Black Friday - Cyber Monday Weekend Sale

I'm a little late in sharing this, but hopefully many of you have already seen the news on my Facebook page, my newsletter, or from another indie author. 

 

 

Yes, a massive ebook sale with over 300 titles! All my ebooks are on sale for 99 cents. Browse the website https://sale.perrykirkpatrick.com/ and stock up on all the reading material you could want. All the books are clean, so you can't go wrong. I've already snagged some books I'm really excited about reading. Prices are good through Monday night.

 

 

 

New Release and Review Opportunity

Happy fall! Even though it's already November, the hot season in my area of Texas feels like it just ended and the real fall season has begun. And as the cozy part of the year begins, I have some publishing news of my own to share! Remember A Very Bookish Thanksgiving? Several of the authors in that collection are releasing their novellas individually this month in time for the holiday. We'd love to have your help on the launch team. You can get free review copies, exclusive interaction with the authors, and even some special thank-you goodies for your participation.

Sign up HERE.

Available on Amazon

Available on Amazon

 

Available on Amazon

 

 

Available on Amazon

Sustainer's Smile Blog Tour

Sustainer’s Smile by Erika Mathews is here! I’m excited to share this new novel with you because life is an issue dear to my heart, and it’s the heart of this book. This post includes snippets, a character spotlight, and a giveaway!

Learn the Basics

It’s Book Four of Truth from Taerna but it can easily be read as a standalone.

• It’s a prolife novel.

• It tells the story of Liliora Ellith, who makes peace with her past and discovers her future among the cradles of Taerna’s unwanted babies, born and unborn.

• It’s a kingdom adventure fiction novel.

• It’s clean and family-friendly, though it’s recommended for teens and up due to dealing with the issue of abortion. 

• Its launch date is October 21 but it’s available for preorder right now!

View or Buy Sustainer’s Smile on Amazon

 

Read the Snippets

Liliora shook her head. “If Adon Olam wants it, I will not listen to my fears.” Yet tears welled up even in the words, and she felt her heart failing her. 

Character Spotlight: Rita

 

Age at the time of Sustainer’s Smile: Early 20s
Personality: ESTP

Height: 5’ 8”
Hair: dark blonde

Eyes: dark blue

 

About Rita

Rita has been a friend of Liliora’s for many years. Rita lives in Frydael with her parents, and she loves Frydael’s social life. As children, Rita and Liliora went on many adventures together, and both shared similar ideals and dreams for the future. As they grew older, however, Rita felt like she was growing up faster than carefree, innocent Liliora. Now Rita’s trying to land a job so that her old-fashioned parents will allow her to marry the love of her life—but things aren’t as easy as she wishes.

 

Author Note

Every main character needs a friend, and Liliora was no exception. In telling Liliora’s story, several elements required someone else to be involved. There were things that simply wouldn’t work for Liliora to be directly involved in—and that’s where Rita came in. She proved to have a mind of her own, and her stubbornness and Liliora’s mildness melded together beautifully. And once she brought in her fiancé, he added a whole new element to the plot.

 

Sustainer’s Smile Excerpt

 

“Tying yourself down, even without a husband of your own.” Rita sighed dramatically. “Why do I even bother to come here asking you to have fun with me? Clearly your priorities are elsewhere.”

“Because I’m your friend?” Liliora quirked an eye­brow. “And friends have fun together?”

“Yes,” Rita agreed. “Remember that time we stopped up the creek and the water flooded the neigh­bor’s chicken pen? Or that time that your brothers stole our dolls and hid them in the orchard? Or when we made a nutmeg cake and fed it to Deen Penson, and he thought it was ginger and almost spit it all over the table? Now that was fun! And all the planning and scheming before­hand, and the messages, and…”

“I remember.” Liliora sighed. 

“Or when we went on the youth hayride? That was back when I didn’t know Trig very well at all. I was so awkward…”

“I remember,” Liliora repeated. 

“I want to have adventures like that again,” Rita stated wistfully. “Those were the days. Carefree, excit­ing…”

“We can’t be children forever, Rita. We have work to do. Work for life. For survival. For betterment of those around us…”

“Nonsense! Leave the work to others, who don’t mind it.” Rita swept to her feet, tossing her hair behind her shoulders. “We ought to enjoy life while we can. Surely Adon Olam would want that.”

