Cathy Gohlke's Blog, page 7
January 4, 2021
NIGHT BIRD CALLING RELEASE
To celebrate the January 5 release of Night Bird Calling I’m offering a month of weekly giveaways—books and gifts related to my story—as well as signed copies of Night Bird Calling!
You can find these offerings through weekly videos of Book Gems on Facebook at CathyGohlkeBooks. Each week I will share new information–inspiration for the story, quirky characters, why I chose to open a home library to everyone in No Creek in 1941, what I hope readers take from the book–and more. To enter the drawings for opportunities to win the giveaways, simply subscribe to my newsletter , where you’ll automatically receive a gift of
“Into the Starry Night,” the short story prequel to Night Bird Calling. 
Other entry options include sharing the video or following me on Bookbub, where I share lots of good book recommendations. Be sure to leave a comment on Facebook or right here on my blog, letting me know how you’ve chosen to enter. Each week I’ll draw a winner for gift items and signed books. I’ll contact the winner through Facebook Message or this website. I can’t wait to share these treasures with you! They’re all gift items or books that helped inspire Night Bird Calling or made me think of the characters I’ve grown to love.
When you’ve read Night Bird Calling I hope you’ll write and let me know if you’ve enjoyed the story, or kindly leave a review. I always love hearing from you!
Until next time take care, God bless, and happy reading,
Cathy
The post NIGHT BIRD CALLING RELEASE first appeared on authorcathygohlke.com.
December 9, 2020
A Short Story Gift For You
To celebrate the launch of my new website I’m offering a gift, “Into the Starry Night”–a short story prequel to my new book Night Bird Calling–to all who subscribe to my newsletter updates. Into the Starry Night introduces a few of the characters from No Creek, North Carolina, the small Appalachian town featured in Night Bird Calling. Characters are a couple of years younger in this story, but I think you’ll love them as I do. Night Bird Calling releases January 5, 2021, and is available for pre-order now.
I hope you’ll explore and enjoy my new website. Jones House Creative designed it and I’m thrilled with the beautiful new look! Be sure to check out my Bonus Features Page–you’ll find lots of new things there with more to come.
Remember that if your book club is reading one of my books I’m always glad to schedule an online book club chat. You can reach me through my Contact Page.
Merry Christmas, and a blessed New Year!
Cathy
The post A Short Story Gift For You first appeared on authorcathygohlke.com.
August 3, 2019
ReNEW–Retreat for New England Writing and Speaking
SO looking forward to the cooler temps and beautiful autumn foliage of New England–and ReNEW–Retreat for New England Writing and Speaking October 4-6! Join me and an amazing team of Christian writers and speakers for a wonderful weekend retreat in beautiful West Hartford, Connecticut! I’d love to share my fiction writing workshop with you–Sharing Influences of Your Life in Your Stories.
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June 3, 2019
D-Day 75th Anniversary Blog Tour
June 3-11, 2019
Welcome to the D-Day 75th Anniversary Blog Tour!
Seven novelists are commemorating the brave men who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Thank you for joining us as we remember their heroism and sacrifice.
Our novels illuminate different aspects of the war—from the landing beaches of Normandy to Nazi-occupied Europe to the US Home Front. Each day, visit with a new author as we share about our stories, our research, and our unique settings. With each blog post, you’ll have the opportunity to win that author’s novel–plus a chance to win a packet of ALL NINE featured novels and a gorgeous signed hardback copy of Everything We Have: D-Day 6.6.44, the new commemorative book from the National World War II Museum!
Giveaway Details
For a chance to win ALL TEN books, please visit each blog, collect the answers to ALL SEVEN questions, and enter the Rafflecopter giveaway on the BLOG TOUR PAGE. The contest opens June 3, 2019 at 1 am PST and closes June 16, 2019 at 11 pm PST. The winner will be announced on Monday, June 17, 2019. *Note* Several of the titles will not be released until later—these will be mailed after the release dates.
To win the prize of ALL TEN books, you must have collected ALL SEVEN answers. The winner must be prepared to send ALL SEVEN answers within 48 hours of notification by email, or a new winner will be selected.
Cathy Gohlke
The Medallion
Two couples’ lives are ravaged by Hitler’s mad war but forever linked through the fate of one little girl.
