Dreaming about my next book.

   This book was my second Heartsong Presents inspirational romance novel published by Barbour Publishing in America. As well as my Search and Great Southland series, I am so thrilled they released it again last year as an e-book. This is the cover of the e-book available on Amazon and other sites like Barnes and Noble, Australia's Koorong and Word Australia bookshops.
   After writing my other Heartsongs and a requested novella for Barbour's Christmas Dreams volume, I decided to write a spin-off for Damaged Dreams. By that time my husband, Ray, was ministering at a church in Northampton, north of London. That is where we were living when I wrote the first draft of the manuscript, Delayed Dreams. Naturally this new book had to be set mainly in beautiful England. Unfortunately, by that time, it was decided by my editor there had been too long a period since the first book had been published.

Now that this book is again available as an e-book, I have been working again on revising the  original Delayed Dreams manuscript. It has been a very busy time here the last few months, and I am delighted that at long last I have submitted it to a publisher today. Of course, the hero and heroine were young minor characters who were very good friends in Damaged Dreams.

Would love to have comments from anyone who has already read Damaged Dreams. If you haven't read the paperback, do download that e-book version!

Can you tell me the names of the hero and heroine in Damaged Dreams?
Who do you think are the characters from that first book who now have their own romance story told?

And I hope you are all celebrating a very wonderful Easter season, as we remember the greatest Book ever written of the story of God's love for us in His Son, Jesus Christ

Check out my updated website: http://www.mary-hawkins.com
Don't forget my Facebook site.

Reliving Memories

Life always throws ups and downs at us. Ray and I have been having quite a few of them these last couple of years. Although we have both had some relatively minor health issues, we are still active but do realise we seem to be doing less and getting weary faster. Sound familiar anyone?

We had a wonderful few weeks again over Christmas and New Year with our family and friends.

This year we added our celebrations of reaching the mile-stone of being married for fifty marvellous, happy years..

We can only give thanks to our wonderful Lord for all His has done for us over all these years.


Seeing the DVD of our old wedding photos and singing a couple of the songs we chose for our wedding day brought back beautiful memories.

Fifty years is a long time and there had to be that touch of loss also as we saw images of some dear family and friends who are no longer with us. There are some of these folk in this photo I just have to share here of course.

We accept sorrow because God does comfort and bring back joy. Although our faces now may show the ups and downs of the years, this shows only a little of the great joy we have been given over all these years in our marriage.

Here is another photo to show our family now. God is still bringing us great happiness through our children as we watch their faithful walks with him. In the years to come may it also be true for each of our precious grandchildren.

PART TWO - MY JOURNEY LAST OCTOBER

Do hope you have read Part One before this where I shared a little of our time in Melbourne, with friends at Orange and Tamworth in New South Wales. The main focus of our time on the Australian mainland was the Omega Writers’ CALEB conference in Brisbane, Queensland.

Our home until I was nine on
the black soil plains of the Darling Downs.

However, our next appointments after Tamworth were near and in Dalby on the Darling Downs, over 200 kilometres west of Brisbane. This was the black soil pains area where I grew up and still have extended family on several large farms.  On our old farm on the eastern Downs near Bongeen (the setting of my Search book series now e-books), Dad grew mainly grain crops like wheat, barley and sorghum.  The landscape has changed tremendously, especially with large numbers of much larger dams for irrigating cotton and a variety of other seasonal crops.

 

Bruce organised our time at Dalby

We were booked to stay several days with my brother Stan Pedler on a farm some distance from Dalby. The minister at the church in Dalby was an old friend of ours and a great organiser of a dinner where we spoke and Ray preached at their church the next day. 
It was our first experience doing a book-signing for a general market bookshop. Collins Bookshop was in a large shopping complex and a great experience.

I also enjoyed very much meeting old friends and family, some who live in Dalby and others out on farms I remember visiting many years ago with my own family.



As I mentioned in the last blog post, we were concerned about the “sore” on Ray’s face. The day we arrived at Stan’s, my brother mentioned he had a very painful knee. He lived close to an hour’s drive from Dalby so made an appointment to see his doctor while we were at the book-signing. It was too good an opportunity to miss, so while I stayed with our books for a brief while, Ray went with Stan hoping to be able to also see a doctor at the clinic. I have no doubt God was organising us even more than our friend could have control of. 



My big brother, Stan.

