Please help me welcome Colleen L Donnelly…
Ten Moments That Changed My Life
- The time an angel grabbed me as I toppled over the edge of a bluff on my tenth birthday. I felt their hands, but saw nothing, and was up-righted from a free fall to back on my feet.
- The time when as a very young child, I shoved my little brother aside so I could have first dibs on a bowl with the remnants of cake batter inside. I realized then that I didn’t have a bully’s heart and found no pleasure in behaving that way. My brother and I still competed, and I wasn’t always the best big sister, but from then on, I knew who I was and how I was designed.
- The time I went to a Neil Diamond concert and realized the audience was almost geriatric. I didn’t enter leaning on a walker, but I had to face that I was no longer a spring chicken.
- The time I learned a new language—Sign Language—and had my world opened up to a whole new culture and wealth of friends.
- The time(s) I became a parent and realized I wasn’t the center of the universe and there were needs and people more important than mine and me in the world.
- The first loss of someone very special and their funeral I couldn’t stop crying at.
- The moment in adulthood when my parents suddenly made sense, and I realized they weren’t unreasonable and on earth merely to make my life miserable.
- The day I realized my husband was betraying me, and the long trek through the grieving process that followed.
- The first sip of real coffee that turned me into a coffee snob, causing me to throw out all store brands, trash my drip coffee maker, and begin to pay for good beans, grind them myself, and spend the time drizzling the perfect temperature of water over a cone of dark grounds.
- The moment the Bible suddenly made sense.
Blurb:
Jim Turner writes crime but doesn’t live it. He respects his grandfather’s tales of heroes but doesn’t believe them. When his failing grandfather sends him to a remote peninsula to write the end of his own heroic love story, Jim includes a war criminal interview while there to maintain his edge.
Chastity is an anomaly, a misfit in pre-WWII culture as well as in Jim’s life. Her spritely charm and endearing features turn Jim’s world upside down, especially when she reveals his grandfather’s peninsula as the site of her upcoming wedding.
Do good journalists flee when their interviewee is murdered? Do heroes write fiancés out of another’s story and themselves in? “The End” become the hardest words for Jim to write.
Excerpt:
“So,” Chastity said. “Tell me more about the grandfather who impacted you so much.”
I felt him in the room. Or maybe it was in Grove. Mountain Grove. Or because we had been on his beloved peninsula, she with her yellowish hair. It was as if he joined Chastity and me, and she sensed it too. His hands and heart were in this decrepit building with us, his presence and hers making it feel like a castle instead.
“If it wasn’t for him, who knows where you might be now instead of here helping me.” She squeezed my hand.
How did she know? Because of Grandpa I came to Grove and searched for a peninsula that brought me to Chastity…who actually brought me to it. “My grandfather is a wonderful man… But before we discuss him, there are things you should know about.” I had to be honest. “Tasks you can’t help me with.” Like crime and violence, dangerous interviews, and the way I felt about her.
A face unlike any I had ever seen…and never would again…should send my heroic heart to the ladder where I would gather a million splinters in my hands by sliding to the ground, risking pain and infection to keep her safe by leaving.
Her features looked watery as I gazed at her. Tears? I never cried. Her pastel throw rugs turned into colorful puddles blurred by an emotion I had never experienced before.
“You are supposed to be here, Jim. And I am supposed to help you.”
For a moment, something ominous crept into my thoughts. Something of the old crime writer in me, who with several clicks of a typewriter’s keys could turn any story the direction I wanted. I welcomed him back, then set him aside. Because in the blue of her eyes, I saw something stronger—my promise.
If friendship was defined by a long period of time and a large number of interactions, Chastity didn’t qualify. And maybe my initial carnal fascination which became a pitter-patter my heart couldn’t beat without didn’t meet the definition of love. But she was at least partially right. For three days we were supposed to be together and help each other. For three days we had an eternity.
Buy link: https://amzn.to/4lq6qGO
About the Author:
Colleen L Donnelly put her science education to use for years and then put it behind her to pursue other passions. Her first love is writing and her second is hunting—hunting for that next good story, hunting for shed antlers or mushrooms in the woods, hunting for the next good author to read. An avid believer in work hard/play hard, Colleen splits her time between indoors and out, always busy at something.
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Author Alicia Dean 