Guest Post/Book Feature - God Loves You, Chester Blue by Suzanne Anderson

What if when you most needed help, a blue bear appeared with a note from God?

One night, Miss Millie of Blossom, Ohio turns her face to the stars and asks God for help. The next day, a package arrives on her doorstep containing a blue teddy bear and a very special note.

Over the course of a year, this remarkable blue bear travels across the country, showing up just when he’s needed most.

During his journey, Chester Blue helps a young girl trying to impress her big sisters; saves a sailor caught in a terrible storm; reunites two constantly fighting brothers; helps a cowboy become a rodeo clown; and aids a father and daughter in bonding after divorce.

If you ever needed a message from God, it's here...

What are your long-term and short-term writing goals?
by Suzanne Anderson

One of the best books I’ve read on goal setting is by Debbie Macomber’s Knit Together: Discover God's Pattern for Your Life. In this short, readable book, Debbie outlines how she has used goal setting throughout her writing career to keep herself moving forward. This has been essential in times of obstacles to help her persevere, and in times of success, to raise the bar. It’s one of my all-time favorite motivational books.

What I’ve learned about goal-setting from this book and others like it are a few simple but crucial rules about effective goal setting: 1) write down your goals. It doesn’t matter whether you ever look at them again or not, but write them, get them out of your head and onto paper…this gives them a greater reality. 2) revise your goals. As you accomplish your goals, create new ones, so that you always have a sense of forward momentum and accomplishment.

With the publication of my second book, God Loves You. –Chester Blue, and my first children’s book, I find myself re-evaluating what my writing goals will be going forward. Writing Chester Blue has made me realize how much I enjoy children’s literature and wish to add it to the genres that I will continue to write in the future. Knowing how much books meant to me when I was a young girl, deeply motivates me to provide that joy for a future young reader.

Short-term Goals: In the next twelve months…I want to re-write and self-publish the rest my unpublished ‘back list’, which includes five children’s books and two women’s novels.

Long-term Goals: I’ve got the beginnings of a romance-foodie three book series I’d like to write next. And beyond that distant horizon (let’s say the next 12 – 36 months) I’d love to try my hand at historical romance since I’ve become such a big fan of the genre.

Most of all, the ultimate achievement of all of these goals is to find readers who enjoy my work enough to keep reading each book that I produce. Which is exactly the other side of every writer’s coin….we come to this avocation because we feel a burning desire to share a story, or perform on the written page. But like any performance, an author finds their sweetest satisfaction in discovering that their story is enjoyed and shared by an audience of readers. And like any other performer, we are only as good as our last entrance onto the stage!

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Genre - Religious / Historical Fiction
Rating - PG
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Guest Post/Feature Mrs Tuesday's Departure by Suzanne Anderson

Now faith is 

the substance of things hoped for...

 

Hungary's fragile alliance with Germany kept Natalie, a renowned children's book author, and her family out of
harm's way for most of the war. Now as the Führer's desperation grows during the waning years of the conflict, so does its threat. Natalie's younger sister, Ilona, married a Jewish man, putting both her and her young daughter, Mila, in
peril; Natalie's twin sister, Anna, is losing her already tenuous hold on reality. As the streets of Budapest thrum with the pounding boots of Nazi soldiers, danger creeps to the doorstep where Natalie shields them all. 

Ilona and her husband take the last two tickets to safety for themselves, abandoning Natalie to protect Anna and Mila from the encroaching danger. Anna's paranoid explosion at a university where was once a professor, sparked by delusions over an imagined love triangle, threatens their only other chance for escape. Ultimately, Natalie is presented with a choice no one should ever have to make; which of her family will she save? 

An inspirational story of faith and family, strength and weakness, and the ultimate triumph of love over hate. Mrs. Tuesday's Departure demonstrates the power of faith to light even the most harrowing darkness.

... faith is the evidence of things not seen.

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Genre - Religious / Historical Fiction

Rating - PG

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A World Without Books By Suzanne Anderson

A world without books … would be like living in black and white.

How many of you remember black and white televisions? Okay, you’re probably not as old as I am. So, how many of you have watched a vintage film, such as that Christmas classic: It’s a Wonderful Life? It’s an amazing film, and the grimy black and white film perfectly captures the harrowing desperation of the Depression Era. Can you imagine what it would look like in color?

How about another classic film: The Wizard of Oz. The majority of the film is presented in black and white, until we reach that climatic moment when the they are in the City of Oz and the film bursts into vibrant color and the entire film seems to explode with vitality.

In my mind, that is the perfect before and after of a world with and without books.

In fact, reading the original series of books that comprised The Wizard of Oz, is one of my favorite childhood memories. It was the first time in my life that I experienced the sensation of becoming so immersed in a book that when I came up for air I physically felt as if I’d been transported back from the land of Oz. It was truly a magical experience.

I had a similar experience when I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and experienced the magical realism for the first time. Through his incredible storytelling, I experienced a South American worldview in a way that even a trip to South America could not capture.

Imagine a world without books? Impossible.

Books not only convey information, they are a great a great socio-economic equalizer. Decades before I stood before an original Degas in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, I read a book about Degas and looked at pictures of his famous ballerina paintings as a child, from my modest home in Florida.

Though I never studied Philosophy in university, I enjoyed a survey course of the world’s great philosophers, while enjoying the incredible story of a young girl doing the same, in Sophie’s World.

Books enrich my religious beliefs, lift me up when I’m feeling blue, and offer a delightful escape when I need a vacation but can’t afford to leave the house. They enrich my life by introducing me to people and places that I might never experience. And best of all, they convey ideas that enrich my view of the world around me.

What are your favorite book-ish memories?