Inspired by true events of Poland’s darkest days and brightest heroes, The Medallion paints a stunning portrait of war and its aftermath, daring us to believe that when all seems lost, God can make a way forward.
Reminiscent of Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key and Kristen Hannah’s The Nightingale.
TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION
Three summers ago a friend sent me a link to a news story—in Lithuania, a WWII escape tunnel had just been discovered by an international team of archeologists using modern technology. Something about the details of the place rang familiar—as if I’d “been there.”
And then I remembered: Years before, while doing Holocaust research, I’d viewed a powerful documentary, SHOAH, in which Claude Lanzmann, over an eleven year period, had traveled the world to interview surviving Holocaust camp inmates, SS commandants and Jewish, German and Polish eyewitnesses of the “final solution—Nazi efforts to systematically exterminate human beings.”
During the war, as the Russians closed in on occupied Lithuania, Himmler feared the discovery of Nazi wartime atrocities. He ordered eighty Jewish prisoners to dig up and burn bodies (approximately 70,000 Jewish and 30,000 others mostly from the Jewish community in Vilna) that the SS had shot and dropped into mass graves in the Ponary Forest. The prisoners realized that to eliminate witnesses, they, too, would be murdered once their gruesome labor ended. Shackled and emaciated, the men contrived to dig, by night, an escape tunnel from their pit of imprisonment to the forest’s edge. They had only their hands, spoons, and a few electricians’ tools to do the job. 
Until new technology (using radar and radio waves to scan the area) in 2016 verified the existence of the tunnel, the story had been relegated to the stuff of myths—an escape tale too fantastic to believe. Nova aired a documentary revealing the scientists’ search and tunnel discovery in 2017.
One of the long ago interviews by Claude Lanzmann included that of Issac Dogim (sometimes spelled Itzhak Dugin) who, in the process of digging up bodies, found those of his family (some sources sited his mother, three sisters and their children. Some sources sited his wife and sisters). According to the story I read, Dogim identified the partially decomposed bodies of his family by their clothing, and his wife by the medallion she wore around her neck—a medallion he’d given her on their wedding day.
As I reread transcripts containing Dogim’s interview, and began researching details, I asked the Lord to show me the greater purpose of this story—what in this would bring Him glory and what would He teach me through its writing? What will bless and encourage readers? 
About the same time, my sister and others sent me numerous links to Irena Sendler’s story. Irena was a Polish Catholic social worker who developed a network within Żegota (an underground Polish Council to Aid Jews) to rescue children during WWII. Despite terrible risks, they smuggled 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto and certain death at the hands of the Nazis, then hid them in Polish homes, convents, churches and hospitals until the end of the war. 
Of the 2500 Jewish children her network helped to save, approximately 2,000 were found after the war. Though their parents had been murdered (most at Treblinka), many were united with extended family, thanks to matching lists of Jewish and assigned Aryan names) that Irena had kept hidden in a buried jar. Approximately 400 to 500 children were never found.
Theories abound regarding the whereabouts of those 400 to 500. I couldn’t help but wonder: What became of those children? What became of one?
And what of those who risked everything to hide those precious children? If I had bonded, loved and treated a child as my own for several years, believing their parents dead, would I give up that child at war’s end? Would I lie to keep them? 
Sacrifice, making hard decisions, struggling for the moral high ground and obedience to God are not ideals relegated to wartime. They are the ongoing stuff of life. The legacies of Irena Sendler and Issac Dogim entwined to form a story in my heart and mind, giving birth to The Medallion.
Question to answer for the Rafflecopter Giveaway: What is the name of the forest where the escape tunnel was dug? Remember to write this down as you will need all the clues to enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway.
To enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway on the BLOG TOUR PAGE, enter your name and email address (we need these to notify the winner). Then select an author’s name and enter the answer to that author’s question. You only need to enter the Rafflecopter once to be entered in the giveaway, but you can earn up to seven entries by answering all seven questions in the Rafflecopter. But don’t forget…to win, you must have collected ALL SEVEN answers. You can enter the Rafflecopter each day, or you can enter all your answers at once any time before June 16, 2019 at 11 pm PST. US mailing addresses only, please.
RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY ON BLOG TOUR PAGE
Three-time Christy, and two-time Carol and INSPY Award-winning author, Cathy Gohlke, writes novels steeped with inspirational lessons from history. Her stories reveal how people break the chains that bind them and triumph over adversity through faith. When not traveling to historic sites for research, she, her husband, and their dog Reilly, divide their time between Northern Virginia and the Jersey Shore, enjoying time with their grown children and grandchildren. Visit her website at www.cathygohlke.com and find her on Facebook at CathyGohlkeBooks.
Cathy is offering an additional giveaway: To win a signed copy of The Medallion share this post on Facebook and/or sign up for Cathy’s newsletter on her website at cathygohlke.com and leave a comment at the end of this post.
Schedule for the D-Day 75th Anniversary Blog Tour
Be sure to visit each site for a chance to win ALL NINE featured novels, plus the commemorative D-day book!
Note: Links will go live on the post date.
June 3: AMANDA DYKES, author of Whose Waves These Are
June 4: CATHY GOHLKE, author of The Medallion
June 5: LIZ TOLSMA, author of When the Heart Sings
June 6: SARAH SUNDIN, author of the Sunrise at Normandy series: The Sea Before Us, The Sky Above Us, and The Land Beneath Us
June 7: AMANDA BARRATT, author of My Dearest Dietrich
June 10: VALERIE LUESSE, author of Almost Home
June 11: MELANIE DOBSON, author of Memories of Glass
The post D-Day 75th Anniversary Blog Tour first appeared on authorcathygohlke.com.
May 9, 2019
February 24, 2019
The Saving Amelie Tour
A Unique Journey through Israel to Oberammergau’s Passion Play. Award-winning Authors Cathy Gohlke and Terri Gillespie will lead a once-in-a-lifetime journey through Israel and end at the location of Cathy’s bestselling book, Saving Amelie, June 15-27, 2020. For more information, to download a full brochure, and to register see this page. Tour includes Israel, Germany & Austria.
The post The Saving Amelie Tour first appeared on authorcathygohlke.com.
July 31, 2018
Road Trippin’ with Tyndale and Melanie Dobson: Stop #9
Welcome to Tyndale Fiction’sRoad Trip Scavenger Hunt! We’re so happy you are here. To participate, collect the key words through all 13 stops in order, so you can enter to win our grand prize giveaway!
Some details:
The adventure begins on Wednesday, August 1. You’ll have two weeks to make your way through all the stops (giveaways will close on Tuesday, August 14).
While you do not have to start at Stop #1, keep in mind that the grand prize giveaway phrase will begin with the word you collect at that first stop.
To complete your submission for the grand prize giveaway, be sure to collect the key word within each author’s blog post, submitting the final, completed phrase in the form hosted on this page.
Also, be sure to enter the giveaways these authors are hosting on their blogs!
Enjoy the journey—we hope you’ll discover new books along the way as you hear from Tyndale Fiction authors about road trips, the settings of their novels, and more!
Happy road tripping!
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I am so pleased to welcome my friend and fellow Tyndale author Melanie Dobson to my blog today. Melanie’s July release is a WWII time-slip story called Hidden Among the Stars, about hidden treasure, a castle, and ordinary people who resisted evil in their own extraordinary way. Publishers Weekly gave it high remarks, calling it “an exciting tale” that“will please fans of time-jump inspirational fiction.” Melanie’s capacity for research, eye for detail, and skill with imagery will convince you that she’s visited every place she writes about—and many she has, including the Austrian castle in this story! Welcome, Melanie!
Author Melanie Dobson
Hallstatt’s Hiding Places
By Melanie Dobson
Melanie & Jon Backpacking
Backpacking across Europe—that’s how my husband, Jon, and I decided to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. We savored the old-world culture and charm as we hiked along Italy’s coast, toured medieval castles in Germany, and cruised the canals in Belgium, but we both left a bit of our hearts in an ancient Austrian town called Hallstatt.