Stan’s doctor took one look and booked Ray in to have it cut out in the surgery the next afternoon. Only later did we discover he was concerned enough to give up his day off to do that. Family and friends have told us this doctor Ray “happened” to see is very highly thought of in the area as the doctor with a great deal of experience at the local Skin Cancer Clinic. Yes, it was a Squamous Cell Carcinoma - still nasty but not as vicious as a melanoma. So for nearly a fortnight during the conference and speaking appointments, Ray had that dressing on his face. 

Oh, need I mention the pain in Stan’s knee also stopped quickly over the next few days? God is good and His mercies endure forever. 

Ruth Bonetti, Anne Hamilton
 and Jo Wanmer

 

We could only spend a brief few hours with family and friends in my home town of Toowoomba on the way to Brisbane and the wonderful CALEB writers’ conference.

Hard working CALEB members who worked hard organising our conference our great conference.

 

 

The Omega Writers organise the Award dinner and fiction finalists wait to be told the dinner.

The few days were a wonderful time of fellowship with other writers. This input to my writing was something I regret very much not having for over ten years in those early days of
trying to write that first book, Search for Tomorrow.

 


The writers in the master class I  presented doing an exercise about point of view and dialogue - while I had a break from speaking.


    

The publisher of Wombat/Even Before Publishing with most of her published authors - except my husband, Ray, who had sneaked off too soon after the dinner.

I am so thrilled and proud of our Aussie writers. May we all continue to try and improve our efforts to give readers more challenging and entertaining books. I am only sorry my camera was not working properly so could have more photos.

 

Currently I am trying very hard to get to what I hope wil be the final revisions for my new single title, Her Outback Cowboy.

When I do get time, afraid I am too slow preparing my blog posts and now Christmas Day has come and gone as I type this on Boxing Day. I do hope all reading this have had a great time yesterday and a restful time today. May you know personally the true wonder of how God has shown His love for us by giving us His only Son.

 

I am afraid I did not think to get my camera out yesterday when at Craig and Rachelle's for our Christmas time together. Those six grandchildren had a wonderful time today with their presents. I stayed with them for a few hours while Mum and Dad - and Grandad too - had to work at Seahorse World and Seahorse Australia breeding farm. Like all farms, the animals - and fish! - still have to be cared for on holidays. 

 

And now the rest of our trip - already over too long ago - has to wait until I have time to prepare PART THREE - especially some more photos I hope you might enjoy.

Would love anyone who is in the above photos to let me know in a comment. 

 

I also have a post last Monday and the next two on some of the basics of writing Christian Romance - Click on this:- Australasian Christian Writers 

 

Blog Tour: An Unholy Communion - A Compelling Read

With English and Scottish ancestry, I have always enjoyed historical novels set in the United Kingdom.  While this is a contemporary novel it contains much information about the historical background of special places the characters visit on a pilgrimage. To my delight, while the characters and mystery were very intriguing, this book included places I have been privileged to visit, especially Pembrokeshire and my favourite cathedral at St Davids in Wales. I only wish I’d read this book before being there!

An Unholy Communion is the third book in Donna Fletcher Crow’s Monastery Mystery series but the first book of hers I have ever read. I love “discovering” new authors whose books I really enjoy reading. Her back-list is very impressive and I am looking forward very much to reading other titles.

I am so pleased Donna has kindly agreed to share with us a little about herself. As a reader and a writer also, I found the following very interesting.

Thank you so much, Mary, I’m delighted to be in Australia with you and your readers today—if only virtually.

And I’m so pleased that you enjoyed An Unholy Communion! I’ve wanted to tell the story of St. David and the development of Christianity in Wales for something like twenty years. After I wrote Glastonbury, The Story of Christian England and then The Fields of Bannockburn and The Banks of the Boyne, epics of Christianity in Scotland and Ireland, Wales was the next obvious project. But editors move, markets change, other stories assert themselves. . .in other words, life happens. So I had to wait.



Research in Wales among the tombstones - and the rain.



One of the things I’ve loved most about writing The Monastery Murders is that it has given me a chance to tell stories I’ve long wanted to explore. The first book A Very Private Grave is about St. Cuthbert, book 2 A Darkly Hidden Truth is about the English mystical writers Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. But, as you mentioned above, all these books are actually contemporary mysteries.

Perhaps I should explain. Our daughter studied classics at Oxford, worked in London, went off to study at a theological college run by monks in a monastery in Yorkshire and wound up marrying a Church of England priest. As I shared Elizabeth’s journey and got to know the monks and ordinands at The College of the Resurrection it dawned on me what a great background that would make for a book—actually a series of books.

