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by: Staci Stallings

As a Christian romance author it has become incredibly obvious to me why people struggle to understand “romance.” You see, my days are spent crafting stories about people falling in love. While in most such stories the characters have challenges, in mine very often the challenges are emotional explosions meant not just to destroy the budding relationship but to destroy the two people in that relationship as well.

Why?

Because I write Christian romance, and let me tell you, Christian romances are NOT EASY romances. Satan would like nothing more than to convince both people that God is not real, He is not for them, and love is not worth all the hassle.

Now this past month or so I’ve really been struck by this understanding because I do a lot of Facebook marketing in book groups. This means I go around to the groups every day and post information about my books, hoping to attract new readers or to alert my current readers about other options I have available. The thing is, these reader groups (most of them anyway) are decidedly not Christian.

I choose to market there anyway because I think the hundreds of thousands of people who get their book information from those places should have a choice that doesn’t include vampires dripping with blood, thrillers and murder, and bodice rippers.  It is that last category that has most caught my attention recently. Why? Because their primary understanding of “love” is two bodies in a bed.

On their ads, they say things like, “Can Bryce and Trudy find real love?” next to a picture of… well, you can probably guess.  To which I always, looking beyond the hot nights in bed, respond, “No. Sooner or later, they’re going to realize life isn’t just about what happens between the sheets, and because their relationship is only rooted in how ‘hot’ the other one is, it’s doomed before it ever gets started… even if they find ‘love’ right now.”

Then you get the genre of jilted, revenge-seeking lovers who will stop at nothing to make the other one pay. There is a whole genre of books dedicated to this very topic.  Why? Because after a person realizes in their own lives that the first option doesn’t work, they will naturally move to the second one!

And herein lies what I have found in juxtaposing those types of “romances” with my stories… I find myself often going, “Ugh. My couple would love to just go right to the physical and skip all of this emotional stuff. Why is this taking so long? And why is it so hard?”

The other night as I posted, there was a plethora of the first type of ads—those for the hot bodice rippers. I was slogging through 10,000 word days when my characters were just going through a ton of emotional YUCK, and I have to tell you, even I got discouraged. “It sure would be easier just to write that stuff. He thinks she’s hot; she loves it that he loves her; they fall in bed, and BAM, they’re in love!”

And then it hit me. Women (and men) read these kinds of romances and feel the same way about their own marriages and relationships!  They don’t have the benefit of being an objective third party to the trials of establishing a relationship that will last. All they get is the day-to-day struggle of trying to keep a family together, deal with in-laws, co-workers, problems—a tired spouse, financial problems, conflict, and exhaustion. When they turn on the television or open that book to a story soaked in hot, easy romance, I’m sure one of their thoughts is, “Why can’t my relationship be like this?”

So, I guess I’m trying to give you a warning. When you read my books, you get “real,” sometimes like these next two books in the Hope Series, “really real.”  The hero in “A Time to Love” has the bodice-ripper paradigm as relationship goals in his head. The heroine is barely functioning after a tragic loss. To say the two of them miss the point completely through most of the book is putting it VERY mildly!

I do sincerely hope readers will stay with me and not get terribly frustrated by the twists and turns these two take to become a real couple. I dare say, these books are “more real” than even some of the ones I’ve written previously, but if you will stay with it, I think you will gain amazing insights into what being in a relationship can mean.  It ain’t easy, but it is worth it!

Start the Journey TODAY…

The Hope Series

About the Author:

A stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again. Every title is a new adventure! That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading. Although she lives in Amarillo, Texas and her main career right now is her family, Staci touches the lives of people across the globe with her various Internet and writing endeavors.

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by Suzanne D. Williams

What if we lived like God was WITH US? Not in the distance but right alongside. Participating. What if every action we made, every word we spoke, every step we’ve taken, we were continually aware of Him?

What if He was involved in everything? Not just services on Sundays but Mondays through Fridays, too. At home, at work, at college. In government. At the laundromat, the grocery store, our children’s elementary schools. In traffic jams, at basketball games, in video chats. What if He read every word you typed, while gazing over your shoulder?

What if you became AWARE of Him 24-7? Like, you get in your car and the music comes on and that song you groove to but don’t want to tell anyone, suddenly, you knew God was listening

What if you knew that He knew everything? Every book ever written, every script ever read, every legal document in any courtroom across the country. Every motive, every reasoning, every pathetic excuse. What if we knew that He knew every thought in our head?

What if He was concerned about every iota of every piece of your life? What if you included Him in more than a ten-minute bedtime prayer and the standard meal blessing? What if when you turned on the television you considered what He’d like to watch? Is He into Bonanza? Mountain Men? HGTV?

What if He knew all the characters and exactly how the story ends? What if He not only KNOWS our lives, but He’s actually working amongst us? What if that person you hate that you’ve written off as unsavable really isn’t? What if inside them is the potential to be something huge-huge big? An evangelist. A pastor. A teacher. Someone’s best friend.

