, they now enjoy their home in the Pacific Northwest. The entire Dobson family loves to travel and hike in both the mountains and along the cliffs above the Pacific.
For more about Melanie Dobson and her books, visit
July 22, 2012
Suspense Author Sharon Dunn & Is a Strong Woman Moneywise?
My guest today is author Sharon Dunn whose books I love! Today she shares about her daughter and her heroine and MONEY! (She’s also offering a book giveaway so leave a comment!) Here’s Sharon:
“As I look at the cost of sending my own daughter to college in the fall and watch the protestors on television who are faced with huge debt and no job prospects, I start to wonder if advising a young person to go to college is wise. The answer is yes, college is still a good idea. For me, it was a good place to mature emotionally as well as intellectually because independence happens gradually especially if you live the first few years in the dorms. However, the mindset of the student has to be in the right place. College is not the place where you live large. It is the place where you begin the habit of sound financial management and frugality.
I worked at a college for years and got to witness students who used their loan money to buy new pick-up trucks and dinners out at expensive eateries and extravagant spring break vacations. One woman even confessed to me that the amount of debt she incurred would have allowed her to purchase a home. Whether it is in the form of loans, grant, scholarships or help from relatives, the money is intended to be used on education.
When I went to college, my parents were not able to provide much financial support. I lived without a car, had multiple roommates to offset the cost of rent and eating out happened maybe once a month at the local fast food place. It was one of the happiest times of my life.
Just like dating is not the place where you “practice for divorce” by running from relationships when a crisis happens and it’s not fun anymore, college is not the place where you practice for a lifetime of debt by living like there was no tomorrow.
One of the biographical details of the heroine in my July release Zero Visibility is that she paid for college by working one year and going to school the next. As Merci Carson puts it, she is the world’s oldest undergraduate. She decided to pay for college herself because if her wealthy father had picked up the bill, he would have assumed he could still control Merci’s life. Merci chose to truly live independently and was willing to make the sacrifices to do that. Being a strong woman isn’t just about making good choices about relationships, but also about finances.
My website address is www.sharondunnbooks.net
Thanks, Sharon, you show a lot of common sense in your advice. Unfortunately common sense ISN’T common. 
Questions for BOOK DRAWING: Did you go to college or trade school? If so, how did you pay for it? Or share your opinion about how college or a trade should be paid for.
Personally, I paid my way through college debt free by getting my beautician’s license. Best decision I ever made! Now you share.”–Lyn
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July 21, 2012
This Week’s Winner & Zero Visibility
Susan F won my slightly read copy of Tamera Alexander’s A LASTING IMPRESSION!
This week Authors Sharon Dunn and Melanie Dobson will guest. Don’t miss a great week!–Lyn
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July 18, 2012
July 15, 2012
Best-Selling Author Sandra Byrd & A Fearless Woman
Author Sandra Byrd tells us the story of a fearless woman, fearless for the truth, the freedom to speak the truth and for God. Here’s Sandra:
“Anne Askew: Mother, Minister, Martyr
A hot day in July, 1546, was about to get hotter for Anne Askew, tied to a bundle of sticks. Her jailers had secured the wood to her mid-section because she’d been tortured to the point where she could not hold herself upright any longer. Anne was the married mother of two young children, twenty-five years old and about to be burnt to death for her faith.
Anne had been born to an up-and-coming gentry family in Lincolnshire and at the age of fifteen she’d been forced to marry her dead sister’s fiancé, a not unusual arrangement. The Dictionary of National Biography says that she left her family to go “gospelling”, the sixteenth century word most often used for preaching scripture. This, of course, was unusual in a time when by law women were not only under the constant legal authority of their husbands, but were also forbidden from reading the Bible aloud to any but their close friends, in private.
Reformist Anne was caught in the middle of the maelstrom that was religion in the Tudor Court. Religious traditionalists wanted a return to the Roman Catholic faith which had been foundational in England for more than a thousand years. Reformers wanted change in the church, or perhaps to establish a new church altogether. Henry, sick, seemed to lean more and more upon his sixth wife Queen Kateryn Parr, a strong reformer, and the heroine in my latest novel, The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr. Parr hoped to continue to influence her stepson, Edward, after her husband’s death, but religious conservatives wanted Edward under their control. By implicating Parr through her friend Askew’s heresy, they hoped to bring down the queen, too. But Ann was not a fair weather friend to the queen.
