Come With Me…

My Beloved Readers,

As 2013 wraps up, and the end-of-the-year HOLIDAYS are peering around the corner of next week, I am officially winding down this site, Braveheart: Tales from the Front Lines. Over the next few weeks, I’ll post very little here except the final episode of Elderberry Croft, a few newsflashes, a Christmas goodie, and an au revoir. 

Everything is shifting to my new site, Hope Through Storytelling. In fact, everything I listed above (all but the goodbye) will also be posted on my new site as well.

That being said, I really want you to come spend time with me there!

So…I made a bold and possibly presumptuous move and I transferred EMAIL ONLY subscriptions from this blog to my new one. (You email subscribers have already received notification of this and there is nothing more you need to do.)

For those of you who follow via e-readers or other options, I’m inviting you to join us, too! I don’t want to lose a single one of you!

I can’t promise I’ve got it all together on my new site yet. I can’t promise I’ll have it together any time soon. In fact, I have a feeling I’ll NEVER be able to say “BY JOVE, I THINK SHE’S GOT IT!” At least not about myself. But I still want every one of you along for the ride. (Besides, my fits and foibles and fumblings could be rather entertaining for you….)

Hope Through Storytelling is now my online home, my friends. It’s the place I want to share with YOU! There, you’ll find information about my books, you’ll find Grace Notes (my blog), you’ll find stories of hope (a new series starting the beginning of 2014!), and you’ll find me. This is the place where I want to connect with you!

I write about hope. Not necessarily happily-ever-after, but HOPE. My stories are woven together by the scarlet thread of GRACE, and that GRACE-thread is the reason I have hope, and the reason my characters have hope. (For those of you who are reading Elderberry Croft, the serial novel I’ve been publishing free on my website this year, you already know a little about my words and the heart behind them.)

My website blog, Grace Notes, is the place I share sniglets, bites, tidbits, morsels, appetizers, scraps, nibbles, hors d’oeuvres…of HOPE.

So join me in this new season! I look forward to getting to know each of you a little better in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

My Books: “And books, they offer one hope — that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.” (Anne Rice) ~ Learn more about my books here. And don’t forget to visit Willow Goodhope of Elderberry Croft, and the rest of the Coach House Trailer Park residents!

My Blog: “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as the expectation of something tomorrow.” (Orison Swett Marden) ~ Grace notes in music are an embellishment, and my blog is the Grace Notes to my novels. I write about grace, courage, writing, relationships, and above all, hope.

My Bio: “Life is either an adventure or nothing at all. To turn our faces toward change and behave as free spirits is strength, undefeated.” (Helen Keller) ~ I’m a Braveheart living passionately for Jesus Christ. My weapon is my pen, and I write heart-changing stories. Find out what it means to be a Braveheart here!

Review: Loving by Corin Hughs

From the Back of the Book:

Hannah Mattox has Pulmonary Hypertension, a heart disease that prevents her from safely bearing children.  Karla Valez is a homeless prostitute who despises the “thing” growing inside her and hopes to kill it in-utero with the drugs that have ruled her life—and buried her painful past—for nearly five years.  Andrea Greene, founder of the Sanford Crisis Pregnancy Center, finds herself the bridge between these two women.  A time when questions far outweigh answers, there is one most pressing: why would God allow this?

Weaving together the lives of three very different women, Loving will take readers on an emotional journey that reveals one common thread: the need to surrender to a God who loves.

About the Author:

Corin Hughs wrote her first “book” the summer after third grade, an illustrated children’s book about the principle of compromise (the main characters were pigs!). Many years have passed since that book, but she never stopped writing. Her first novel, Loving, will be available in October 2013. Now, in addition to writing novels, she delights in writing notes of love and encouragement to her children. Corin married her high school sweetheart nearly 10 years ago, and they have three young children. Please visit www.corinhughs.blogspot.com to learn more.

From Me:

Corin Hughs does a well-balanced high-wire act of painting the convergence of three very different characters in three very different life stories. Corin’s voice is strong, her characters are relevant, and the issues she covers in this book are hard-hitting in many ways. Besides the obvious tough stuff like drug abuse, prostitution, abortion, etc., Corin handles the more delicate issues of the longing for children, the fear of rejection by foster-parent/adoption programs, and even the stigma of being childless in a Christian marriage.

Corin draws her readers in with lots of vivid details, with strong story-telling skills, and with a straight-forward open-eyed response to why bad things happen to good people, in a way that many inspirational authors skirt around or shy away from altogether. I’m impressed by her commitment to present Christ and His grace and love in a way that goes so much deeper than the oft-sugar-coated Jesus we see in much of today’s Christian fiction. As much as I could determine, Corin sticks to biblical truths with a boldness I found refreshing and resonating.

My only (small) drawback of this book was that it covered so many topics (and the resulting back-stories) that there were times I had to “reset” my thinking for fiction reading. Although Loving had a beautiful, poignant, and redeeming ending, I sometimes felt more like I was reading a memoir, and not fiction. In some ways, that’s good – Corin made these characters seem real – but in other ways, it made it more difficult for me to live vicariously inside the story. There were times I felt like I was being told these women’s stories, rather than participating in them.

Overall, I thought Loving was a beautiful, timely, and inspired book about women and the charge we have to lay down our lives for each other in love, especially as believers. This story made Christ real, and that’s a remarkable victory.

Corin, thank you for trusting me with your novel. I was richly blessed by your voice and I look forward to reading more from you in the future!