“I think we do enjoy life when we’re living in Him,” Liliora replied slowly. “Even if what we’re doing seems boring or mundane. Normal work still needs to be done.”

“But I have no patience for it,” Rita retorted. “So come on. Are we going to have some fun today or not?”

 

See the Blurb

Suffering suffocates her soul. 

How can she ever smile again?

A helpless newborn…that’s exactly how twenty-four-year-old Liliora Ellith feels in her efforts to speak up on behalf of the youngest members of Taerna’s pleasure-driven society. Her tender heart for the defenseless and deep aversion to conflict throw Liliora’s soul into turmoil when tragedy opens her eyes to the quiet yet heartrending war on Taerna’s babies—both born and unborn. Adon Olam’s Word coupled with a secret in her own past fuel her determination. All she wants is to make peace with her past and discover her future among the cradles of unwanted babies. However, the challenges ahead of her threaten to send her spiraling into hopeless depression time and again. Saving innocent lives from the crush of the destroyer and raising a generation in the ways of Adon Olam seem more impossible than ever. At the very end of herself, will the sufferings of her and her babies prove to be anything less than the catalyst for complete disaster?

Enter the Giveaway

Win a signed paperback of Promise’s Prayer (Truth from Taerna #1) and other fun prizes! Enter here.

Find the Rest

There’s a bookstagram/blog challenge, author interviews, character spotlights, and more!

Add to Goodreads

View or Buy Sustainer’s Smile on Amazon

See the Rest of the Prolife Tour

Visiting De Smet

 A Very Bookish 4^th of July has been out for almost two months, and now this limited-time collection has just one month left! 

 

 

Recently, I returned to the land that inspired my Fourth of July novella, Prairie Independence Day. The corn stood tall and thick, the soy formed low, leafy bushes, and the untamed prairie grass waved in the wind. In the mornings, a sometimes soft, sometimes strong, but always constant wind tempered the sun’s heat, but the afternoons turned quite sultry. I had a lot of fun visiting my friends who live in eastern South Dakota, but one of the highlights was our trip to the Ingalls sites in De Smet, which I wrote about in Prairie Independence Day.

They were almost exactly how I remembered them. A few details were different, but nothing of much consequence. (Sadly, the changes were mainly due to the pandemic, which I did not include in my novella.) Out on the homestead site, it was still incredible to touch Pa’s cottonwoods—planted in the 1880s—and walk inside the dugout, the claim shanty, and the wooden house representing the types of homes the Ingalls family lived in at one time or another. I loved thinking about how they walked this very land under my feet. Just like Chandler Ivey in my story, I enjoyed the covered wagon ride to the one-room schoolhouse and the one-room church. There were demonstrations and antique objects that helped bring the books to life, such as the hay twists Pa and Laura had to make during The Long Winter. And then in the town of De Smet, I loved imagining them inside the Surveyor’s House (featured in By the Shores of Silver Lake) and the Third Street house (where every member of the immediate family except for Laura lived at some point).

 

The Cottonwoods

 

 The Claim Shanty

 

Inside the Claim Shanty

The Dugout

Inside the Dugout

Ma's Little House

The Covered Wagon

If you’re a Little House fan and you’re ever in eastern South Dakota, visit the Ingalls Homestead Site and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Homes! And if you'd like to read about my first visit to De Smet, way back in 2013, here are the blog posts:

"The Slough of Delight"

"The Little House Stage"

"One Last Little House Post (I Think)"

P.S. If you haven’t gotten a copy of our limited edition novella collection yet, here is the link to check it out!

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

This post is written in memory of Eric Carle, children’s book author and illustrator extraordinaire, June 25, 1929 – May 23, 2021.

The other day, I opened up a few of my favorite childhood picture books. 

Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle

Simple Pictures Are Best by Nancy Willard and Tomie dePaola 

 

 

Round Trip by Ann Jonas

 

 

A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Ziefert and Anita Lobel

On Market Street by Anita Lobel and Arnold Lobel

I’ve always enjoyed my family’s collection of picture books. My mom didn’t thin them out as we kids grew up. Instead, she kept them (ostensibly) for the grandchildren … though in reality, neither she nor I could bear to part with them.