What if you judged a situation incorrectly and passed a verdict when Holy Spirit was in your ears whispering? Except you were too noisy to hear it, too lost in your opinions, your self-knowledge, your criticisms?

What if we could see all about you at a glance? Like those commercials where they show people how much sun damage they’ve had. They can’t see the spots and blemishes until they get in the right light. What if that LIGHT was JESUS, and there, in front of the world is that thing you did?

What if all of this was true, the God of heaven, the Father of LIFE, the SAVIOR of the world knew you, He saw you, nothing was hidden from Him, yet He loved you anyway? 

A Good Life 

Amazon 

https://amzn.to/2y6R1IA  

Other Retailers 

https://books2read.com/u/4EkqAA 

“There is no better portrait of God than in His Word. Though many men held the brush over thousands of years, God directed each stroke, never altering in His purpose.”

We have access to God on a personal level. He desires to spend time with us, for us to know Him so well that we think like Him and talk like Him, react like Him. Such a close relationship with Almighty God comes only through obedience.

Obedience paints such a negative picture in our mind. We see ourselves having to do something we dread and hate. But obedience is how a child of God will grow to maturity. Through obedience, we come to know our loving heavenly Father intimately, and in knowing Him, we find true joy and success.

In these pages, author Suzanne D. Williams paints WHO GOD IS from the image He has drawn in His Word of a GOOD God, a LOVING God. Speaking from her personal experience, she shares an image of the Father and Friend, who lifted her from a dark place of fear and panic to one full of peace and love and heavenly light.

To a beautiful life, a joyful life, a good life exceeding anything we can ever imagine.

About The Author: 

Best-selling author, Suzanne D. Williams, is a native Floridian, wife, mother, and photographer. She is the author of both nonfiction and fiction books. She writes devotionals and instructional articles for various blogs. She also does graphic design for self-publishing authors. She is co-founder of THE EDGE.

www.feelgoodromance.com 

www.suzannedwilliams.com 

Facebook – suzannedwilliamsauthor 

Twitter – @SDWAuthor. 

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by Staci Stallings

Sometimes life is designed to make you remember what is really important and how easily our “blessing counter” can get skewed.

So for about 3 months now, I have been “counting down” so to speak for November. November 1, “A Time to Love” would release and “Some Say Love” would go on preorder. In order for that to happen, I had to have “Some Say Love’ finished at least the first draft.  To make a long story short, I ended up writing around 140K words in 21 days, which is INSANE.  But I got it done.

I was so looking forward to November as all of my marketing and hard work was going to pay off—maybe even resulting in hitting a “list.”  I was working almost literally around the clock to get this to happen, marketing, writing, publishing, and trying to keep up with my crazy-crazy life outside of writing.

Things looked to be going great, but then around November 4, I started having health issues—major ones. By the 7^th and 8^th, my body had slammed on the brakes, and by the 9^th, I was in the Urgent Care. The 10^th I made a trip to the Emergency Room with horrible symptoms that they did not at all understand. They gave me a mild painkiller (I wasn’t in pain, just felt like my body was about to shut down completely!), and they sent me home.

The 11^th was one of the worst days I’ve ever lived through physically. I was mentally a wreck, and my body kept going into spasms I could not predict, control or fix.  It would be four full days before I got any kind of answer as to what was going on. My natural health lady finally figured it out. I had gone into near total adrenal collapse. My estrogen went off the charts because my progesterone had virtually crashed into nothing.

I don’t know how well-versed you are in the importance and function of hormones, but let me just tell you, when they get as out-of-whack as mine were, coming back is NOT an easy road. It is slow going and a process of boosting the good things in your body, eliminating and detoxing the overloaded hormones, and artificially boosting certain hormones enough while the other two processes are going on so that you don’t lose your mind!

It has been quite a trip, let me tell you.

So November didn’t turn out exactly as I had planned.  Mostly, I’ve been sitting in the chair and progressively going from near catatonic to mingling with the family, to watching movies, to reading, and now to actually working a little each day.  So with this Thanksgiving season, you can bet I am taking care to count my blessings—little things like getting more than a few hours sleep at a time before my body freaks out, having a wonderful family who loves me and is doing everything they can to help me get well, GREAT health people who have gone out of their way to help me figure this out, living in a place where I have access to good stuff to get me going again.

Yeah, I thought this year I would be thankful for sales, and I am. They just aren’t on the top of the list anymore.

It is funny though how a couple of the reviews I’ve gotten for “A Time to Love” have mentioned that Jenna’s grief seems to “drag on” and how her recovery doesn’t track the easy road some have experienced.  I have to say, my November has felt a lot like Jenna’s grief process—slow, meandering, getting a few things right as other things seem to fall apart… Strange how life sometimes really parallels what we write.

I hope you and yours have had a safe, wonderful, peaceful, healthy Thanksgiving, and I’m wishing you all a most wonderful holiday season!

About the Author:

A stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from. Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again. Every title is a new adventure! That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading. Although she lives in Amarillo, Texas and her main career right now is her family, Staci touches the lives of people across the globe with her various Internet and writing endeavors.