THE LETTERS - C Kevin Thompson - One Free Book

Welcome back, C Kevin. Tell us about your salvation experience.

It occurred in November of 1981. I was eighteen years old. Cindy and I had been married for about three months. We were home on a Wednesday evening, watching TV, when a knock at the door came around seven o’clock. It was the youth pastor from a local church and a friend we had gone to high school with standing on our front porch. I answered the door, and they asked me if this house was the address they had on their little note card. I informed them they were looking for the house two doors down. So while they were there, we struck up a conversation, and in the midst of it, they asked me “the question”: If I was to die tonight, would I know for sure I was going to be in heaven? I admitted I was not sure. As a matter fact, it was a different question I had pondered for over two years: Was there more to this life than working really hard, accumulating a bunch of money and assorted stuff, and then dying and leaving it all to your kids? I felt like there had to be more to this life than that, but I didn’t have a clue what that would be. If there wasn’t, then why bother to obey laws and rules? Why not eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die? I didn’t word it like that, but does that sound familiar? That’s how I felt. But something inside kept telling me such hopelessness was unwarranted. There was more to this life. That night, on my doorstep, as an eighteen-year-old newlywed who already owned his own house, I gave my life to Christ. Now, all these years later, I am rich. Not in money and stuff. But I am rich in the things thieves and rust and moths can’t touch.

I love to hear salvation stories, and yours is a good one. You’re planning a writing retreat where you can only have four other authors. Who would they be and why?

 Oh, my, that’s a good question. Only four, huh? Okay, so in no particular order, they would be as follows (and you didn’t say they had to be alive, so we’re gonna swing for the fences): Charles Dickens because he wrote from his heart and believed in his work so intensely, he was willing to risk everything to see it in print; Michael Crichton because he could teach a great deal about researching cutting-edge ideas and creating plots that are ripe for the silver screen; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because he could teach us how to develop a character that has been mimicked, copied, and spun off of, more than any other literary character in history, I think; and Tom Clancy because he believed in creating a truly good guy—a “boy scout”—and making him into a legend we all wished worked for the government.

Do you have a speaking ministry? If so, tell us about that.

I actually do not, per se. Because I’m the major bread winner, I do have a day job that takes up the majority of my time. I have spoken in churches in the past, filling in for pastors in various capacities. I am also going to be teaching a class to our local writers group this summer on developing proposals that get you published, which I hope to then use to get my foot in the door at some writers conferences, so we’ll see how that turns out. J

Hoping it works out all right. I’m supposed to be the keynote speaker for a one-day conference in April, but it has been postponed. What is the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you and how did you handle it?

When I was a language arts teachers years ago, I showed up to school and taught the first half of the day before a student came up to me at the end of class, as the bell rang and students were filing out. He said, “Mr. Thompson, did you know you have two different shoes on?” I laughed and said, “Yeah, right.” I thought he was joking. He said, “No, really. Look.” He pointed at my shoes, so I looked. Sure enough, I had two pairs of the same shoes in my closet. One pair was black. The other brown. I had one of each on my feet. “That’s what happens when you get dressed in the dark,” I told him. He laughed. I laughed. Then, I thanked him for not blurting it out in class and embarrassing me in front of everyone, as I was embarrassed enough. I added that he showed great maturity by handling it the way he did. I then proceeded to open my closet and allow him to raid the stash of candy I had stored away for various rewards. It was the least I could do. And no, I didn’t go home and change my shoes. I lived too far away. So I decided to make an experiment out of it and see if anyone else noticed. Much to my surprise, nobody did. Because you know that if a middle schooler with no couth noticed, he or she would have said something.

People are always telling me that they’d like to write a book someday. I’m sure they do to you too. What would you tell someone who came up to you and said that?

I usually ask then what they want to write. Then, I steer them in the right direction, because fiction is a different animal from non-fiction. If they just want to write a memoir, then that’s an entirely different discussion. But I always tell them that books don’t write themselves, so you have to sit down and actually write it. First things first. Can’t publish an unwritten book.

I also ask them what they plan to do with it once it’s done. That also helps me answer questions and give them some pointers about next steps after it is written.

Very good advice. Tell us about the featured book.

The Letters is a book about two worlds colliding within the life of Rachel Hamar. She’s just been let go from her bank teller position as a casualty of downsizing. This happens on the twentieth anniversary of the death of her high school sweetheart, Billy Baldwin. Billy died at the hands of her father because he found out she was pregnant. As a result, her father goes to prison, and her mother lands in a psychiatric ward. At the urging of her best friend, she has an abortion.

Now, twenty years later, everything and everyone she loved has been ripped from her. All that’s left is her mother, Dorothy Hamar, who now is a psychiatric patient at a local hospital in New York City.

It’s in the midst of Rachel’s spiraling depression that a letter arrives in the mail. It’s addressed to her. No return address. Simple white envelope. Common kind. Inside is a folded-up sheet of paper with what looks like scribbles from a pencil scratched across one side. She thinks it’s weird and tosses it in the garbage. Chalks it up to a postal carrier’s error. However, as more arrive, one each day, she fishes the first from the trash and starts comparing them. When she’s in possession of several, and as they shift from scribbles to crudely written letters to pictures drawn by a small child’s hand, Rachel starts to freak out, thinking they may be intended for someone else.

She enlists the help of a local detective, who is concerned this may involve the welfare of a child. However, the detective also believes this may be the work of a serial stalker, and this launches them into a story where two worlds collide into a tale of redemption and wonder.

As Rachel says in the prologue, this is her story. Some will call it a fairy tale. Some will call it a lie. But she calls it a story of love and redemption.

Please give us the first page of the book.

West 173rd Street

Washington Heights, NY

I slammed the car door shut and dropped my car keys onto the cold pavement. Shuffling the grocery bags from one hand to the other, I crouched in a pretzel-like fashion, trying not to keel over in my high heels.

Stupid keys.

Picking them up, my thigh muscles burned as I rose and fumbled for the one I needed, attempting not to crush the eggs or shatter the glass jars of spaghetti sauce clanking together in

revolt.

A stiff winter breeze battered my face as I trudged up the four blocks of sidewalk to the entrance of my five-story apartment building.

No bigger than a wide alley designed to look like a courtyard, the entrance led to eight fractured, concrete stairs, eroded by years of ice-melting salt in the winter, blistering heat in the

summer, and a million trudging feet.

The steps spread wide under two forty-year-old doors. Their glass panes, arranged in nine squares and each framed in wood, had a slightly melted, made-in-the-seventeenth-century look

about them.

How can readers find you on the Internet?

Readers can find me in several locations:

Website:                                 www.ckevinthompson.com/

Kevin’s Writer’s Blog:          www.ckevinthompson.blogspot.com/

Facebook:                               C. Kevin Thompson – Author Fan Page

Twitter:                                   @CKevinThompson

Instagram:                               ckevinthompson

Pinterest:                                ckevinthompsonauthor

Goodreads:                             C. Kevin Thompson

Christian Authors Network:   https://christianauthorsnetwork.com/c-kevinthompson/

BookBub:                                C. Kevin Thompson

In addition to these links above, I also am a regular contributor to the writer’s blog, Seriously Write, I am a member of ACFW and have an author’s page on “Fiction Finder” too.

Thank you, Kevin, for sharing this new book with us. I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book, because it is such a departure from the first 4 books I featured on my blog.

Readers, here are links to the book.

https://www.amazon.com/Letters-C-Kevin-Thompson/dp/1951246209/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= - Paperback

The Letters - Kindle

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