But Megan isn’t the only one struggling. Fourteen-year-old Olivia’s world is falling apart right before her eyes, and there’s nothing she can do about it. She finds herself acting in ways she cannot even begin to understand. When her internal struggles turn to dangerous behavior, even the paranormal connection she shares with her mother might not be enough to save her – her life will hang in the balance. Megan’s Way is a journey of self discovery and heartfelt emotions, exploring the depth of the mother-daughter bond, and the intricacies of friendship.

*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU PUBLICLY FOLLOW THIS
  BLOG (IF NOT, GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT ON RIGHT SIDE).

*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK.

*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER.

*REMEMBER TO INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS FOR ALL ENTRIES.

Giveaway copies are supplied and shipped to winners via publisher,
agent and/or author. This blog hosts the giveaway on behalf of the
above. I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in
exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are
ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.
I am not responsible for lost or damaged books that are shipped
from agents. I reserve the right to disqualify/delete any entries
if rules of giveaway are not followed

What a great way to start July off!!   Special thanks to Jodi and Robyn from WOW-Women On Writing, for giving me the opportunity to be be one of the hosts for this awesome writer, while she is on her virtual book tour.  Please help me give a very big and warm welcome to today’s guest.  I have the honor and pleasure to introduce you to the very busy, amazing and talented author, Melissa Foster!! 

Megan’s Way have both been nominated for Dan Poynter’s Global eBook Awards

You can visit Melissa at her website, follow her on Facebook, twitter, FB Fanpage.  Chat with her on  The Women’s Nest.

1. Do you have a favorite type of book? What are you reading right now?
I gravitate toward books that are very close to real life—or at least that I can fathom happening in real life. I like strong, complex, female heroines who have something big to lose. I prefer fiction, and to read books that have bigger purposes than just to entertain, although I do like those, too.

Right now I’m reading Raven Stole The Moon, by Garth Stein.

2. Where did you get the idea for Megan’s Way?
Years ago, my mother had surgery and decided not to tell me that they thought she had cancer. Luckily, she didn’t, but she told me a year later that if she had, she had decided not to have treatments. Even though I was a mother, I instantly reverted back to being her daughter, and I was devastated. It took me years to wade through my emotions of feeling like she would have abandoned me, to understanding that there were larger issues at hand than just the selfishness of a daughter. In time, I came to understand, from a mother’s perspective, why she would have made that decision.

For this reason, it was easy for me to slip into both Megan and Olivia’s shoes when I was writing the book.

3. How long did it take you to write Megan’s Way?
I think it was about a year.

4. You’ve written two novels and are working on your third. Do all your novels have a common theme?
I really had to think about this question, because all three books are markedly different, although I believe the themes that are woven through them are similar—love, family, friendship, selflessness.

5. Have you ever considered writing any other type of book? Children’s? Non-fiction? Romance? YA?
Yes, many readers have really enjoyed the strength of teenage voice and I really enjoyed writing from that perspective. My fourth manuscript, Shades of Gray, is a YA / Women’s Fiction crossover.

6. Do you have a special writing room? Can you describe it for us?
Right now we are building a house and living in a temporary apartment. I don’t have a separate room, but my writing “area” is all windows and overlooks a gorgeous horse farm. In my new home, my office will overlook fields and will be bright and sunny, too. As long as I’m alone and have windows (or if I’m outdoors), I can write anywhere. I wouldn’t do well in a room without windows.

7. Have you ever had writer’s block? How do you escape it?
Luckily, I haven’t encountered that yet. I figure I have another ten years of stories in my head—then perhaps I’ll fall into the dreaded writer’s block black hole, but I sure hope not.

8. Are you a full-time author? If not, what is your other job(s)? If you weren’t a writer what would be your dream job?
I am a full-time author and I founded and run The Women’s Nest, a social and support community for women. Although it’s not an occupation, I like to spend my time helping women see the positive side of life. I owned and operated an HR consulting firm for many years.

