When the Ordinary Become Extra-ordinary by Kay Marshall Strom

Today's guest blogger is author Kay Marshall Strom. Kay Marshall Strom is the author of thirty-six published books, including her most recent, The Second-Half Adventure: Don’t Just Retire-Use Your Time, Skills & Resources to Change the World. Her writing credits also include numerous magazine articles, short stories, curriculum, stories for children, two prize-winning screenplays, and booklets for writers. Kay speaks at seminars, retreats, and special events throughout the country. She and her husband Dan Kline love to travel, and more and more Kay’s writing and speaking take her around the word. To find out more about Kay, or for contact information, check her website at www.kaystrom.com.


"When the Ordinary Become Extra-ordinary" by Kay Marshall Strom

So, what kind of people seek out a Second-Half Adventure? Who decides simple retirement isn’t for them? That they would rather use their lifetime of accumulated skills and resources to change the world?

Well, lots of ordinary people. And some pretty extra-ordinary ones, too.

You would probably consider Charlie extraordinary—unless you also grew up in a mafia family. Charlie knew two things: power and money. He learned early how to get what he wanted, often through intimidation. As an adult, he started a financial planning business which was hugely profitable. Charlie was tough, he had money, he had power. True, at forty-three his third marriage was about to end, but he would see that it ended on his terms. Then a strange thing happened. Charlie’s wife started going to church. He mocked and ridiculed her, but she went anyway. Nothing he did stopped her. Grudgingly, he finally agreed to attend with her on Easter Sunday, and—miracle of miracles—Charlie encountered God.

Charlie soon discovered that Christians have the same money problems as everyone else. He offered his financial services, which were eagerly accepted, and he also began to teach classes on financial responsibility. “Most people are surprised to learn there is more in the Bible about money than any other subject,” Charlie says.

But Charlie did more than just teach; he lived his lessons. Within two years, he and his wife were debt-free. He sold his business and committed to work full time with Crown Financial Ministries—an interdenominational organization dedicated to teaching biblical financial principles and helping people apply them.

“Christians should model good financial stewardship,” Charlie insists. “Imagine if we pointed the way in these hard financial times by living without debt!”



Okay, so Charlie isn’t ordinary. But Kathy would describe herself that way. When her engineer husband, Clint, was tapped to go with a group from their Oregon church to Venezuela and make a business presentation to university students, Kathy decided to tag along. At the last minute, she put together packets of a quilt block she had developed and stuck them in her suitcase. Fifty of them.

Her husband never got to give his presentation. But to everyone’s amazement, an entourage met the team at the airport. It was there to meet Kathy. “We heard about the quilt and we’ve got a lot of women interested,” they said. “We hope you have enough supplies for ninety women.”

She didn’t. But Clint put away his presentation notes, picked up a pair of scissors, and got busy helping Kathy cut out the twenty-five piece sets—each piece represented an element of Jesus’ story of the Woman at the Well.

On second thought, Kathy and Clint aren’t so ordinary either. Kathy’s self-assurance and Clint’s gentle refusal to insist but-I’m-the-one-with-the-valuable-skills! are rare traits.

Now, John, though—he insists no one is as ordinary as he.

John spent his entire life as a bread delivery truck driver whose day started at four a.m. He retired two years ago, but a lifetime routine of getting up so early isn’t easily changed. John is still out of bed at four, but now he sits down immediately at his computer and logs in to his personal site at GMO, an organization that uses cutting-edge technologies to respond to spiritual questions from people around the world. “I’m never lonely,” John says of his early morning sessions. “Somewhere in the world, someone with a pressing question is always up at that hour.” And, thanks to the training GMO gave him, John feels comfortable offering answers. Even to people in Ghana… or Ethiopia… or India…

Come to think of it, second half adventurers are ordinary people who become extra-ordinary because of the way they choose to define retirement.


About The Second-Half Adventure

Whoever you are, whatever your skills and experiences, you can use what you have gained in life to help change the world. In connection with The Finishers Project, The Second-Half Adventure will enable you to analyze where you have been, where you want to go in the second-half of your life, and how to start preparing today.

Through the stories of individuals and couples who have found meaningful involvements—from business people to housewives, from engineers to artists—this book will help you infuse your special God-given years with purpose and eternal significance. The best adventure is yet to come

You can follow Kay's virtual book tour by checking in every weekday in January and February at http://virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/

Sahale Snacks Giveaway at Confessions of an Overworked Mom

Since this blog's title is Book Tours and More, I guess I can get away with promoting a non-book item here. My friend Ellen from Confessions of an Overworked Mom is running a giveaway for Sahale Snacks. They all look scrumptious, and all you need to do is check out the Sahale Snacks website and let Ellen know your favorite.

