Beyond Her Calling, Blog Tour: Day 2

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Hello ladies and gents! Welcome to the second day of the Beyond Her Calling blog tour! I’m so excited to have you here.

Today is theme day! I’m going to talk about the symbolism and the meanings and all that fun jazz – and of course the Christianity stuff.

Without further ado, THEME DAY FOR BEYOND HER CALLING!

Unofficial Blurb

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A clean and pure Christian historical romance with:

-friendship to romance (which is actually based on love)

-mental disabilities rep

-Scotland

-awkwardness

-kittens

-cows (and being afraid of cows)

-BORDER COLLIES

-small adorable children

-more Scotland

-awesome families

-siblings and best friends and both at once

Read More About the Book

Right now it’s only available in Kindle, but paperback shall follow as soon as Kindle Direct Publishing gets its stuff together!

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Today’s Posts

Guest Post by Character (Ivy) & Review // Grace M. Morris

This post contains a super fun guest post by Ivy Knight! Ivy talks about her favorite (and some of her least favorite) books. There’s also a super flattering review by Grace.

Book Spotlight // Erika Messer @ Maiden of the Pages

A sweet book spotlight! All the pinkkkkkk though!

Author Interview // Angela R. Watts @ The Peculiar Messenger

Gotta love this girl.  Ang is a very dear friend (and my co-manager at Reveries Co.!).

LOVE how Angela formatted this interview – and of course I got to answer some great questions, too. My favorite question was the last!

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The Schedule
Saturday, October 20th

Intro Post // Kellyn Roth @ Reveries

Author Interview // Molly @ A Sparkle of Light

Review // Lisa @ Inkwell

Review & Character Interview (Jordy) // Amie @ Crazy A

Character Interview (Ivy) // Jo @ The Lens and the Hard Drive

Book Spotlight // Annie @ Letters from Annie Douglass Lima

Sunday, October 21st

Theme Day // Kellyn Roth @ Reveries

Guest Post by Character (Ivy) & Review // Grace M. Morris

Book Spotlight // Erika Messer @ Maiden of the Pages

Author Interview // Angela R. Watts @ The Peculiar Messenger

Monday, October 22nd

Ivy Day // Kellyn Roth @ Reveries

Character Interview (Ivy) // Loretta Marchize @ Just Writing

Review // Andrea Cox @ Writing to Inspire

Character Interview (Jordy) // Liz @ Home with the Hummingbirds

Author & Character Interview (Violet) // Julia @ Julia’s Creative Corner

Review & Character Spotlight (Ivy) // Caroline Kloster @ Inside the Autistic Life

Tuesday, October 23rd

Jordy Day // Kellyn Roth @ Reveries

Author Interview // Faith Blum @ Bookish Orchestrations

Review & Guest Post // Cara @ Jessie Bingham

Guest Post // Lindsi @ One Beginner To Another

Character Spotlight (Ena) // Shannon McDermott @ Shannon’s Blog

Wednesday, October 24th

Violet Day // Kellyn Roth @ Reveries

Guest Post // Germaine Han @ The Writing Mafia

Review // Jana T. @ Reviews from the Stacks

Thursday, October 25th

Real Life Day // Kellyn Roth @ Reveries

Book Spotlight // Gabriellyn Gidman @ PageTurners

Author Interview // Sara Willoughby @ Th!nk Magazine

Review // Michaela Bush @ Tangled Up In Writing

Guest Post by Character (Violet) // Peggy M. McAloon @ Peggy’s Hope 4U

Friday, October 26th

Future Day // Kellyn Roth @ Reveries

Review // Abigail McKenna @ Novels, Dragons, and Wardrobe Doors

Review // Gracelyn Buckner @ Literatura

Review // Katherine Brown Books

Review // Bella Putt

Saturday, October 27th

Wrapup Post // Kellyn Roth @ Reveries

Character Interview & Spotlight (Jordy) // Kaylee @ Kaylee’s Kind of Writes

Book Spotlight // Abigail Harder @ Books, Life, and Christ

Be sure to check out the Facebook party every day this week for exciting updates!  

This is the biggest tour I’ve done in quite a while, so I’m super excited! I can’t wait to read all those amazing posts!

