Heartwarming story by author Ane Mulligan–In High Cotton

Posted on August 15, 2020 by Rose McCauley

This is one of the best books I have ever read set during the depression years. Because of the author’s writing skills and the wonderful characters who support and help each other, the story is very uplifting, even hilarious at times! Please leave a comment about this book then return on 21st of August to to find out who will win a copy of this book from the author!

Here is what Ms. Mulligan sent for the very INTERESTING back story:

I love this pic of Ane who wears the same white hat I wear to walk in, although I don’t have the cool “Metaphors be with you” logo!

Thank you, Rose, for allowing me to meet your readers. A big Sugar Hill “hey” to all y’all. (That’s hello in Georgian).

When people learn I’m an author, they want to know what kind of books I write. My brand is Southern-fried fiction (pinned on me by my dear friend, Rose!). In all my books, no matter what era they’re set in, you’ll find an ensemble cast of strong women, facing life’s issues together.

Their next question is, “Why did you choose to write this story?”

The Story Behind the Story

I grew up wanting sisters. I only had a brother; both of us were adopted. While we had an idyllic childhood, I longed for sisters. I gathered girl friends around me in place of nonexistent sisters. That continued into adulthood, and those friendships influenced my writing. Of course, little did I know what God had in store for me. The story of my discovery of my birth sisters is here on my website.

In High Cotton is the first in my Georgia Magnolias series. It’s probably my favorite of all the books I’ve written. I love this story of a young widow, raising her small son during the Depression. I also grew to love the other characters, who took on life as Maggie gathered them around her.

Sadie Moreland, half Yamasee Indian, who became a mentor to Maggie. Duchess Alden, Maggie’s sister, who arrived in Rivers End without any skills other than being a good hostess.

Then there’s sweet Pinkie Yates. Maggie’s little boy found her and beaten and battered. He told his mama he’s like the Good Samaritan in the Bible, and they had to take her home. Maggie’s mother-in-law, Faylene, is a tower of strength.

I’ve had a lot of fun researching and writing this series. One of my favorite aspects of this was the Depression era recipes. Southerners used peanuts as a staple protein in their family meals, and I tried a few out on my family. I share several recipes in the book, and I thought y’all might enjoy seeing one of them.

Macaroni Papoose

1 package macaroni, broken in ¼-inch lengths

1/3 c milk

grated cheese

small amount horseradish

thin slices raw smoked ham

Cook macaroni until tender, spread slices of ham with macaroni, horseradish and cheese.

Roll slices and skewer or tie together. Place in shallow baking dish with milk.

Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) for 35 minutes. Serve hot with dish of crushed pineapple to sprinkle over each “papoose” as desired.

If you’d like to read the first chapter of In High Cotton, go to https://anemulligan.com/georgia-magnolias-series and scroll to the DOWNLOADS

Ane Mulligan has been a voracious reader ever since her mom instilled within her a love of reading at age three, escaping into worlds otherwise unknown. But when Ane saw PETER PAN on stage, she was struck with a fever from which she never recovered—stage fever. She submerged herself in drama through high school and college. One day, her two loves collided, and a bestselling, award-winning novelist emerged. She lives in Sugar Hill, GA, with her artist husband and a rascally Rottweiler. Find Ane on her website, Amazon Author page, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and The Write Conversation.

In High Cotton

Southern women may look as delicate as flowers, but there’s iron in their veins.

While the rest of the world has been roaring through the 1920s, times are hardscrabble in rural South Georgia. Widow Maggie Parker is barely surviving while raising her young son alone. Then as banks begin to fail, her father-in-law threatens to take her son and sell off her livelihood—the grocery store her husband left her. Can five Southern women band together, using their wisdom and wiles to stop him and survive the Great Depression?

Available online at Amazon, LPCBooks, Target, and in bookstores.

Mulligan pens a story full of southern charm with a cast of characters in a cute Georgia town you won’t easily forget. Makes me want to sit down with the lot of them for a glass of sweet tea. — New York Times Bestselling Author, Rachel Hauck

The perfect marriage of Southern charm and dramatic tension, author Ane Mulligan takes the reader by the hand, immersing you in a story world you won’t want to leave. The women of In High Cotton are strong, brave, and compassionate, role models from the past who are every bit as relevant to women today. Personally, I think this is Ane’s best work ever! – Michelle Griep, Christy Award winning author of Once Upon a Dickens Christmas

 

 

 

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New Title by Ramona K. Cecil–The Time for Healing

Posted on August 4, 2020 by Rose McCauley

The Time for Healing by Ramona  K.  Cecil releases August 7, 2020

Congrats for Ramona K. Cecil, another longtime ACFW friend. I am so happy to introduce this well-known writer who has a new book coming out this week. Ramona is happy to give away an e-book to one reader who leaves a comment with an interesting question about the book on this blog after you read the excerpt. We will send the book one week after the release, so I’ll announce the winner on August 14, 2020

Excerpt:

A soft, moist touch against his lips jerked Jeremiah awake. At the sight of the white Indian girl kneeling over him, myriad emotions darted around his chest like a bevy of barn swallows. Surely she had not…

Red Fawn dipped her finger into a little wooden bowl then touched it to his lips, moistening them with an oily salve. “I am sorry to wake you, but the sun is rising in the sky, and your friend asked me to bring you medicines.”

