Purple Pros Newsletter ONLY A FEW DAYS LEFT!!! Win one of two scholarships to the SWA Writers Workshop!

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JR Collins’ novel, The Boy Who Danced with Rabbits, has been acquired by Argus Publishing!

JR Collins’ novel, The Boy Who Danced with Rabbits, has been acquired by Argus Publishing!

Based on historical events about a young boy who grows up with the Cherokee Indians, it is written as a narrative and is told, in a voice that will stay with you forever, by the main character after he has aged ninety years.

Jedediah Collins was born on a cold and snowy night, late in the winter of 1817, at the base of Ben’s Knob Mountain, in a valley called Choestoe (a Cherokee name you say the way the Indians do, Cho-E-Sto-E). This area is now the northeastern part of Georgia, the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains.

A time when the Cherokee Indians still lived and thrived in their beloved mountain home, years before their forced removal by the U.S government under the direction of President Andrew Jackson, many European settlers found a life in these mountains. Living among the local natives, each people learned and adapted aspects of societal culture from the other.

Thompie and Celia Collins, parents of young Jeb, are direct descendants of Irish immigrants who settled in Choestoe during the escalation of the American Revolution. Friendship and dependence has developed between the settlers and their Cherokee neighbors, and such is the case for the Collins family.

Written in the dialect, style and vernacular of the mountain folk, Jeb paints a picture of his utmost humble beginnings, life during those times, and especially of his family’s friendship with Dancing Bear’s Cherokee family.

A very spiritual book, both Christian and Native American, The Boy Who Danced with Rabbits seeps into your soul, igniting a desire to know these people and to mimic their ways through the deep love and devotion, loyalty, and pride they show one another.

JR Collins was raised in the valley he so passionately writes about. An ancestor of the first pilgrims to the area, he proudly claims heritage and roots through the people of the Appalachian Mountains that settled in the Choestoe Valley sometime in the latter part of the 1700’s. Born in 1962, he grew up hunting and running the ridges of Choestoe.

As of 2013, Collins has been Director of Advertising for The North Georgia News, after having worked as the editor for sports stories, special events and is in the process of publishing Professional Golf Tips: A Pocket Lesson Book for Golfers – Tips from the Range – Ten Things All Golfers Must Know. He is a graduate of Young Harris College. Collins is currently working on the sequel, Living in the Land Where Rabbits Dance.

Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency https://loiaconoliteraryagency.com/jr-collins/ Published by Argus Publishing (Release 2017)

Johnnie Bernhard’s historic fiction novel, A Good Girl, a top ten finalist in the 2015 Faulkner- Wisdom Literary Competition, has been acquired by Texas Review Press!

Johnnie Bernhard’s historic fiction novel, A Good Girl, a top ten finalist in the 2015 Faulkner- Wisdom Literary Competition, has been acquired by Texas Review Press!

Learning who you are is accepting where you’ve been.

Have you ever wondered why you are the way you are?

In order to forgive her dying father, Gracey Mueller Reiter immerses herself into the chaotic gene pool of the Walsh-Mueller clan, only to find herself and the family she spent years running from.

Her great-great-grandmother, Patricia Walsh, came over from Ireland in 1847, starving, on a coffin ship, and ended up in Houston, Texas married to Emil Mueller, a first generation German immigrant. Six sons and a legacy…

Facing a catalyst—a past confronted, the present slipping away and the unknown, intimidating future—she can’t do a thing about the past, except accept it for what it was…her father’s alcoholism, her mother’s infidelity and soul-searching, and her siblings “realities.”

Imminent death lurks. And yet, in the midst of it all, histories come full-circle, revealing both lies and truths. What once was, will be again, repeating itself…or does the buck stop here?

An all-encompassing novel that penetrates the core beings of all who read it, A Good Girl pulls back the skin to reveal the raw actualities of life, love, and relationships, told with candor and honesty.

A former high school English teacher and professional journalist, now an agent and an author, Johnnie Bernhard life’s work has been reading and writing. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines, both nationally and internationally. She is a graduate of the University of Houston with graduate work at Nicholls State University. Her articles and columns have appeared in the Suburban Reporter, Houston; World Oil Magazine, Houston; The MS Press, Ocean Springs Record, and Word Among Us. She was also published in two anthologies for the Gulf Coast Writers Association MS Profiles “Portrait of a MS Artist” and Katrina Memories “Maureen and the Hurricane.” She has edited the Houston Writers Guild/Inklings Publishing anthologies, Eclectically Criminal and Twisted Reveries. She is a member of the Cursillo Movement of South Mississippi, an international Catholic religious retreat. Bernhard’s goal is to reach out to the education and faith-based communities as a lecturer and speaker. A Good Girl book trailer

The mock cover, created by international artist Grady Byrd, is being considered by Texas University Press.

A Good Girl will be a sought-after book club discussion book, as well as for anyone who has ever lost a parent or had siblings. Who hasn’t? A guaranteed best seller, it may even encourage readers to research their own heritage.

Texas Review Press, founded in 1979, is a member of the Texas Book Consortium: Texas State Historical Association Press, Texas Christian University Press, University of North Texas Press, State House/McWhiney Press, Stephen F. Austin State University Press, and Southern Methodist University Press. It is under the direction of Dr. Paul Ruffin, Texas Sate University system Regents’ Professor, Distinguished Professor of English. Dr. Ruffin is the 2009 Texas Sate Poet Laureate. Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency

A great Dorito commercial to support our wounded veterans and our ‘little inspirations’. Please ‘like’ and ‘share’.

https://www.facebook.com/396248217241792/videos/440225829510697/

Courage all around. I sent it on. It reminds me of an old saying my father use to tell me (when I needed it.) “I had no shoes and I complained…until I met a man who had no feet.”