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The Giveaway

Enter the giveaway to win a paperback copy of Beyond Her Calling! (USA & International!)

Enter Now!

Be sure to share the giveaway through your social media!

Theme Day!

The themes of Beyond Her Calling include (but are not limited to):

Self-worth in God
Striving to be the best you can be/being the best version of yourself
Our purpose
Forgiveness (mildly)
Putting others before yourself

Let’s break each of those down, shall we?

Self-worth in God

God created each of us to be beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, AWESOME people … and there’s no shame in recognizing that!

Pride comes from saying, “I’m awesome because of myself.” However, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “I’m awesome because of God.”

That’s exactly what He wants us to say, in fact. He wants us to claim that we are His beautiful creations. After all, He’s the one who looked at us and said we are “Good.”

That probably sounds like some new-agey “love yourself” crap. And it could be … unless you understand that it’s only through God, when He removes you (the bad) from you (the good) that the Awesome Person He Made shines!

Being the best version of yourself

It’s hard to be the best version of yourself. I admit that freely. However, it’s something to ever strive for.

When people think about becoming like Christ, it may be difficult for them to understand that they’re not losing your identity in Him.

They’re gaining a new identity as a child of God, yes … but that identity is just the best version of YOU.

God didn’t make us as mindless, identical robots. This is cliche, yes, but it’s true that we’re as individual as a snowflake – because God made us that way!

You can be as individual and different as you want. However, without God, you are not the best version of you – nor are you any different from the struggling masses seeking to be “special” and “unique.”

You are unique. God made you that way. However, without God, you can never hope to be the best “unique” you can be.

So lean on God for your individuality and to be the best version of yourself.

Our Purpose

God put us here for a reason – we all know that.

We discovered in At Her Fingertips that God’s plan isn’t always ours and that we need to follow His goals for our life about our own.

I tackle a different side of that in Beyond Her Calling. As you can probably guess, the story is about going beyond Ivy’s, well, calling.

Since Ivy is mentally disabled, it’s difficult for her to believe she has a purpose in this world. Or, rather, that’s the excuse she gives herself.

We all have excuses – reasons why God doesn’t have a glorious plan for us like He does for everyone else.

And I know you’ve (probably) heard this before, but it bears restating:

God DOES have a purpose for each and every one of us … and that purpose (e.g. calling) is more incredible that anything our human brains can imagine!

Forgiveness

This is a topic that is overdone in Christian fiction – forgiving others, forgiving yourself, forgiving God, etc.

It’s been hashed and rehashed. There’s not really much more to say.

However, for Jordy’s sake, I ended up including a couple nods to what I call the Most Popular Topic in Christian Fiction.

Jordy’s need to stop viewing himself as a clown incapable of being committed or serious about anything and forgive himself for all his past tomfoolery was a fun plotline to explore. (Though anything with Jordy is fun to explore, to be honest!)

Putting Others Before Yourself

This is one of the more subtle themes that I played with in Violet Angel as well as Calvin Blakely (although that plotline will have to be resolved another time).

Violet learns in the course of the story that she needs to give up herself and focus on others – or she will never truly be happy.

This is a theme close to my heart as I see it on the rise in contemporary society. (I especially see it in young parents and their children. Ugh.)

We live in a self-pleasing world. We always have, of course, but it bears restating. It probably always will. After all, loving others is the second greatest commandment, and Satan can’t like that! 

And I’m not guiltless; I would call myself a very selfish person. But, you know, one can strive for better!

What the Readers Are Sayin’

We’ve only had a few readers so far, but here were there thoughts on theme:

Lisa @ Inkwell:

They both deal with problems self-worth … and the meaning of their lives and what God has planned for them and how much they matter to him – and the struggles were so real and touching and I love how, even though the clear and easy answer was provided, it wasn’t easy to TAP INTO IT, so to speak. It’s hard to explain. They KNEW what was true, but it was so difficult for them to FEEL and BELIEVE it anyway.

Grace Morris:

Ivy…. She was wonderful! I love her journey of finding God’s calling for her.

Amie @ Crazy A:

It is one of those books that you read, and you just know that the Lord must have put the words to write in the author’s mind. It was a super sweet story, full of the right amount of laughter, confusion, lessons we all need to learn, and faith.

Yes, I did just want to share those and had no other excuse!