Near the end of our monthlong trip, a ferryboat met Jon and me and our oversized packs at a train station along Hallstättersee (Lake Hallstatt), delivering us to the village on the opposite shore. Hallstatt’s wooden boathouses and storybook homes seemed to be clinging to the side of an Austrian Alp, and the moment we stepped off the ferry, we crossed through a portal of sorts, traveling back a few centuries as we walked along a cobblestone lane to the town square. The rugged, snow-capped mountains and alpine lake, the quaint village with its church steeples and waterfall that spilled into town—all of it captivated us.
Austria
Along the shore, hidden partially by trees, we could see spires of an abandoned castle, and I wanted to know its story. No one in Hallstatt could tell us who’d lived in the castle—at least, not in English—so my husband agreed to a new adventure. With a swan as our escort, we glided across the lake in an electric boat so I could study the rusty turrets, boarded windows, and old boathouse resting in the water like a felled log.
Instead of quelling my curiosity, the visit ignited the match of inspiration in my mind. Who had lived in this castle and what happened there? I began writing in my journal that night, trying to capture my rogue thoughts on paper, hoping that one day a novel would emerge from the ashes of this castle’s story.
Austria
When we returned home, I began researching more of Hallstatt’s history and discovered that this region, in all of its beauty and mystique, had been infiltrated by an enemy in 1938. This town and the surrounding Salzkammergut became a mountain retreat for Nazi officials who built mansions on the shores of its many lakes and tested submarines in the deep water. They also used salt mines in the mountains to hide “ownerless treasure,” the gold bullion and artwork they’d stolen from the Jewish people.
The Nazis intended to build a Fourth Reich in this alpine fortress, but the Allies had other plans. Near the end of the war, these lakes became a dustbin of sorts, collecting whatever the enemy dumped into their waters—weapons, counterfeit banknotes, concentration camp lists—as they fled south from the Allied troops. The Devil’s Dustbin, locals call it.
Lake Hallstatt plunges more than four hundred feet between the mountains. Because of its depth and the many hiding places in the underwater forests, caves, and shifting sands, divers continue finding World War II artifacts, almost eighty years after the war. Some still believe there’s a treasure trove buried on the bottom, but no one has reported finding any gold.
Austria
As the years passed after our trip—and access to online material grew—I was able to find out more about Schloss Grub, the medieval castle on Lake Hallstatt’s shore. One of its first owners was an eccentric salt administrator named Count Christoph Eyssel von Eysselsberg who stated in his will that his casket must journey across the lake every fifty years, from Hallstatt’s village church to his former home. During World War II, I discovered, this estate was used as a Hitler Youth camp, but my imagination had to fill in many gaps about what happened there after Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany.
Much has been written about World War II treasure since Jon and I visited Hallstatt, but a story about this castle and what happened to the heirlooms of the Austrian Jewish people continued to burn inside me until I finally put it on paper. So I built Schloss Schwansee—Castle of Swan Lake—in my mind, inspired by Eysselsberg’s story, and created a cast of historical and contemporary characters who are searching for lost treasure.
Hidden Among the Starsis a time-slip novel about an Austrian castle and treasure and fairy tales, but most of all, it’s a story about God using ordinary people across Austria to resist evil in their own extraordinary way.
Melanie in Austria
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Here’s the Stop #9 Important Information:
You can purchase Melanie’s book, Hidden Among the Stars, here . (link: https://www.tyndale.com/search?q=hidden+among+the+stars&f= }
Clue to write down: and
Link to Stop #10, the next stop in the scavenger hunt, on Melanie’s Site! {link:http://melaniedobson.com/road-trippin-with-tyndale-and-courtney-walsh-stop10}
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Cathy Gohlke’s Giveaway from Until We Find Home — a book from England, depicting the lovely and story inspiring home of Beatrix Potter, a tea towel with a beloved quote from C. S. Lewis, and a signed copy of Until We Find Home. To Enter the Drawing, leave a comment that includes the answer to this question from Melanie’s post above: What was the object that the eccentric Count Christoph Eyssel von Eysselsberg stated in his will must journey across the lake every fifty years, from Hallstatt’s village church to his former home?
Link: http://www.sandrabyrd.com/road-trippin-with-tyndale-and-cathy-gohlke-stop-8/
The post Road Trippin' with Tyndale and Melanie Dobson: Stop #9 first appeared on authorcathygohlke.com.