Now that I work at a preschool, children’s picture books are a regular part of my life again. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the job. Although reading a particular picture book for the first time as an adult isn’t usually as wonderful as it is in childhood, I can enjoy it vicariously when I see the toddlers’ thrill. I’m on the hunt for my own copies of …

The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don Wood

 

You Are Special by Max Lucado

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle

But books I knew in my childhood are different. I was sad to hear that Eric Carle had recently died. He was one of my favorite illustrators, and we have a sizable stack of his books. (Do you know how he did his art? He painted tissue paper and cut it into shapes to form pictures! Look it up on YouTube sometime.) And Tomie dePaola! He was another icon of my childhood, gone for over a year now. Reading their books and others I loved as a kid transports me back in time, back to when I was savoring them and being absorbed in the world their pictures and simple words created. Nothing else can take me back like that, not even childhood movies or toys.

Draw Me a Star is particularly significant to me now because of how it beautifully links the work of an artist with God’s creation, ending with the artist as an old man who lived out his days and flew into the night sky with a star. Rest in peace, Eric Carle.

One of these days, I plan to do a post (or a series) on the memorable books of my growing-up years, but to finish this one out in honor of Eric Carle, here is a list of just his that I own:

Draw Me a Star

Today is Monday

Dragons Dragons & Other Creatures That Never Were

Animals Animals

Treasury of Classic Stories for Children

Pancakes, Pancakes!

A House for Hermit Crab

Rooster’s Off to See the World

The Tiny Seed

The Mountain That Loved a Bird

The Mixed-Up Chameleon

The Lamb and the Butterfly

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Have You Seen My Cat?

The Grouchy Ladybug

A Color of His Own

The Foolish Tortoise

Did you enjoy any of these books I mentioned when you were growing up?

A Very Bookish 4th of July Preorder

A young mother, pulled into event planning for her new hometown on the prairie like Laura Ingalls Wilder.

An aspiring authoress, finding companionship outside of Anne of Green Gables for the first time in her life.

Two sisters, with a deadline to travel an incredible distance just as it was in Around the World in Eighty Days.

A young girl, preparing for her favorite holiday with her many cousins like in the book Eight Cousins.

Four stories, by four authors, based on four classic books together in one collection. Tales of faith, patriotism, and hope.

Available only through the end of August 2021. 

 

The third Very Bookish Holiday collection is almost here! The special preorder price is available for only one week more. Join me, Abigayle Claire, Sarah Holman, and Rebekah A. Morris as we celebrate Independence Day through heartwarming stories inspired by beloved classics.

Buy on Amazon | Add to Goodreads

 

Follow on us on Facebook and Instagram to get ready for the release and to learn more fun details! 

A Very Bookish Fourth of July Launch Team!

 

 

I'm so excited to announce the next book in the A Very Bookish Holiday series.

A Very Bookish Fourth of July!

I will be joining several other authors in this collection of novellas inspired by the Fourth of July and beloved classic books. We need you! We need some readers to help promote this release! 

Apply to this exclusive team HERE.

 

 

Reclaiming Ryda Blog Tour

I'm excited to share with you about this new release by Rachel Rossano, one of my favorite indie authors, published on April 21! 

 

 Reclaiming Ryda

Book 2 of Once Upon a Duchy

Rydaria lives as a prisoner in a tower library. Captured as a child, her past is a mystery. Maintaining the literary treasures within her care, she studies the world through books that give her a glimpse of the freedom she craves.

A scribe by trade, Crispin has devoted the last three years of his life seeking the lost heir of Avalene. He travels to Worthenave’s famed library in hopes of finding the key. Instead, he discovers a new mystery, a beautiful librarian who is locked in with her books every night.

As the days pass, Crispin must choose. Rydaria’s precarious situation is deteriorating. Meanwhile, his duty demands he leave before the Duke of Worthenave uncovers his quest. Still, the scribe can’t bring himself to abandon the captive in the library tower, even if it costs him his mission.

Inspired by Rapunzel and East of the Sun West of the Moon

 

Find on Goodreads

Purchase on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, and Kobo

About the Author

Rachel Rossano specializes in clean romantic fiction set in historical-feeling fantasy worlds. She also dabbles in straightforward historical romance and not-so-strict speculative fiction. A happily married mother of three children, she divides her time between mothering, teaching, and writing. She endeavors to enchant, thrill, entertain, and amuse through her work. A constant student, she seeks to improve her skills and loves to hear from readers.

