THE SEAKEEPER'S DAUGHTERS - Lisa Wingate - One Free Book

Dear Readers, if you haven’t read any of Lisa Wingate’s books, try one. You’ll be hooked for life.

Welcome back, Lisa. Since you’re being published regularly, what new avenues will your future books take?

My last few books have been dual time frame novels. The historical threads were created from fictionalized historical events. I love doing the research, finding little-known events and building on those. I imagine the people who were involved, what issues they may have faced, how they might have learned from their challenges.

I love having present day characters discover some historical mystery and telling a time-slip story allows the modern characters to learn life lessons from the past. I have at least one more book coming up along those lines. My lips are sealed at this point about the topic, title, and theme, but it’ll be hitting shelves sometime in 2016.

And I hope it hits my blog soon after. What conferences will you be attending this year? Will you be a speaker at any of them?

I’ll be attending several book festivals in the South while on Tour in September, including the Decatur Book Festival, SIBA Conference, and a bit later the Lousiana Book Festival. In the spring, I’m scheduled to attend a wonderful book festival in Panama City Florida. I’m looking forward to the books and the scenery.

I’ll be speaking at all of these book festivals, in one capacity or another. Typically, I’ll be sharing a panel spot with other authors, which allows us to bounce ideas and thoughts around. I’ll also be speaking at various luncheons and venues during The Sea Keeper’s Daughters book tour in September. For more about that, friends can check out the Appearances page on my website.

http://lisawingate.com/blog3/appearances/

And, I’ll be teaching a fiction track at Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference in March in Felton, CA.

Busy lady. If you were in charge of planning the panel discussion at a writing conference, what topic would the panel cover, and who would you ask to be on the panel, and why?       

I love speaking with other writers about their writing processes – what works for them and what doesn’t. I think we can all gain tips from one another to improve our productivity both in writing and in publicity. I think if I were planning a panel, it would be a combination of talking about writing process and tips to optimize the writing life. I’m not sure who I’d ask. I think we can learn from other writers of all types.

How important is it to you to be active in writing organizations?        

Working with other authors is very important to me. I have friends I meet with regularly and typically I attend and/or speak at several writing conferences each year. Some of my best opportunities have happened because I’ve come to know other writers. As writers we need support, advice, and help with everything from publicity to plotlines. Many brains are better than one.

Where in the community or your church do you volunteer?

For years my, husband and I taught Sunday school for high school seniors, which we loved. It’s hard to believe, but we continued so many years, that eventually our Sunday school kids were coming to visit with their own children. It has been such a joy to keep in touch with them and watch them grow into Godly adults with families and adult lives of their own.

I started the children’s choirs with another lady at the church we attended for 30 years. The Lord led us to another church about 12 years ago. Now some of my boys and girls are on the praise teams for this new church. It’s such a blessing seeing them up on stage. Tell us about the featured book.

From modern-day Roanoke Island to the sweeping backdrop of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains and Roosevelt’s WPA folklore writers of the Federal Writers’ Project, past and present intertwine to create an unexpected destiny….

Restaurant owner, Whitney Monroe, is desperate to save her business from a hostile takeover. The inheritance of a decaying Gilded Age hotel on North Carolina’s Outer Banks may provide just the ray of hope she needs. But things at The Excelsior are more complicated than they seem. Whitney’s estranged stepfather is entrenched on the third floor, and the downstairs tenants are determined to save the historic building. Searching through years of stored family heirlooms may be Whitney’s only hope of quick cash, but will the discovery of an old necklace and a depression-era love story change everything?

Tell the inspiration for the book

I never know where my stories will come from. While working on my first Carolina book, set on the Outer Banks, I became fascinated with the mystery of the Lost Colonists of Roanoke Island. You can’t spend time on the Carolina Coast without realizing that theories abound as to the fate of the 117 people who vanished from Sir Walter Raleigh’s ill-fated colony over thirty years before the Pilgrims would land on Plymouth Rock. While writing my second Carolina book, The Story Keeper, I delved into the mystery of what early explorers deemed to be Appalachia’s “blue-eyed Indians,” who were found to have been living in the mountains decades before other Europeans pressed in. I knew that the third Carolina book would somehow bring these two fascinating bits of history together.