Anne was brought before the infamous rack in the Tower of London and asked to name other highborn women in the queen’s household who believed as she did, the implication being that the Queen should be named, too. When she refused she was stripped of her clothing down to her shift and racked – a means of torture in which ankles and wrists are strapped to a pulley which stretches until all joints are dislocated. Afterward, Askew was brought to the stake in a chair.
After the fire was lit, Anne continued to correct the bible teaching of Bishop Nicolas Shaxton, so recently a friend and fellow reformer till he recanted when faced with torture and death. As the flames grew higher, she’d speak out, correcting Shaxton on his scripture. “Yes, he’s got that right,” she’d boldly call out on a passage, or, “No, there he misseth and speaks without the book.”
John Foxe, author of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, tells us that someone provided gunpowder to be added to the stakes below Askew to speed her death and more quickly ease her pain. Many believe that the same strong women at court that she protected – the Queen and her highborn ladies in waiting – supplied that gun powder to speed the bold and courageous Askew heavenward on her “chariot of fire.”–Sandra
Best-Selling Author Sandra Bryd & A Fearless Woman
Author Sandra Byrd tells us the story of a fearless woman, fearless for the truth, the freedom to speak the truth and for God. Here’s Sandra:
“Anne Askew: Mother, Minister, Martyr
A hot day in July, 1546, was about to get hotter for Anne Askew, tied to a bundle of sticks. Her jailers had secured the wood to her mid-section because she’d been tortured to the point where she could not hold herself upright any longer. Anne was the married mother of two young children, twenty-five years old and about to be burnt to death for her faith.
Anne had been born to an up-and-coming gentry family in Lincolnshire and at the age of fifteen she’d been forced to marry her dead sister’s fiancé, a not unusual arrangement. The Dictionary of National Biography says that she left her family to go “gospelling”, the sixteenth century word most often used for preaching scripture. This, of course, was unusual in a time when by law women were not only under the constant legal authority of their husbands, but were also forbidden from reading the Bible aloud to any but their close friends, in private.
Reformist Anne was caught in the middle of the maelstrom that was religion in the Tudor Court. Religious traditionalists wanted a return to the Roman Catholic faith which had been foundational in England for more than a thousand years. Reformers wanted change in the church, or perhaps to establish a new church altogether. Henry, sick, seemed to lean more and more upon his sixth wife Queen Kateryn Parr, a strong reformer, and the heroine in my latest novel, The Secret Keeper: A Novel of Kateryn Parr. Parr hoped to continue to influence her stepson, Edward, after her husband’s death, but religious conservatives wanted Edward under their control. By implicating Parr through her friend Askew’s heresy, they hoped to bring down the queen, too. But Ann was not a fair weather friend to the queen.
Anne was brought before the infamous rack in the Tower of London and asked to name other highborn women in the queen’s household who believed as she did, the implication being that the Queen should be named, too. When she refused she was stripped of her clothing down to her shift and racked – a means of torture in which ankles and wrists are strapped to a pulley which stretches until all joints are dislocated. Afterward, Askew was brought to the stake in a chair.
After the fire was lit, Anne continued to correct the bible teaching of Bishop Nicolas Shaxton, so recently a friend and fellow reformer till he recanted when faced with torture and death. As the flames grew higher, she’d speak out, correcting Shaxton on his scripture. “Yes, he’s got that right,” she’d boldly call out on a passage, or, “No, there he misseth and speaks without the book.”
John Foxe, author of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, tells us that someone provided gunpowder to be added to the stakes below Askew to speed her death and more quickly ease her pain. Many believe that the same strong women at court that she protected – the Queen and her highborn ladies in waiting – supplied that gun powder to speed the bold and courageous Askew heavenward on her “chariot of fire.”–Sandra
July 14, 2012
Last Week’s Winner Is…..And How’s Your Dishwasher Doing?
Marion Stroud won Bonnie Leon’s JOY TAKES FLIGHT! Thank you, Bonnie for being my guest and giving away a book! Congrats, Marion!