Find her at:

https://www.rachelrossano.com/

https://www.facebook.com/RachelRossanoRambles/

https://www.pinterest.ca/rachelrossano/_created/

https://twitter.com/RachelRossano

https://www.instagram.com/anavrea/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1430209.Rachel_Rossano

 

Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Excerpt

 

Ryda

Distantly the noon bells sounded as I lifted the first of the scrolls into place. Hoping that the stranger would leave for his meal, I continued to replace the scrolls until at least a score of minutes had passed. The last one slid home with satisfying ease. Dusting myself off a bit, I descended to the first floor to check if my meal had arrived.

It had.

Only one meal, the standard shavings of meat, a small loaf of bread, a pot of salted butter, and a bit of yellow cheese, lay on a tray at one end of the table. The jug of ale and a wooden cup sat next to the food.

The stranger still lingered. His satchel lay half-empty next to a mess of supplies and logbooks, scratch paper, and empty ink bottles covering the other half of the table. Pens in varying states of decay or disrepair were scattered about as though someone had sought a functional implement in haste and found them all lacking. Then, all of it had been shoved toward the end of the table to make room for the tray and such. The delivery boy had shown his customary lack of concern for anything beyond his task.

“Just push anything that is in the way aside.” The stranger himself stood next to the shelves where I had directed him, bent over the oldest log on the shelves.

“There is plenty of room, thank you,” I replied as I set about breaking the loaf into pieces. “Did you take your meal in the great hall?”

“I am well enough for now, thank you.” He didn’t look up from his perusal of the ledger.

From all I had read, large men seemed to require vast quantities of food. I glanced at the invader. He definitely fit the definition of large, but he didn’t have the manner of a warrior. I had seen many of those from my window perch and at my tower’s gate over the years. Though, I would definitely not consider him flabby or soft either.

As I considered the best descriptors for him, he lifted his gaze from the ledger and met my gaze. One golden-brown eyebrow rose in a silent question.

“You do not have the appearance of a man who skips meals regularly.”

“True, I don’t usually, but this is an exception.” He gestured to the laden shelves around us. “I have no way of knowing I will be allowed in again tomorrow.”

I shrugged. “I suspect you will. Worthenave likes showing off his collection, and admirers cannot fully appreciate it in only a single survey.”

“I prefer not to risk it.” His attention returned to the page.

Breaking my bread into two hunks, I opened up one of the linen napkins on the tray. Spreading it out, I set the bread hunk, half the cheese, and the meat shavings on it. I then folded the linen so that the food wouldn’t fall out.

Delivering the bundle took a bit more bravery, but I forced myself to act before I thought on it over much.

“To hold you until the evening meal,” I explained as I dropped it on the open shelf near his elbow. I returned to the table to focus on my own meal.

For a few moments, I feared he would reject it, or worse, take offense that I had not believed him. Only the sounds of him eating put me at ease enough to devour my own meal efficiently. As I cleared away the remnants, he approached and dropped the crumpled napkin on top of the pile.

“Thank you.”

 

Fanny's Hope Chest Scavenger Hunt

 

Welcome to the Hope Chest Scavenger Hunt! Today, I’m taking part in this fun event and giveaway to celebrate the release of Sarah Holman’s new book Fanny’s Hope Chest.

Here’s how to play:

1.     Go to Tangled up in Writing or The Destiny of One and get the full list of items to search for and the blogs taking part.

2.     Find the hidden item on each blog.

3.     Go to Tangled up in Writing or The Destiny of One and enter the giveaway with your completed list.

4.     Tell your friends about the scavenger hunt.

5.     Watch to see if your name is drawn on February 16th for 1 of 5 prizes.

 

Okay, see if you can find the item I’ve hidden:

 

Did you find it? Don’t forget to enter the giveaway. There will be five winners!

Interested in Fanny’s Hope Chest? Grab it for $0.99 through the 14th. (Price will go up to $2.99 after.) 

 

How old is too old for a hope chest?

When Ellie starts a new job as a home health aide, she doesn't expect to meet a woman in her eighties looking for her hope chest, nor a house as messy as Ellie's own emotional state. But as she cleans up Fanny's house, she begins to wonder if Fanny's hope chest might hold the answers to her questions about disappointed dreams and holding on to hope.

That is, if she can face both the mess and her own heart.

Find it on Amazon.