Jeremiah pushed up to a sitting position on his woolen-blanket cot. Heat suffused his neck and face at his initial mistaken impression of her actions. He poked out the tip of his tongue to taste the oil she’d spread over his cracked lips. The sweet, light taste told him it must be either plant or mineral based.

“It is sweet birch oil,” she said, answering his silent question. “It will heal your lips and make the skin soft again.” Her smile transformed her features from comely to breathtakingly beautiful.

“You speak English well.” He found it surprising that she hadn’t lost the language of her childhood during her years with the Shawnee.

She set the bowl aside. “My father wanted me to keep the white man’s language and to teach it to him and my mother. He said it would be good for our family and our tribe when dealing with the whites, so we spoke it often in our home.”

“Where is Zeb?” Jeremiah cleared his burning throat and glanced around the longhouse. He needed to direct his thoughts away from this girl who made his heart hammer like a woodpecker’s beak on a dead log.

“He has gone to Chief Great Hawk’s lodge to tell him what is written in the book you brought,” she said, her voice turning harder. She walked to the fire, bent over a steaming iron pot, and stirred its contents with a shaved stick.

She spoke as if the Bible was new to her, but Zeb said the Shawnee had taken her at the age of six. Jeremiah recalled his own sixth year vividly. That year, his family had traveled from Kentucky to Indiana, and his mother gave birth to his brother Joel in the Conestoga along the way. He and his seven-year-old sister, Dorcas, had kept three-year-old Lydia occupied by fishing for crawdads on a creek bank during Mother’s travails. It seemed inconceivable that this girl, who remembered her given name as Ginny McLain, had no memory of her parents or Zeb and his wife, Ruth, setting her on their laps and telling her stories from the Scriptures.

“Surely, you remember the Bible. I remember the Bible stories my ma and pa told me and my sisters when I was six.”

She stopped stirring the sweet-smelling contents of the pot and became still. At her silence, hope leapt in Jeremiah that perhaps he’d jogged a long-buried memory in her.

Without answering him, she grasped the pot handle with a scrap of wool material to protect her hand, lifted the pot from the fire, and set it on a flat rock. She dipped an earthen bowl into the pot and then carried the vessel to him. She set the bowl on the ground in front of him. “When it is cool enough, drink it. It will heal your sore throat.”

As she walked out of the longhouse, an ache not associated with his illness throbbed in Jeremiah’s chest. Regret filled him. God had given him an opportunity to share Christ with Red Fawn, and he had squandered it.

www.ramonakcecil.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RamonaKCecilAuthor/

https://www.facebook.com/ramona.cecil1

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RamonaCecil 

Hi! I’m Ramona K. Cecil and I live in southern Indiana. I’m a wife, mother, grandmother, and author of historical romance novels for the Christian market. My husband and I have been married for forty-seven years and are now empty-nesters. We have two grown daughters and three young-adult grandchildren. We make our home in Seymour, Indiana, the “small town” made famous in rocker John Mellencamp’s song of the same name. I’ve always loved history, especially the history of my Hoosier state. Like The Time for Healing, many of my stories are set in Indiana’s past. When not writing, my hobbies include reading, gardening, and visiting places of historical interest.

My latest novel, The Time for Healing, releases August 7th with Pelican Book Group. This award-winning story is inspired by a real life event—The Pigeon Roost Massacre—that happened in 1812 about thirty miles south of where I live.

 

 

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How Kim Vogel Sawyer and I finally got to write a book together

Posted on July 18, 2020 by Rose McCauley

Kim Sawyer and I both were unpublished when we met at the the first ACRW conference in 2001 or 2002, although she had some self-pubbed books to sell at that conference, so she was already ahead of me. And, she continued to get contracts soon from publishers and agents, while it took me another several years! But we had clicked at that first conference and stayed in touch snd encouraged and prayed for each other’s writing careers and our families.

So, when Kim and her husband invited me and my husband to join them on a K Love Cruise a few years later in January, it sounded like a good chance to meet up again with them. Little did we know that would be the beginning of a long friendship for our husbands and our chance to get a book published together. Don and Chester hit it off as well as Kim and I had and we even invited them to spend 5 or 6 days with us in KY while she had a book signing tour coming up that year. But more about that later. When one of our days in port was at a Sea Turtle Farm in Jamaica, while holding a sea turtle, Kim got tingles up her arms and looked over at me and said, “I think this will be my next book.”