This week best-selling author Sandra Byrd will guest on Monday and I will review a new book on Thursday and do a giveaway of my slightly read copy. Should be a fun and interesting week!
Now about the dishwasher–About two months ago, my 3 year old dishwasher started doing a really poor job. I finally called my local appliance repair guy who told me this:
The US Govt in its wisdom has ordered all phosphates be taken out of dishwasher soaps. This means that dishwashers may not clean as well as it should. SO the fix is:
Buy one of those dishwasher cleaner things and use it.
Run hot water in the tap nearest the dishwasher right before starting the washer so you start with hot water.
Finally, use Finish cubes with the red dot
Well, I tried these suggestions and they worked for me. I don’t know if they’ll work for you. No guarantee or warranty! But what gets me is -WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY WARN ME?
–Lyn
July 11, 2012
Author Rachel Hauck & A Wedding Dress, A Symbol of Freedom?
Author Rachel Hauck writes the most interesting books, all a bit out of the ordinary. Her latest release THE WEDDING DRESS is no exception. Here’s Rachel:
“Fighting for What We Believe In
When I started writing The Wedding Dress, I knew I was going to have two plots in two different timelines — 1912 and 2012.
Since there are so many fascinating things happening in history in the early 20th Century, I gave my heroine Emily a “cause.”
I thought it was going to be women’s suffrage. But as I researched 1912 Birmingham, Emily’s issue became one about defying prejudice. She stared down Jim Crow laws. Better known as Separate but Equal.
Emily wanted a certain dressmaker to design her wedding gown, but the woman, Taffy, lived on the wrong side of town. In racially segregated Birmingham, Emily broke all protocol and society rules by seeking out a black dressmaker.
But she knew what she wanted. She connected with the regal and peaceful Taffy. She wanted to wear the one she designed. The gown became a symbol of Emily’s desire for independence. Because nothing else about her wedding was her own choice. Not even the groom. But she didn’t know what she wanted until the dramatic ending.
Even when Emily found herself on the wrong side of the law and jail cell, she was determined to fight for what she believed in. She believed in the dress Taffy was making.
Charlotte, the 2012 heroine, faced a different battle. One that did not breaking society rules but one that defied her own identity.
To purchase, click here. The Wedding Dress
I wonder who faced the more difficult battle. Emily or Charlotte? It’s often easier to fight the external battles while avoiding the turmoil inside. Or the notion that the way we’ve chosen to believe about ourselves, others, and the world around us just might be wrong. At the very least, skewed. Facing those notions confuse us. Even frighten us.
If we recognized our own weaknesses, have we turned on our truest friend? No matter what we struggle with, we are our own best friend.
Often taking a look at our internal values and allowing them to be challenged makes us a much stronger person. Our beliefs are validated. But wow, the first leap into the “internal” is challenging.
We have to be willing to change. Be wrong. To look inside.
It takes a strong woman to look at the world around her and speak up for change, to defend the weak, to challenge the wrongs. But it takes an even stronger woman to shine the light of truth on her own heart and… change.
But I don’t want to be the same, do you? I want to leave my Sunday morning church service, changed. I want to leave lunch with friends, changed. Inspired. I want to read a book and think, “How can I do more for others? For myself? For the Lord?” Maybe a novel leaves me inspired to speak up more for what I believe. Or, to open a blind eye about an issue.
Fiction is a cocoon that delivers butterflies of truth, values, ideas and beliefs. Through story, we get to see beliefs – good or bad — wounds and epiphanies — acted out.
That’s why I love fiction. There’s nothing like a good book!
Thanks to Lyn for having me today. Thanks to all of you for stopping by!”–Rachel
BIO: Rachel is an award winning, bestselling author living in sunny, breezy central Florida. Her latest release, The Wedding Dress, debuted on the CBA bestseller list. Her next release, Once Upon A Prince, about a prince who falls in love with an American girl, releases in 2013 from Zondervan. She is on the Advisory Board of American Christian Fiction Writers and the book therapist at My Book Therapy.
Thank you, Rachel. This sounds like a fascinating book and truly fits this blog about STRONG WOMEN and THEIR BRAVE STORIES.
Have any of you ever read a book by Rachel Hauck? Did any of you read THE HELP? Sounds like this book has similar themes about women finding strength in the South.–Lyn
