Jencey's Writer's Corner

Have you ever wondered what would it take to be included?   How can you make friends in new surroundings?   How can you take the courage to reach out to other women?   I have and so I participated in Lifeway’s online bible study We Saved You a Seat by Lisa-Jo Baker.   This bible study is for both women and teens.   For me it has been a struggle to find friends since I moved to Georgia.   While I have some great friends that I see from time to time Lynn, April, and Dawn.   I don’t really have people that I see on a regular basis.   This study appealed to me for possibly making a change that might bring more people into my life, and give me a chance to bless others. Here are the supplies needed for this study.   You will need the study guide for We Saved You a Seat, the DVDs or digital downloads, and last but not least a group of friends to share it with. Of course don’t forget your bible.   Choose the meeting format that works...

Photo by Rebecca Weiss A couple of years ago, there was a debate in the literary world about “likeable” characters.   The question, essentially, boiled down to this: must a character be unpleasant, whether angry or aggressive, selfish, or all gloom-and-doom in order to be taken seriously as a literary character?   When the debate arose, the focus was primarily on female characters— if a female protagonist has too many redeemable qualities as a person, does this detract from her substance as a character in a story?   This query nagged at me and took on a new shape during my writing Trouble the Water , as I watched my two main protagonists undergo journeys of personal growth that left them both decidedly more pleasant than the people they were when the story began.   The question I needed to answer was whether depth and meaning are negated by personal recoveries? My own take, as a reader, is that if I am going to spend hours reading a novel, hanging out with cha...

Welcome to spring! It is that time of year where the brides start walking down the aisle. Lenora Worth brings us the story of a bride who has to decide whether it is worth, it to walk down the aisle in her novella An April Bride . Have you ever had the experience of having trials surprise you? How will you react or will you change your plans? Synopsis: Stella is looking forward to marrying her fiancé Marshall, when he comes back from his deployment. Around the time that Marshall would have been sent home he and his unit encounter an IED.  Marshall survives but is injured. He wakes up with no memory of Stella and their time together. His parents initially keep Stella away because of his amnesia. When Stella discovers what her current circumstances are she begins to reconsider plans. Will she still marry Marshall? Or will he come up with the perfect plan to help her down the aisle? My Thoughts: I enjoyed Lenora’s story of the reluctant bride. She did a great job of ...

Congratulations to Patricia Mariani the winner of the Unsung Hero giveaway.  Please email me at jenceyg@gmail.com to claim your prize.  You have 48 hours to claim.  I look forward to hearing from you soon! :)

Thank you to Parker Row Books for a copy of Every Last Lie .   I was given this copy in exchange for an honest review. Mary Kubica is known for getting inside her characters and creating the right amount of tension to make the story flow.   In Every Last Lie she explores what happens when a family loses a loved one and how that impacts those around them.     So what journey will she take her readers on in this novel? Synopsis: Clara last sees her Nick husband as he offers to pick up their daughter from ballet and get dinner.   Later that same day Clara is still waiting for dinner to arrive for her and the infant son, but receives the police instead.   They direct her to the hospital where she finds out that her husband is dead but their daughter Maisie has survived the crash.   Once home from the hospital Maisie starts having night terrors which are so bad she locks herself in the bathroom.   Clara wants to ignore the bills and the w...

Ecco, most of the reviews of The Italian Party have overlooked your role in the book. Please describe what you do in the story, and tell us how you feel about being overlooked.  I’d like to bite someone right in the leg. First of all, I’m the true star of the book! I’m a fox terrier, so I’m incredibly feisty and adorable and always present in the story—even when Scottie is zooming around the Tuscan countryside on a scooter, I’m right there, ears flapping in the wind. My name means “Here he is.” I play a crucial role in the book. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the scene in which I first enter Scottie and Michael’s life is very important—they discover how rural Italians live, and how people of that era (1950s) are being forced to leave the country and move to the cities to find work. Michael’s job as a tractor salesman is part of the postwar Italian “economic miracle” that mechanized agriculture, which was good for profits but meant a lot of farmworkers lost their jobs. Tha...

Photo by Chris Arlen Tessa Arlen is  visiting Writer's Corner for her new book in the Lady Montfort Mysteries series Death of  an Unsung Hero.   I have one copy up for grabs.  Giveaway will be open to US only.  Please follow the link to rafflecopter.  What inspired you to begin writing mysteries? Was the Lady Montfort Mysteries a series you always wanted to write? Ever since I read Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes when I was fourteen I wanted to write mysteries. I particularly enjoyed the Golden Age mystery writers: Dorothy L. Sayers Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham often referred to as the Queens of Crime who wrote detective fiction between the wars. And it wasn’t until I started to write mystery that I discovered that they considered their whodunits as a game for both author and reader: the elements of the mystery must be clearly presented but in such a way as to arouse curiosity, to entice the reader to try and...