Blogging and tweeting about this giveaway will get you extra chances to win. The last day to enter is January 21, 2010, so get on over to Ellen's blog for the details and to enter this great giveaway!

Thirty Year Old Historical Fiction by Linda Dahl, Author of Gringa in a Strange Land

Today's guest blogger is Linda Dahl, author of Gringa in a Strange Land.

Gringa in a Strange Land brings back the exhilarating and confusing time of the “counterculture” in the early 1970’s.

Erica Mason, an American woman living in Mexico, is torn between working to become an artist and the lure of the drug culture.

Set mostly in the colonial city of Merida in the Yucatan peninsula, the story also moves among Mayan ruins, laid-back beaches and the cities of Belize and Oaxaca.

A host of bohemian expats and Mexicans, and the complex character of Mexico itself, infuse this portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-American, culminating in an unexpected resolution

"Thirty Year Old Historical Fiction" by Linda Dahl

I love good historical fiction. I once wrote a book set in New Orleans spanning the l800’s up to the l960’s. The research for the book was immense. There was a scene where the main character was cooking – good thing I did my homework, because the kitchen those days was a shed out back! But I never imagined when I dusted off the 30-year-old manuscript of Gringa in a Strange Land a few years ago that it, too, had become historical fiction. Erica Mason, the twenty-something American woman who hits the road and ends up living in Mexico, has no idea of this, of course, but I did. Above all, it has to do with technology. In the l970’s in Mexico, there were few telephones – no cell phones, of course – there was no internet, and a slow, inefficient mail service. In a foreign country, without recourse to the immediate, constant flow of communication, Erica becomes isolated in a way that is simply unimaginable today. (When I went to Africa a few years ago to Malawi, one of the least developed countries on earth, even there were cell phones and internet service at the hotels.

The huge challenge of coming to terms with the world is heightened for Erica in Gringa by the period in which she lives. If the book had been published when it was written, in the late 70’s, the isolation she experienced living in a “strange” land would have been considered normal. Then, when I rewrote the book many years later, I saw that Erica had acquired an old-fashioned, even somewhat exotic quality in terms of the technology boom that had followed in the late 20th century. And this must be especially so for any reader younger than my generation, the “baby boomers.” Meeting very few fellow Americans, thrown almost completely on her own resources, Erica in Mexico in l973 and ’74 has to learn to negotiate a foreign language and foreign attitudes to a degree that is no longer the case. Erica’s isolation both dramatically heightens her conflicts and it also, I think, compels her to move beyond her darkness itoward the light.


Linda Dahl has written extensively about Latin America, women in jazz, New Orleans and other topics that interest her over a thirty-year career as a published author. She has lived in Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil and New York and currently lives in an old farmhouse with lots of flowers and pets. A widow, she has a daughter and a stepson. Her website is www.lindadahl.com and blog about her new book at http://gringainastrangeland.blogspot.com.

You can follow Linda's virtual book tour every weekday in January by visiting http://virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/

Corrigan's Pool by Dot Ryan - Book Review

Be swept away by history and romance in Corrigans' Pool by Dot Ryan.

Ella Corrigan has long carried great responsibility. After her mother's horrific accident, her father turned to alcohol, leaving Ella to manage Greenpole, the family's Savannah plantation. While a good and fair mistress, romance has eluded her, and at twenty-four, she is on the urge of becoming a spinster.

When Gentry Garland, with eyes black as night, rides into Savannah from Texas, Ella's life brightens. Ella falls in love with the dashing horse rancher, but is brokenhearted when Gentry disappears without a trace. Chiding herself for her foolishness, Ella hastily marries Victor Faircloth, a man many years her senior, whose proposals she swore she would never accept.

Life at Faircloth plantation is hard on Ella and the many servants who sullenly work for Victor. While Ella's family has owned slaves for generations, for the first time, Ella begins to question the institution that is placed in jeopardy by the growing rumblings of civil war. As Victor's servants began to escape and mysteriously disappear through Corrigan's Pool, his anger rises.

As the years pass, Ella is forced to endure the deep sadness brought on by her hasty decision to marry Victor. Struggling against her husband's dictates and blackmail, and with memories of Gentry still taunting her, the war is just another reason to feel despondent over the future.