— Thomas E. Simmons, author of By Accident of Birth, The Man Called Brown Condor and Forgotten Heroes of WWII

Book Signing Advice from Caroline Giammanco

Book Signing Advice from Caroline Giammanco, author of Bank Notes: The True Story of the Boonie Hat Bandit http://www.booniehatbandit.com/book-signing-advice/

Three opportunities to enjoy Wally Avett, author of Last Bigfoot in Dixie, Murder in Caney Fork, Rebel Bushwhacker, and Coosa Flyer.

Three opportunities to enjoy Wally Avett, author of Last Bigfoot in Dixie, Murder in Caney Fork, Rebel Bushwhacker, and Coosa Flyer. He will speak on writing and publishing as well as his novels. He may even sing a few songs for you!

The Cherie Show Monday, April 11th @ 11am, ETC3-TV station.

Sequoyah Regional Library Ellijay, Georgia, Saturday, April 16th, 10:30-noon

Mountain Regional Library Blue Ridge, Georgia, Saturday, April 23rd, 10:30-noon

Limitless Publishing acquires Rebecca Besser’s dark thriller Nurse Blood

Limitless Publishing acquires Rebecca Besser’s dark thriller Nurse Blood

Based on true events.

A dark premise has been lurking in the fears of society for hundreds of years—body snatching.

A sexy thrill ride of deception and death for fans of suspense, thriller, mystery, horror, and true crime.

When a group of thugs, a black market dealer, and host of medical professionals begin kidnapping people—harvesting their organs and blood for profit and medical research—they do it to the wrong man…the brother of an FBI agent.

All the hoodlums are twisted and constantly trying to outsmart each other to stay alive while being relentlessly pursued by the FBI. Twisted-sick love, hate, jealousy, greed and just plain evil, each one schemes to do the other in.

Rebecca Besser has been published over 200 times in magazines, ezines, anthologies, literary journals (poetry & photography), nonfiction collections, and on blogs. Undead Drive-Thru, her first zombie novella, has been compared to the works of Stephen King and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. An anthology, which she edited and has a short story in, Earth’s End, won the Turning Pages Book of the Year 2012 Reader’s Choice Award in the Scifi category. www.rebeccabesser.com Published by Limitless Publishing Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency

Rochelle Wisoff- Fields interviews Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski who has made it her mission to speak for those who didn’t.

“I MUST TELL YOU”

Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and Sonia Warshawski, survivor of Majdanek, Auschwitz-Berkinau, and finally Bergen-Belsen where she was ultimately liberated by the British.

Rochelle’s novels, Please Say Kaddish For Me and From Silt and Ashes, are rooted in the pogroms of Kishinev at the turn of the 20th Century.

God’s Grace – short story

God’s Grace

There once was a man named George Thomas, the pastor in a small New England town. One Easter Sunday morning he came to the Church carrying a rusty, bent, old bird cage, and set it by the pulpit. Eyebrows were raised and, as if in response, Pastor Thomas began to speak…. “I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a young boy coming toward me swinging this bird cage. On the bottom of the cage were three little wild birds, shivering with cold and fright.

I stopped the lad and asked, “What do you have there, son?”

“Just some old birds,” came the reply.

“What are you going to do with them?” I asked.

“Take ’em home and have fun with ’em,” he answered. “I’m gonna tease ’em and pull out their feathers to make ’em fight. I’m gonna have a real good time.”

“But you’ll get tired of those birds sooner or later. What will you do then?”

“Oh, I got some cats,” said the little boy. “They like birds. I’ll take ’em to them.”

The pastor was silent for a moment. “How much do you want for those birds, son?”

“Huh?? !!! Why, you don’t want them birds, mister. They’re just plain old field birds. They don’t sing. They ain’t even pretty!”

“How much?” the pastor asked again.

The boy sized up the pastor as if he were crazy and said, “$10?”

The pastor reached in his pocket and took out a ten dollar bill. He placed it in the boy’s hand. In a flash, the boy was gone. The pastor picked up the cage and gently carried it to the end of the alley where there was a tree and a grassy spot. Setting the cage down, he opened the door, and by softly tapping the bars persuaded the birds out, setting them free.

Well, that explained the empty bird cage on the pulpit, and then the pastor began to tell this story: “One day Satan and Jesus were having a conversation. Satan had just come from the Garden of Eden, and he was gloating and boasting.

“Yes, sir, I just caught a world full of people down there. Set me a trap, used bait I knew they couldn’t resist. Got ’em all!”

“What are you going to do with them?” Jesus asked.

Satan replied, “Oh, I’m gonna have fun! I’m gonna teach them how to marry and divorce each other, how to hate and abuse each other, how to drink and smoke and curse. I’m gonna teach them how to invent guns and bombs and kill each other. I’m really gonna have fun!”

“And what will you do when you are done with them?” Jesus asked.

“Oh, I’ll kill ’em,” Satan glared proudly.

“How much do you want for them?” Jesus asked.

“Oh, you don’t want those people. They ain’t no good. Why, you’ll take them and they’ll just hate you. They’ll spit on you, curse you, and kill you. You don’t want those people!!”

“How much? He asked again.

Satan looked at Jesus and sneered, “All your blood and tears, and your life.”

Jesus said, “DONE!” Then He paid the price.

The pastor picked up the cage and walked from the pulpit.