Then, the next day Chester and I went on a one-day mission trip as part of the cruise to Jamaica, and I found my story. Our oldest daughter, Christy, had taken a two week trip with her church to Kingston, Jamaica and our granddaughter, Natalie, also did a mission trip to Haiti. Plus I had already taken two other mission trips by then to Barbados and Honduras in the Caribbean, so we decided to combine those experiences into a story about a Jamaican/Haitian mission.

These two stories as well as three more by Constance Shilling Stevens, Julane Hiebert, and K. Marie Libel are all in the collection Destination : Romance which makes a great read! 5 books for the price of one!

Now, I want to add a footnote about the long weekend Kim and Don Sawyer spent with us which ended up in her book about Mammoth Cave being published the following year–Guide me Home by Kim Vogel Sawyer. Another great read!

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Book Review of In High Cotton by Ane Mulligan

Posted on July 4, 2020 by Rose McCauley

I am so happy to share with my readers the wonderful heart-warming story of In High Cotton by my friend and fellow ACFW writer Ane Mulligan. I have read several of her other books, and I believe you will agree with me that this is the best one she has written so far. Her voice comes through loud and clear in this story set during the depression era in the small town of Rivers End, Georgia.

Her characters are those you would love to meet and live with, and that is what you feel like you are doing as you share their troubles and triumphs. The main character is Magnolia, nicknamed Maggie, a general store owner who is also a writer of household hints and is also working on a book. She is surrounded by her son Barry (seven going on eight), and her sister Duchess and several other friends who prove to be true and loyal, unlike her father-in-law and a few other characters.

This book has so many twists and turns, but I don’t want to ruin the surprises for the readers, so will let them read and enjoy this adventure for themselves. So hold onto your hats and prepare for the ride of your life!

And be sure to return on August 4th for a post from the author herself and a way to leave a comment to win a copy of this amazing book!

 

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A Book review of A Silken Thread by Kim Vogel Sawyer

Posted on October 28, 2019 by Rose McCauley

Kudos to Kim Vogel Sawyer for tackling such a hard topic as racism in this book set in 1895–thirty years after the end of the Civil War and over 150 years in our country’s past. Yet, still racial strife occurs in the United States as well as all over the world. As the song asks, “When will we ever learn?”

Ms. Sawyer’s thoughtful story uses the site of the Atlanta Cotton Exposition to portray the people who interact with several families–The Tates and the Sharps , both from poor families whose sons have grown up as best friends. And also the wealthy Rochester family who runs a steam-powered engine empire on exhibit at the fair, and whose son wants to woo the beautiful Laurel Millard who has grown up in a larger family whose father has now passed away.

Most of the brothers and sisters decide the  youngest sister, Miss Millard should agree to take care of their mother since they all have their own families to see to. But, she and several other young people apply for and attain jobs at the Exposition, shaking up the social structure and opening up their opportunities.

I enjoyed this book, despite its more serious nature, plus I knew I could trust this author of over thirty books i have read and enjoyed to do thorough and honest historical research and handle this topic fairly. I hope you will read this book for yourself to learn about an interesting part of our country’s history, and to help you and others grow in fairness and love with people of all color and race.

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Announcing the winner of our Christmas Drawing for The Smoky Mountain Christmas book!

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Rose McCauley

We have a winner!! Carole Price, so if anyone of you know Carole, please tell her to contact one of us 4 authors so we won’t have to draw again. He hope everyone enjoys this story as well as the other prizes several of you already won!
Thank you to everyone who stopped by our Summer Christmas blog tour and hung out with us during the warm summer months. We hope our Christmas stories cooled off your summer a little bit. :)
As promised, we awarded winners from the individual blog posts, but now it’s time for the GRAND PRIZE!
….drumroll please….
CAROLE PRICE
Congratulations! You have won everything you see pictured with this post. Here’s the complete list of prizes:

Christmas at Bald Head Island by Rose Allen McCauley (print or e-book)
No-Bake Christmas Crumble Recipe (made by Grace in Christmas Grace)
Dolls & Diamonds by Jeanie Smith Cash (print or e-book)
Hummingbird Kisses by Delia Dawson Latham (print or e-book)
Do You See What I See? Notebook & Pen
Sea glass bracelet from the Lost Gypsy Wagon Jewelry & Clay Shop by Maureen Corell (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1601354493492249/)
Teal earrings from the Lost Gypsy Wagon Jewelry & Clay Shop by Maureen Corell
Dangle fob or keychain inspired by Smoky Mountain Christmas
Heart of Christmas CD (Smoky Mountain Hand-crafted Instruments)
Christmas Angel by Tiffany Amber Stockton (print or e-book)
Patterns and Progress by Tiffany Amber Stockton (print or e-book)
Stealing Hearts by Tiffany Amber Stockton (print or e-book)
Comment on this post or contact one of us authors privately to provide us with your mailing address, so we can send out your prizes. Where you have a choice of print or e-book, please specify which you would prefer. And your mailing or kindle address please.
Thank you again to everyone who came along the tour with us, and to all of our readers for your continued support. you can see other posts about this from Delia Latham and Tiff Stockton at their sites or posts!

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