When Sherman's Union troops burn their way across Georgia and swarm onto her property, Ella musters her strength in the hopes of saving herself and those who depend on her. But what will she do when the past she has long blamed for her fate steps unexpectedly out of the darkness to face her?

An excellent debut release from Dot Ryan, Corrigan's Pool will leave you breathless and begging for a sequel. Ryan has created a story that perfectly mixes history and romance. The strength of this novel is certainly found in its many captivating characters: Ella, her sister Honor, her grandmother Beatrice Corrigan, Ella's father Adam, Gentry Garland, and the many servants whose names and stories will capture you.

While admittedly it took me a few chapters to be totally immersed in this story, once that happened, I never wanted to stop reading. So involved was I in Ella's story, and those of the people around her, that it took me only a few days to make my way to the final page. That one woman had to deal with so much responsibility, so much heartache, so much pain, made Ella a sympathetic character from the start. But that inner strength in Ella shines through all of it, and once she pulls herself together to do what must be done to save her family, there isn't any stopping her.

Outside of Ella, my favorite character would have to be Beatrice Corrigan. In some ways she reminds me of Aunt Jo from Anne of Green Gables, a woman whose rough exterior hides much warmth underneath.

The one question I would love to ask the author is how she created a dastardly character such as Victor. Actually, dastardly is too nice a word. Victor was pure evil. It never ceases to amaze me when an author can develop a character that you despise so much, and Ryan excelled in her creation of Victor.

If my "to be read" pile wasn't so high I would certainly read this book all over again. The last few chapters were superb, and the ending, out of this world.

According to the biography of Ryan featured on the back cover, she is hard at work on her next two books. I can't wait!


Title: Corrigan's Pool
Author: Dot Ryan
Publisher: iUniverse, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-595-46740-2
SRP: $22.95 (U.S.)

The Book Connection Posts Its Top 10 Favorite Books of 2009

The Book Connection recently posted its Top 10 Favorite Books of 2009. You can check it out here.

A Story Behind a Children's Classic by Melanie Benjamin

Today's guest blogger is Melanie Benjamin, author of Alice I Have Been.

Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole–and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?

Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.” Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.

That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war.

For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.

A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.

"A Story Behind a Children's Classic" by Melanie Benjamin

I pride myself on thinking that I’m a pretty smart person, very well-read. But it turns out that I don’t know as much as I think I do, and I’m actually very grateful for that. A gaping hole in my knowledge of children’s literature is the main reason that I wrote ALICE I HAVE BEEN.

I knew nothing about Lewis Carroll beyond the fact that he wrote ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND and THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. That was it. So when I happened to come across an exhibit called “Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll,” I was curious enough to want to see it, because I had no idea that Lewis Carroll had ever taken a single photograph in his life.

Thank goodness for that! Because once inside this remarkable exhibit, I was completely taken aback by how little I knew about this man. For instance, I didn’t even know that Lewis Carroll was a pseudonym; his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and he was a mathematics don at Oxford University in the 1860’s. So – the man who wrote two classics of children’s literature was actually writing under a different name; he was a pioneer in the art of photography; his day job was a mathematics professor.

How intriguing!

He also was a very close friend with a little girl named Alice Liddell; he took her photograph many times; he told her a story about a little girl who fell down a rabbit hole, which she then asked him to write down.

Curiouser and curiouser!

In fact, my curiosity was piqued so much that I couldn’t stop thinking about this little girl. I couldn’t stop wondering what happened to her after she grew up; I couldn’t stop imagining what happened between her and this very mysterious mathematics professor/photographer/storyteller, because something obviously had. The photograph he took of her was so very startling; she looked at the camera – and at him - with such an adult, worldly, wise gaze for a seven-year-old.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how little I knew of this entire story, the story behind ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. And it occurred to me that other people might want to know about it, too. And so I finally just had to write it, not only to satisfy my own curiosity but to satisfy other people’s, as well.

If I had known any of this, I wouldn’t have written this book. And what a delightful, rewarding experience I would have missed! So I feel very blessed, in such a curious way, by my lack of knowledge. For it made me wonder, made me want to know more; it made me want to tell others about what I discovered, as well.
Many writers say you should write what you know. Maybe that works for them.
As for me, I decided to write about what I didn’t know. And I’m so very glad that I did.

Melanie Benjamin lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two sons, where she is working on her next historical novel. Visit her website at www.melaniebenjamin.com.

Author Spotlight: Greg Middleton and Real Men

Real Men is a book about the plight of males over the last century, how they have become displaced by the changes in our society and lost of a distinct role.