My dream job is being a writer. I adore what I do and crave it on the weekends. If I weren’t a writer I would want to be a preacher of positivity. It’s a fake job that only lives in my head I’d like to spend my days helping others feel good about themselves and find the things in life that make them happy—like motivational speaking on steroids.

9. What do you do in your free time when you aren’t writing?
Free time? What’s that?

I spend my time with my family. I’m pretty boring. My days are filled with exercise, my children and husband, reading, writing, and the dreaded running of errands.

10. Tell us what you’re working on now.
Coming Soon: Come Back to Me (working title)

Tess Johnson has it all, Beau, her handsome photographer husband, a thriving business, and a newly discovered pregnancy. When Beau accepts an overseas photography assignment, Tess decides to wait to reveal her secret—only she’s never given the chance. Beau’s helicopter crashes in the desert.

As Tess struggles to put her life back together and deal with the pregnancy she can no longer hide, a new client appears, offering more than just a new project.

Meanwhile, two Iraqi women who are fleeing Honor Killings find Beau alive in the middle of the desert, his body ravaged. Suha, a doctor, and Samira, a widow and mother of three young children, nurse him back to health in a makeshift tent. Beau bonds with the women and children, and together, with the help of an underground organization, they continue their dangerous escape.

What happens next is a test of loyalties, strength, and love.

Thank you, Cheryl, for having me on your blog today. I enjoyed answering your questions and I look forward to continuing our friendship.

I love to chat with readers and book clubs, and I’m currently running a Kindle Giveaway promotion for anyone who purchases my books. You can find details on my site: www.MelissaFoster.com. If you’d like to talk about my books or writing, please email me: Thinkhappygirl (at) yahoo (dot) com

But Megan isn’t the only one struggling. Fourteen-year-old Olivia’s world is falling apart right before her eyes, and there’s nothing she can do about it. She finds herself acting in ways she cannot even begin to understand. When her internal struggles turn to dangerous behavior, even the paranormal connection she shares with her mother might not be enough to save her – her life will hang in the balance. Megan’s Way is a journey of self discovery and heartfelt emotions, exploring the depth of the mother-daughter bond, and the intricacies of friendship.

 Watch the trailer!!!

 
Melissa’s blog tour for Chasing Amanda, will be launched at the Muffin
Megan’s Way and Chasing Amanda were just nominated for Global eBook Awards

You can purchase Megan’s Way on Amazon or Smashwords.

 

  But Megan isn’t the only one struggling. Fourteen-year-old Olivia’s world is falling apart right before her eyes, and there’s nothing she can do about it. She finds herself acting in ways she cannot even begin to understand. When her internal struggles turn to dangerous behavior, even the paranormal connection she shares with her mother might not be enough to save her – her life will hang in the balance. Megan’s Way is a journey of self discovery and heartfelt emotions, exploring the depth of the mother-daughter bond, and the intricacies of friendship.

*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU PUBLICLY FOLLOW THIS
  BLOG (IF NOT, GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT ON RIGHT SIDE).

*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK.

*LEAVE SEPARATE COMMENT IF YOU FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER.

*REMEMBER TO INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS FOR ALL ENTRIES.

Giveaway copies are supplied and shipped to winners via publisher,
agent and/or author. This blog hosts the giveaway on behalf of the
above. I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in
exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are
ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.
I am not responsible for lost or damaged books that are shipped
from agents. I reserve the right to disqualify/delete any entries
if rules of giveaway are not followed

Approximately a month ago, I received an email from an author, an author who has just finished writing her fifth (5th) book.   An author who’s books are published by a big publishing house.   Honestly, I had to read the email twice because I really had a hard time processing what she stated in the email.   I was awestruck that this very talented and experienced writer was not only visiting my site, but liked it and wanted to know if she could visit with all of us and talk about her latest novel.  Astonished doesn’t seem to express what I was feeling.  So I please ask to give a very warm welcome to today’s guest, Ms. Cathy Holton, as only the CMash fabulous and fantastic followers can do!!

Visit her online at www.cathyholton.com; follow her @cathyholton on Twitter and on Facebook.
Visit the Summer in the South Facebook Fan Page for news and special offers.