While researching the previous books, I came across life history interviews written by participants in a little-known Depression-era program called the Federal Writers’ Project. The Project was championed by Eleanor Roosevelt and was a WPA program designed to hire impoverished writers, academics, housewives, and reporters. They became Field Interviewers, tasked to travel the hidden corners of America and record the stories of the common man. The adventures of these Federal Writers were equally as fascinating as the narratives and stories they discovered during their travels.

What might a modern woman discover, I wondered, if she were to happen to find the long-hidden missives of a relative who had left behind her wealthy family to become a Federal Writer? Could she possibly discover, among mountain stories handed down by oral tradition, not only her own family history, but a clue to one of America’s oldest mysteries?

Sounds so interesting. Please share the first page with us.         

Perhaps denial is the mind’s way of protecting the heart from a sucker punch it can’t handle. Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe denial in the face of overwhelming evidence is a mere byproduct of stubbornness.

Whatever the reason, all I could think standing in the doorway, one hand on the latch and the other trembling on the keys, was, This can’t be happening. This can’t be how it ends. It’s so . . . quiet. A dream should make noise when it’s dying. It deserves to go out in a tragic blaze of glory. There should be a dramatic death scene, a gasping for breath . . . something.

Denise laid a hand on my shoulder, whispered, “Are you all right?” Her voice faded at the end, cracking into jagged pieces.

“No.” A hard, bitter tone sharpened the cutting edge on the word. It wasn’t aimed at Denise. She knew that. “Nothing about this is all right. Not one single thing.”

“Yeah.” Resting against the doorframe, she let her neck go slack until her cheek touched the wood. “I’m not sure if it’s better or worse to stand here looking at it, though. For the last time, I mean.”

“We’ve put our hearts into this place. . . .” Denial reared its unreasonable head again. I would’ve called it hope, but if it was hope, it was the false and paper-thin kind. The kind that only teases you.

Denise’s hair fell like a pale, silky curtain, dividing the two of us. We’d always been at opposite ends of the cousin spectrum—Denise strawberry blonde, pale, and freckled, me dark-haired, blue-eyed, and olive-skinned. Denise a homebody and me a wanderer.

“Whitney, we have to let it go. If we don’t, we’ll end up losing both places.”

For the complete excerpt, go here…

http://lisawingate.com/seakeepersdaughtersexcerpt.pdf

Where can my readers find you on the Internet?

My website: www.Lisawingate.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/lisawingate

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LisaWingateAuthorPage

Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/lisawingatebook/

Youtube: http://us-mg5.mail.yahoo.com/http://www.youtube.com/lisawingate

Blogging Mondays at: www.SouthernBelleViewDaily.com

The Untold Story Guru: http://theuntoldstory.guru

The Sisterhood Of the Traveling Books: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SisterhoodOfTheTravelingBooks/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/178832.Lisa_Wingate

Tyndale Media Center Link http://mediacenter.tyndale.com/1_products/details.asp?isbn=978-1-4143-8827-4

Thank you, Lisa, for sharing this new book with me and my blog readers.

Readers, here are links to the book. By using one when you order, you help support this blog.

The Seakeeper's Daughters - Christianbook.com
The Sea Keeper's Daughters (A Carolina Heirlooms Novel) - Amazon
The Sea Keeper's Daughters (A Carolina Chronicles) - Kindle

Leave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of the book. Please tell us where you live, at least the state or territory. (Comments containing links may be subject to removal by blog owner.)

Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any pertaining local/federal/international laws.

The only notification you’ll receive is the winner post on this blog. So be sure to check back a week from Saturday to see if you won. You will have 4 weeks from the posting of the winners to claim your book.

If you’re reading this on Goodreads, Google+, Feedblitz, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, or Amazon, please come to the blog to leave your comment if you want to be included in the drawing. Here’s a link:
Http://lenanelsondooley.blogspot.com