Lynne Gentry's Blog, page 3

WALKING SHOES TOUR A STOMPING SUCCESS

Just returned home from our first Walking Shoes tour of the small towns of Texas. Saw some fun sights and met some incredible people. One of my favorite stopping places was SOUTHERN SPICE in Hamilton, TX. This quaint little boutique is run by a spunky gal named Melissa Gentry. Just like Leona Harper, the heroine in my hilarious new contemporary Mt. Hope series, Melissa is in the process of reinventing herself. Kick off your shoes and sit a spell as we visit with a woman who believes you're never too old to start over.  

If you haven't laughed until you've cried, then you haven't read WALKING SHOES. Buy it today.

You can take the whole video tour here: https://www.facebook.com/lynne.gentry.7

Walking Shoes Road Trip

Friday, March 31, we're packing our bags, putting on our red shoes, and taking to the back roads of Texas. Some of the fun things we'll see, besides wide open spaces and lots of bluebonnets and cows, are three really quaint Texas towns. We'll stop in Hico, Hamilton, and Pottsville. We'll meet a spunky Texas gal who is reinventing herself in a big way.

This is going to be so fun. Grab your WALKING SHOES and follow along on my FACEBOOK page. Ask questions. Post pics of your favorite small towns. Tell me where you're from.

Walk in these shoes

Meet author and friend, Steve Johnson. This crazy guy hiked the entire Appalachian Trial.

 

Since the release of my new humorous Mt. Hope Southern Adventures series, I thought you'd enjoy meeting a real adventurer. Someone who dared to dream. Someone who donned a different pair of shoes and set out on the adventure of a lifetime.

I've known retired Air Force Colonel Steve Johnson for years. His adventurous spirit has taken him all over the world. Successful in everything he tries, Steve can now add successfully hiking the difficult Appalachian Trial to his resume. Steve has authored a book (I'll give you the details at the end of our interview). Today, we're talking about the importance of choosing the right shoe for your journey. Come along with this funny guy. Who knows, you may even be encouraged to walk toward your dreams.

LG: Glad to have you with us, Steve. You recently completed a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine. That’s quite an achievement. How many miles was that?

Fob: 2189.1 miles…through 14 states.

LG: I know you spent a lot of time deciding on hiking gear and clothes. But, as you might expect, I’m especially interested in your WALKING SHOES.

Fob: We call them hiking shoes.

LG: What’s the difference?

Fob: Well, most 2-year-olds can walk. But to hike this trail, you need to be crazy.

LG: Explains a lot about you. How important is having the right shoe?

Fob: It’s critical. You’ve heard the expression, “where the rubber meets the road”. Well, on the AT, the “rubber meets the trail” with each of the roughly 5 million steps you take. You want a shoe that is comfortable and keeps everything in place.

LG: Like a bra?

Fob: Let’s not go there.

LG: So did you have any foot problems?

Fob: Plenty. My feet suffered from blisters, bruises, blisters on bruises, intense pain, and numbness. In fact, it’s been 5 months since I finished the trail, and I still can’t feel the 10% of my feet that run along my toes. But I shouldn’t complain. Some hikers had it much worse.

LG: How so?

Fob: I know of several who quit the trail due to foot issues. The constant pounding had reduced their feet to hamburger meat. In some cases, they hiked too many miles too soon. Some chose the wrong…what do you call them...“walking shoes”. And then there was the hiker with the trail name Two Soles.

LG: Two souls? Was he possessed?

Fob: No, two soles. After several days of intense foot pain, he got off the trail and went to see the shoe and foot guy at an outfitter. The foot guy checked his sorry looking feet and said he needed a new pair of insoles. Two Soles agreed, but after hiking in them the next day, he was in even more pain. His buddy took a closer look and discovered he had put the new insoles on top of the old ones…and the combined pair was restricting movement and crushing his feet. He didn’t quit the trail, but he did earn the trail name Two Soles.

LG: Who had the most unusual shoes or feet?

Fob: I know of a few hikers who hiked almost the entire trail in their bare feet … really crazy. I also saw hikers in boots, trail runners, Chacos, and Five Finger toe shoes. And then there was ET.

LG: ET? You hiked with an extra-terrestrial?

Fob: Not exactly. You won’t meet him till my second book, but ET and I met and hiked together in Pennsylvania. Super nice guy and a FAST hiker.

LG: So was that due to his shoes?

Fob: No, he has an extra toe!

LG: No way!

Fob: Yes, way. He was born with 11 toes. Thus, his trail name…ET…for Extra Toe. He let me take a picture of them. They were cool in a way, but a bit creepy. Like when your mom gets her first tattoo.

A picture of ET's Extra Toe.

LG: And the extra toe gave him an advantage over you?

Fob: It couldn’t have been that he was half my age, two-thirds my weight, and was in better condition. So it must have been the extra toe.

LG: Makes sense. I look forward to reading about your AT journey in your upcoming book. Thanks for joining me today.

