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Please help me welcome author friend Min Edwards with the moments that changed her life, and her latest release, Precious Stones, Book 4 in the High Tide Series

Hi, Alicia and thanks for having me on your blog. Today I want to tell you about the 10 moments that changed my life. Actually, the title is daunting. How to pick just 10 moments in the long life I’ve lived so far. But here goes:

1) The first I guess should be when my Aunt Corina came to live with us before she married my Uncle Don. Corina Montez, a gorgeous young woman from Cochabamba, Bolivia. Her heritage was French and Bolivian, and she grew up in the upper echelons of Bolivian society. Her father was in government, a railroad commissioner: Her grandfather was as well… one of the many early 20th century Presidents of Bolivia. She left all that behind and came to the states when I was a very small child, bringing hand embroidered baby dresses from the nuns who schooled her and adored her. She taught me Spanish before I could speak any recognizable English. I’ve loved her throughout my life.

2) My mother’s disappearance into the hospital the early part of my 1st grade year. I say disappearance because I only knew she was gone but I didn’t understand where or why. In those days small children weren’t allowed on to Patient floors. She was gone the entire school year except for a few short and scary returns. In just a few days, I remember my father picking her up and taking her away again.

3) The return of my mother in the summer after my 1st grade. I couldn’t believe she was home. My mother would be waiting for me with cookies and love every day during my 2nd grade and throughout my schooling. I can’t believe that was all I was thinking about. But she was home and our house seemed right again. It took her a while to get her strength back as she’d been bedridden and recuperating from numerous surgeries for months. But by the fall and the beginning of school she was an active young woman again.

4) When I was in High School my grandmother came to live with us. Of course, our house wasn’t big enough for everyone, so my father rented her a small cottage across the street, just steps away. She was a seamstress and though she was retired, she began taking in sewing again. Before too long everyone was raving… Page is so talented. Don’t use anyone else to sew for you. She’d been the head of the alterations department in a very large department store in Tulsa, Oklahoma for years… and she didn’t know how to retire.

The only draw-back to this change in our family dynamics was the tension between my grandmother and her daughter (my mother). It colored my life for years, even on my wedding day. I didn’t understand the tensions between these two loving women, and it wasn’t until my mother was elderly that she told me the reason. Then I understood, but I loved them both so much.

5) Going away to college… Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas… the most gosh-awful, sandy, windy, tornado-ridden place on the earth, or so I thought at the time. But the campus was beautiful, the college football team was fun to watch, the quarterback was gorgeous, and I was majoring in Mechanical Engineering… all those boys! It was too much to bear. But I slowly over several years changed my major to Architecture, then in my Junior year to my great love, Anthropology/Archaeology.

6) My marriage in my Junior year at Tech was pretty life changing and probably not in a good way. I was way too young as was my husband. But my wedding was nice. Of course, the tension was still in the air between my mother and grandmother and they each made me a wedding dress. My grandmother’s dress was elegant (she was always trendy), white, short and very simple but very 60s. My mother’s contribution was elegant as well (she was as talented a seamstress as her mother), but long, ecru with a trailing French lace veil in a shaded ecru… I have the veil to this day. My grandmother didn’t come to the wedding because she caught the flu. She finished the dress though… what a trooper.

7) My arrival in the Philippines. My first visit to a 3rd world country and I wasn’t prepared. The country however, was beautiful, the people were so helpful and friendly, but the politics were brutal. One Sunday my husband and I went to the cockfights just a few blocks from our compound… and ate wonderful barbequed chicken (the losers in each fight). The next Sunday we stayed home, and a rival political group swept into the arena and killed many of the opposing party right where we were sitting just a weak earlier… it was like a 1920s crime wave! Lots more happened in the two years I lived in Angeles City, 50 miles north of Manila, and I’m sure the stories will creep into my books in the future.

8) Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: I spent four years here and had my son at the Naval Hospital. This was very life changing. I’d waited almost a decade for him through 4 miscarriages and moves around the world. This was long before Guantanamo was the terrorist prison it is today. Then it was an American leased property, estranged from Cuba by a tall razor-wire topped fence. In fact, one of my favorite beaches was watched over by a Cuban guardhouse peopled by Cuban snipers with guns pointed our way and an American guardhouse with equally scary guns pointed at the Cubans. Our base commander said that our guard tower was there to protect the swimmers from sharks… but that wasn’t a very believable story to any of us.

9) Moving from my home of 30 years to property I’d owned since the 70s outside the most eastern town in the U.S. It’s 9+ acres of Maine waterfront… towering Spruce and Fir trees, groves of Birch and Poplar, lush meadows and abundant raspberry bushes and blackberry canes… and apple trees… everywhere! It’s beautiful but I still haven’t recovered from leaving all my friends behind in Texas.

10) My life as a single mother raising the most precious son that ever lived is my No. 1 most important Moment in my life. Most of his upbringing was in Texas but when I retired I moved north, to a piece of property I’d owned since before he was born. He was bored with Austin, Texas and wanted a change so he came along. The first couple of years were a little dicey but he’s now comfortably situated as an IT Tech for the University of Maine System… The village misses him enormously, but he likes the steady paycheck, the benefits and the work. He’s been wonderful throughout his lifetime: No drinking, no drugs, no jailtime, no divorces. Really, I’ve been blessed. Raising him to be the man he is today has been my most rewarding accomplishment.

Wow, Min, fascinating! You’ve had quite an interesting life. I’m so envious of where you are now. I’ve always wanted to live in Maine. Thank you so much for sharing!

Precious Stone

Book 4 in the High Tide Suspense series

by Min Edwards

Collee McCullough is the beloved town baker in Stone Bay, Maine. She’s always ready to serve you a luscious treat or offer you a helping hand, but very early one morning trouble comes to call. Two men, in suits—no one wears suits in Stone Bay—asking questions about her great grandmother and something she brought from Russia.

Just as Collee decided to pull out her shotgun which she kept behind the pastry counter, her brother, Nick, the Chief of Police arrived for his morning coffee. Of course, all hell broke out because her brother was her protector even when she didn’t need him. But today, he was needed.

After the melee was over, a jogger stopped by, also for morning sustenance. He, Jake, took one look at Collee… and her shotgun and named himself her knight in shining armor much to the chagrin of her brother, Nick.

And so begins the story of Collee, Jake, Russians and Collee’s mysterious great grandmother. Follow along from the Maine coast to the Dordogne area of France and then to the Highlands of Scotland. I promise you a wild ride!

And follow me on my Amazon Author Page to see other books in the High Tide Suspense series as well as my upcoming prequel to Precious Stone, The Russian Phoenix,

Coming in the fall of 2018

An act of bravery, a gift of unimaginable worth.

But the outcome haunts a young Russian girl through the years.

The Russian Phoenix is the story of Collee’s great grandmother Natasha, the Russian noble women who was kidnapped on the eve of the last ball of the Romanov’s Jubilee Celebration of their 300 years of rule. Natasha was taken on a mad dash across Russia and into the east German woods. Her adventure continues across Europe on the brink of war and the English Channel to Scotland, a place she’d never imagined. Join me on her journey.

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