Over the past few decades something is seriously shifting in the way men are operating within our society. Men are no longer the undisputed heads of the household or the family. Women have equal rights under the law and can compete against men for some of the better and higher paying jobs. Without a decided edge men are loosing their “king of the hill” status. Something must be done to at least redefine the role men should play. Whatever that role eventually becomes men will most certainly need to make adjustments from the way things were done in the past.

BOOK EXCERPT

MARS AND VENUS CONCEPT

Much has been written and spoken about the differences between how males and females operate. It is not by accident that we have a different basic operating system. For example, we build motor vehicles as a means of transportation. We build calculators to assist us in computing numerical equations. One would not expect a calculator to serve as a means of transportation because it was not built for that purpose. In a broader sense, men and women were designed (built) for different purposes. From a design prospective, women were given operating systems to enhance the purposes of which they were created (built): Men were likewise.

For example, women were given the ability to conceive and have babies. They were also given the trait of nurturing and caring for their young. Part of their traits and operating systems were built around their design and purpose. This is not to say that women were only built for the purpose of having babies, it means that it is a unique function to them that men do not have. Since this function is unique to females, it is only natural that men are not equal to women in such capacities. Men were built to serve other functions within the human species of which the protectors and providers were arguably two of the traits that were uniquely designed within them. This does not mean that women cannot be good providers or protectors of the family, but that certain traits within their operating systems were not specifically geared for that purpose. Regardless as to how we choose to operate within humanity, we cannot ignore the fact that certain traits seem to be more prevalent in a particular gender than in the other.

Even in stating this supposition, it does not mean that people can't do as they choose. This is where free will comes into play. There are times when necessity makes the choice against what one may wish or hope to choose otherwise. With single-parent families on the rise many females are left with the total burden of raising and providing for their children. Regardless to what is natural, or the intended design specifications, once children are born into the world someone has to provide, care, protect, nurture, and otherwise raise them. In the absence of having both male and female guardians someone will have to do what is necessary. One gender, usually the female, will have to assume both roles and do as best as they can under the circumstances. Even though it may not have been a conscious choice to be in that situation, necessity dictates a different set of rules that must be obeyed.

In reference to the natural design regarding gender differences, we must understand that even though the design was different and the roles and purposes were different, at the end of the day, necessity and free will dominates the table. Understanding the differences between the natural, unique designs of the genders should assist us in relating to each other and affectively doing the jobs we find before us. Understanding your function and carrying out that purpose is part of your birthright. How you carry out your particular assignment is personal. It has a lot to do with the authentic person that resides in your shell called a human being. Even though we may not realize it, or consciously know it to be true, there is a power and a force in the universe that is far greater than we are. Individually we will die at a given point, but life carries on. A question we should inquire of ourselves is, when that final breath is taken, did you do your best with the plate that was placed before you.

Although this topic is specifically geared toward defining a real man, on a wider view we should be looking at becoming the most genuine person we are capable of being. With that as our primary goal, our natural given abilities will excel in the manner in which they were intended. Gender should not be an issue that we allow to create separation or dissention. Males and females were built for one another, as a hand and glove, to be the caretakers of this planet. If we abide by the natural order it will serve us well. If we do not, then the consequences will be on our shoulders.


Writing came to this author totally by surprise. God planted an urge in Greg to search for Him during the fall of 1999. That search led to a constant reading appetite of various spiritual, religious, inspirational, and even metaphysical subjects. After reading so much material he began taking notes of his many late night sessions in order to remember what he was learning. He later began expressing his personal views of what he was digesting and recorded it in his journal. This collection of notes became the pages of his first book, In Search of the Soul. It was published in 2002 by Dorrance Publishing Company.

From his first book Greg continued to read and record his thoughts and opinions as they were developing. Since that first book he has been writing feverishly ever since. His second book Pearls of Wisdom, was published in 2003 by GEM Publications. Cold Tree Press published his third book, Food for the Soul in early 2005. His goal is to get as many of his completed works as possible into the hands of the readers whom they were intended to inspire.

In addition to being a writer, Greg is also a professional musician, Realtor, and a Professional Seminar Speaker. He and his wife Cynthia make their “Empty Nest” home in Altadena, California, and are ready to start on Phase Two, enjoying the grandchildren. Be on the lookout for more works from this prolific writer in the years to come.

You can find Greg online at www.gregemiddleton.com. For more information about Real Men and Real Men Seminars, please visit http://realmenseminars.com/.