Fob: Thanks, Lynne. Some day we should co-write a book and send your heroine on a long hike in her red, high-heeled shoes.

LG: I’m not sure she could do that.

Fob: She could if you write her in a couple extra toes!

AUTHOR STEVE JOHNSON

After turning 50, Steve Johnson decided to embark on an incredible, life-changing adventure. Leaving family and friends behind, he chose to thru-hike the rugged 2189.1-mile Appalachian Trail. In this first of two volumes, Steve, "Sir Fob W. Pot," invites readers to lace up their hiking boots and join him on the journey of a lifetime, from Georgia to Maine, traveling five million steps across fourteen states. Filled with belly-aching laughs, heart-wrenching struggles, practical life lessons, and AT hiking strategies, Fob's hike is a compelling story about humanity and wilderness survival.

What kind of shoes do you need to take that first step toward your dream? 

Happy Spring

Spring (all three days of it) in Texas is a beautiful thing. Bluebonnets, Indian paint, and oak pollen abound. The weather goes from chilly to hot almost over night. So we, here in Texas, have learned to grab these few days of perfection with gusto. 

Spring reminds us that no matter how long, or how difficult our winter has been, there is the hope of starting over. Of taking a new path.

Wishing you strength and endurance and hope for your journey.

Facebook Live Party

For all of you who came to my first ever FACEBOOK LIVE broadcast ... thank you so much. If you missed it and all the fun stuff we talked about, I've put the video below.

Let me tell you, technology is not easy for me. Any time I conquer another new platform, I want to stand up and shout...but my attempts never goes without a glitch. I had things all set up to broadcast with my phone and then one little question on the process held me up. So I grabbed my computer and came to my own party two minutes late. Better late than never. Grateful the computer setup worked. 

We're so excited to bring this fun new series to you, dear readers. I'm not drawing the winners of the secret code access to my stage performance until Sunday night. Jump in and buy the book, make sure you're on my newsletter, and join the fun.

First FACEBOOK LIVE Broadcast

Have you experimented with the new FACEBOOK LIVE feature? I've watched several people use it, but I've never had the courage to try it myself.

Until now.

This Thursday night (7pm CST) I'll be on my personal Facebook profile page here.

Why risky humiliating myself in a live broadcast?

I'm telling you the news early, dear blog followers. We're introducing a laugh-out-loud contemporary women's fiction/romance series. But you're a time travel/sci-fi/adventure writer, right? I know. But originally, I started out in humor.

This series is a return to my small town roots. You'll meet some of the folks I grew up with (fictionalized of course) and others I've met in some of my stays in small towns.

Early readers are calling Mt. Hope a place of hope and second chances. Others are saying it is a laugh-out-loud look into a close knit community.

I hope you'll visit Mt. Hope and escape your troubles for a few hours.

Here's a peek at WALKING SHOES, the first book in the series:

Sooner or later everyone encounters a fork in the road. When Leona Harper crashes into tragedy, the shocked pastor’s wife is forced to summon her estranged children home. But parenting young adults in a nosy, small southern town soon proves more difficult than reinventing herself. Determined to give her broken family a shot at a second chance, Leona begins to put one foot in front of the other.

Reconciliation and healing won’t come easy in this zany, trouble-filled, walk-through-grief adventure.

Tear-jerking candor. Fast-paced humor. Hope in the darkness.

This holiday story of tear-jerking candor and fast-paced humor offers hope in the darkness.

Fans of Jan Karon, Ann B. Ross, and Philip Gulley will enjoy exploring the dusty town of Mt. Hope. Escape into this delicious southern adventure.

Join us Thursday night, 7 pm CST. I'm unlocking the vault on the stage performance of WALKING SHOES and giving away the secret code access to five lucky winners.

Everyone deserves a place of hope and second chances.

Stepping back in time with Lisa Carter

Crossing paths with wonderful writers who’ve later become good friends has been one of the biggest surprises of this writing journey. Today, I’d love for you to meet the award-winning, super sweet , wonderful historical writer LISA CARTER.

I’m a great believer in treasure hunts. When my husband and I went to Ireland, I searched high and low for obscure Celtic crosses—often found in the middle of a pasture filled with grazing cows. Much to the amusement of Irish farmers, who laughed and shook their red Irish heads at the antics of those crazy Americans.

Then there was last summer when I—read family—researched Beyond the Cherokee Trail. In 1838, the United States government forced the Cherokee to leave their ancestral homeland and marched the Cherokee from Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina to what was then called the Indian Territory. Imagine hundreds of souls trudging through these rugged mountains in what today is still one of America’s last wilderness regions. Six thousand men, women and children would die before reaching modern-day Oklahoma.