And so, my heroine Felicity is a young American woman who studied classics at Oxford, worked in London, went off to study. . . well, you get the picture. Everything I write is based on an experience I have had  visiting Elizabeth or on a research trip. Except for the murders, you understand. I love the contrast of keeping everything as realistic as I can and then letting my imagination soar for the mystery bits. And I hope it helps my readers keep the pages turning.

For An Unholy Communion I took part in a 126-mile youthwalk pilgrimage from London to Walsingham. I was a considerably overage “youth” but they were wonderful to me and I learned the logistics of how such an undertaking works. Then I followed the ancient Cistercian Way through southern Wales with a sister mystery writer doing the driving.  We spent a wonderful four-day retreat at St. Non’s on the very southwest tip of Wales, walking the Pembrokeshire cliffs above the ocean, worshipping at St. David’s Cathedral and exploring every inch of the ruined Bishop’s Palace where some of the pivotal action takes place in the book. You can see pictures from my research trips on my website - see details below.

And now I’m hard at work on A Muffled Tolling, book 4 in the series, set in Oxford. Although I have written historical novels such as the epics mentioned above, The Cambridge Chronicles, a six-book series about the history of the Evangelical Anglicans, and The Daughters of Courage, an Idaho pioneer family saga based on my own family, as well as romance, children’s books and nonfiction I’m specializing in mystery writing now, trying to keep up with three series.

The Elizabeth & Richard Mysteries is a literary suspense series. Elizabeth and Richard are both English professors and each book has a literary figure in the background: Dorothy L Sayers in The Shadow Reality, Shakespeare in A Midsummer Eve’s Nightmare, and Jane Austen in A Jane Austen Encounter.

My Lord Danvers series is Victorian true-crime where I wrap a fictional mystery around an actual historical murder. A Tincture of Murder is my most recent release—where my research turned up a truly bizarre crime worthy of Dickens, so that story has the bonus of two true crimes.

My husband (of 50 years) and I have 4 children and 12 grandchildren. When I’m not reading, writing or visiting my grandchildren I can be found in my garden. As I write, however, the weeds have taken over. On my website (click on address in details below) you can see trailers for each of my Monastery Murders, read about all my books and see pictures of my garden in more flourishing days.  I would also love to have you follow me on Facebook

Thank you so much for sharing this, Donna, and the photo. I for one will be looking forward to reading your back list - and future novels. 

Here is the detailed information about the book. 

Readers from an Anglo-Catholic and Catholic background may appreciate some of the setting even more than I did, but PLEASE don't let this be a deterrent in anyway from seeing God at work in these characters, story Donna has so wonderfully crafter.

DO CONTINUE TO READ MORE DETAILS BELOW 

2 - 6 September 2013

Australia Christian Readers Blog Alliance

Introducing

An Unholy Communion

Lion Hudson (1 April 2013)

by

Donna Fletcher Crow

About the Author:

"Donna Fletcher Crow has created her own niche within the genre of clerical mysteries." - Kate Charles, author of Deep Waters

First light, Ascension morning. From the top of the tower at the College of Transfiguration, voices rise in song.

Felicity's delight turns to horror when a black-robed body hurtles over the precipice and lands at her feet.

Her fiancé Father Antony recognizes the corpse as Hwyl Pendry, a former student, who has been serving as Deliverance Minister in a Welsh diocese. The police ignore the strange emblem of a double-headed snake clutched in the dead man's hand, labelling the death a suicide. But Hwyl's widow is convinced otherwise, and pleads for Felicity and Antony to help her uncover the truth.

Matters grow murkier as Felicity and Antony, leading a youth pilgrimage through rural Wales, encounter the same sinister symbol as they travel. Lurking figures follow them. Then a body is found face-down in a well …

"Donna Fletcher Crow gives us, in three extremely persuasive dimensions, the world that Dan Brown merely sketches." - Timothy Hallinan, author of The Queen of Patpong

About the Book:

Donna Fletcher Crow is the author of 40 books, mostly novels dealing with British history. The award-winning Glastonbury, A Novel of the Holy Grail, an Arthurian grail search epic covering 15 centuries of English history, is her best-known work. She is also the author of The Monastery Murders: A Very Private Grave, A Darkly Hidden Truth and An Unholy Communion as well as the Lord Danvers series of Victorian true-crime novels and the literary suspense series The Elizabeth & Richard Mysteries. Donna and her husband live in Boise, Idaho. They have 4 adult children and 11 grandchildren. She is an enthusiastic gardener.

To read more about all of Donna's books and see pictures from her garden and research trips go to: http://www.donnafletchercrow.com/

You can follow her on Facebook at: http://ning.it/OHi0MY