This was in Stevens Point, Wisconsin; we lived in a large, rambling Victorian house not far from the campus where my father had taken a job as an assistant professor.  We were Southerners, born and bred, but my Liberal parents had decided to get us out of the South during the violent Civil Rights movement, and so my father had accepted a teaching position in this small Wisconsin town. For my younger brothers and I, it might
as well have been the gray, cratered surface of the moon. We were far away from everything we’d ever known.

I had always been an imaginative child, but now I was a lonely one. When I raised my hand in class that first day of school to answer a question, there was a moment of stunned silence. The teacher, unable to understand my thick Southern drawl, asked me to repeat myself. The boy in front of me turned around and said, “Where are you from, the swamp?” The next day the entire group on the playground lined up and shouted, “The Rebels are coming! The Rebels are coming!” as my brother and I plodded stoically toward the front door of The Abraham Lincoln Grammar School.

Eventually I made a friend, and when I went home to spend the night with her for the first time, her mother said, “Oh, you’re from down South where they turn the dogs on people.” I realized then that my family was different; we were tainted by our sinister history. I was deeply and irrevocably ashamed.

A few nights later as I drifted off to sleep, a strange thing happened. My bedroom was at the top of the house and had a faux “turret” that was actually a bowed window seat.  During the day, the window seat, surrounded by the thick branches of a leafy oak tree, was a wonderful place to read. But at night, these same branches cast eerie shadows in my room. On this particular evening, I awoke suddenly to find myself unable to move.  The room was hazy with moonlight and I could move my eyes slightly, but the rest of my body was paralyzed. As the horror of this dawned on me I became gradually aware that I was not alone in the room. I could hear soft breathing. Slanting my eyes to the right I could see, sitting on the window seat, the tall, dark figure of a man.

The paralysis lasted only a few short moments and when I was finally able to move, I jumped from my bed to find the man gone. The following year my parents moved us back to the South. The experience never reoccurred and it was not until college that I read of a fairly common, but little known sleep disorder called “sleep paralysis.” It occurs in roughly half the population at least once and includes both auditory and visual hallucinations.

Not long after I married and started a family, I went with my good friend Randal to spend the weekend in her small home town in Tennessee. Randal was from a very oldmoneyed Southern family, a family with an almost mythical history, and we were guests of her Great Aunt Fanny in a rambling mansion filled with wonderful treasures. On Friday, we escorted Fanny to the cemetery so she could “visit the dead.” Watching as the
elderly woman knelt to put flowers on a small grave set apart from the others, I asked Randal, “Whose grave is that?”

  She hesitated just long enough to make me curious. “That’s Fanny’s first husband. Charlie.”
  “What happened to him?”
  “He died. We don’t speak of him.”

I couldn’t get anything else out of her. That night as I lay awake in my moonlit room waiting for Charlie’s ghost to appear, I remembered my experience all those years ago in the house in Wisconsin. And  I remembered, too, the tender look on Fanny’s face as she bent to put flowers on the grave of a man who had died sixty-five years ago. And I wondered what could have happened between Fanny and Charlie that would keep her family from ever mentioning his name.

Twenty-five years later I wrote Summer in the South, the story of Ava, a Chicago writer trying to escape her own troubled past who stumbles upon a sixty-five year old murder mystery in a small Southern town. Are the things that happened to Ava in that old mansion in Woodburn, Tennessee real or imaginary? Was the love affair between Fanny and Charlie truly as I imagined it?

The answers to both questions, I suppose, lie clearly in the realm of fiction.
 

But the Woodburns are not who they seem to be. Gradually hearing rumors about the mysterious death of great-aunt Fanny’s first husband, Ava stumbles upon a decades-old family secret. With the help of Jake Woodburn, Will’s estranged cousin, Ava gradually puts aside her planned novel and begins instead to write the tragic history of the Woodburns, a family with more skeletons (and ghosts) in their closets than anyone can possibly imagine.

As she writes the history of the Woodburns, Ava begins to put together the pieces of her own past, learning that a good story is always more dazzling, and ultimately less painful, than the truth.