One of the great pleasures of researching my books is the people I meet along the way. One such person was Cherokee cultural historian, T.J. Holland who told me of a place deep in the woods where portions of the Tatham Gap Road along which the Cherokee were force-marched yet remained. There, just as T.J. had told us, underneath the bracken and overgrowth of 180 years, we found the deep gouge marks made by the wagon spokes. The ruts are still visible. The trees haven’t quite grown back together even after all this time. Birds trilled in this peaceful forest setting. Through the tree canopy, sunlight dappled the path. We felt an almost holy hush. It was a beautiful, yet slightly haunted place as if the earth itself remembered the pain and agony once perpetrated here.

Bio—Lisa Carter’s novel, Under a Turquoise Sky, won the 2015 Carol Award for Romantic Suspense. Her latest, Beyond the Cherokee Trail is a 4 1/2 star Romantic Times September Top Pick. The author of seven romantic suspense novels and a Coast Guard series, Lisa enjoys traveling to romantic locales and researching her next exotic adventure. A native North Carolinian, she has strong opinions on barbecue and ACC basketball. She loves to hear from readers. http://www.lisacarterauthor.com

Celebrating the FINAL page

It’s release day for the FINAL book in the series that has swept us away on a grand adventure. I’m so grateful for the readers that have joined us on this journey and look forward to hearing from new readers who don’t like to start a series until it is complete.

It’s bittersweet for me to say goodbye to these characters, but I want to celebrate the place they will forever hold in my heart.

So I am giving away the entire series to ONE lucky U.S. winner. I can either send you signed copies or gift you via Amazon.

If you already have the series, enter to WIN anyway and gift this incredible story to a friend.

These two simple steps will add your name to the contest pot:

 Go to my Facebook Author Lynne Gentry page and COMMENT and SHARE my contest announcement.
Sign up for my newsletter ( JOIN THE ADVENTURE ) on my website homepage.

Stepping Back in Time

One of the blessings of being a writer is getting to know other writers. This year, I had the pleasure of meeting KATHLEEN FULLER at the Romantic Times Convention. We were instantly drawn to each other because of our love for history. I’ve had the pleasure of reading her work and I can’t wait for you to meet Kathleen and learn a wee bit about what sparked her newest release. Take us to another world, Kathleen:

The catalyst for writing the Everlasting Faith series was from my own family. When I was young I always wondered why my Papa was Irish but spoke with a thick Scottish brogue (at least it was thick to my young ears). I discovered that my great-grandfather’s family emigrated from Ireland to Glasgow during the Great Famine. I wanted to explore that part of my family history and also learn how people during that time kept their faith under such desperate circumstances.

The most surprising thing I learned during my research was that Ireland and Scotland had parallel diasporas going on at the same time. The Great Famine is well known, but what is lesser known are the Scottish Highland clearances that had started in the late 1700s and continued throughout the 19th century.

Many of the poorest Irish ended up immigrating to the Scottish Lowlands, Glasgow in particular because of the ship building and factory work available. Meanwhile in the Highlands, landowners, often Scottish lairds, were evicting their tenants in order to rent out their land for sheep grazing, which brought the landowners large profits at the expense of the poorer farm tenants. Many Highlanders ventured south looking for work and a place to live. Thus there was a convergence of Irish and Scottish in Glasgow during this time.

Never Broken is the story of these Irish and Scottish immigrants, people from different countries who are forced to survive and thrive together by leaning on each other and their faith.

To get a sneak peek into my research visit my Everlasting Faith Inspiration Board on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kathyfuller/everlasting-faith-series-never-broken-never-forsak/

 

 

 

 

Bio: Kathleen Fuller is the bestselling author of over 30 books, including the Hearts of Middlefield series. A former special education teacher, she received her B.S.E in Early Childhood and Elementary Education and her Masters in Special Education (emphasis on Teaching the Blind and Visually Impaired) from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Kathleen, her husband James, and their three children split their time between Ohio and Arkansas. When she’s not writing, Kathleen loves to travel, swim, watch football, eat more chocolate than she should, and spend time with her family. To find out more about Kathleen visit her website at www.kathleenfuller.com

 

Waited too Long

This past weekend I had the pleasure of talking story with the wonderful women of Oliver Creek Church in Arlington, Tennessee.

At the end of our time together, one of the women presented me with this beautiful necklace and earring set. I was touched by her generosity. I read her name tag and said, “Thank you so much, Marlene.”

It wasn’t until later that I learned this sweet woman had stayed up until midnight the night before our retreat to make me this gift. Even more astounding, she’d had a mild stroke on Thursday and still wasn’t feeling well. But she’d committed to having this gift ready and was determined to follow through with her promise.

I should have gone back and thanked her again before she left.

But I didn’t.

To my shame, I got busy signing books and talking to others and just let her slip out quietly. I’ll write her a thank you note when I get home, I thought.

And I did.

First thing Monday morning. I even dropped it in the mail that very day.

On Tuesday she had a major stroke. As of now, she’s unresponsive. She may never see my note of gratitude.

How I wish I would have taken the time to hug her.

If there’s someone you need to thank, do it today.