Help! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up! (Or something like that.)

It’s never a good idea to fall down a flight of stairs and an even worse idea when you’re carrying a six-month-old baby. But that didn’t stop Darice. Or Molly—who had little say in the matter since she was the six-month-old.

We were living on Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. Darice’s husband was an Air Force firefighter and worked twenty-four hours on, followed by twenty-four hours off. He was at work defending his country that night, the big chicken, so that left the following cast members:

My daughter, Darice (still fresh [and tender] from a C-section)

My granddaughter, Molly (the reason for the C-section)

Me, (the old mom and grandma)

Our black lab, Maestro

Four cats—Scully, Graham, Deucy, and Maple

Our rabbit, Birch, and

a handful of hermit crabs.

You’ll need a little background on our pets. Scully, a gray tabby, had household seniority and as such, scorned everyone else in the house (me included). Her mother, Darice, was the only one she listened to. 

Maestro was next. She usually kowtowed to Scully, but had little patience with the riff-raff that followed her own arrival to the household. 

Deucy, our black cat, was Darice’s cat from long before she married Ron and had actually lived with Darice the longest. She joined our blended household when I did. Deucy was pretty much out of it as far as hearing anything or doing much besides sleeping. 

Maple, a beautiful calico kitty, was my kitty and joined our family a few years before when we lived in Mississippi. Maple was (and still is) the quintessential scaredy cat. I once dropped a candy wrapper on the floor, and we didn’t see her for four days. We found a new rug for the kitchen, and Maple jumped four feet from the dining room carpet to the tile beyond the rug for the rest of the time we lived there. 

The rabbit, Birch, lived in his own little habitat, and had a fairly good relationship with everyone else, but hated noise. 

The hermit crabs were incredibly quiet, but ugly as all get-out when naked. Don’t ever look at a naked hermit crab. They’re bad enough in their shell; without it they’re just pitiful.

Then there’s Graham. We found Graham in a drainage ditch on base. It was springtime and the bears were out from their winter hibernation and hungry. If we hadn’t brought him home, he’d have made a tasty treat for one of the black bears that wandered around base. Trouble is, we had no idea of Graham’s history. He appeared to be a loving, sweet little gray tabby, much like Scully (without the loving and sweet part), and we had to learn about his idiosyncrasies as life went on.

We lived in base housing, and this particular house had the kitchen toward the back of the house, and two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. The stairway from upstairs spilled out into a front hallway that also housed a half-bath and entrance to the living room and dining room through which you had to pass to get to the kitchen and bonus room in the back of the house. Now about the half-bath: you know how Barbie has that motorhome? Yeah, the pink one. Remember that little bathroom in the back? Take the actual size of Barbie’s bathroom--you know, that area about 3" by 3"--cut it in half, fill it with cold, hard, head-breaking porcelain stuff, and you’ve got an idea what our half bath was like.

Anyway, that night I was in the kitchen when I heard a never-ending shriek followed by baby wails. I dashed from the kitchen, took a left at the dining room for the straightaway through the living room, and just as I was in the left turn to get to the finish line, Maestro, the black lab, slammed into me. I fell to the floor and rolled around like a bowling ball. In the meantime, Darice is still hollering, the baby is screaming, and I’m trying to figure out what happened. “What’s wrong?” “Are you hurt?” “Is Molly hurt?” and on and on in that vein. Darice stopped hollering long enough to holler at me and said (at the top of her lungs), “I fell down the stairs!”

“What?” (More out of incredulity than not hearing her, although Molly’s squalling and Maestro’s barking weren’t helping any.)

Darice answered, “I. FELL. DOWN. THE. STAIRS!” (What I didn’t hear, but what I suspect she was trying to tell me was, “You moron. I’m at the base of the stairs with Molly in my arms. She’s screaming. I’m screaming. What do you think happened? And quit rolling around on the floor like a bowling ball.”)

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Apparently, she fell down the stairs, and took Molly with her. Not the best plan, but nevertheless, that’s what happened. I stumbled upward with Maestro hopping around like a jack rabbit in front of me, regained my balance, and started toward Darice. She was clutching Molly close to her, who, aside from yelling her head off, looked perfectly fine. Just as I was about to reach them, Graham took it upon himself to settle the dog down by jumping up onto her back, claws extended, to … you know, kill her. Okay, we discovered our first idiosyncrasy. Graham doesn’t like it when people scream. Go figure.

This attack wasn’t looked upon kindly by Maestro, who started to howl and buck like a bronco. I was afraid they were going to jump on Molly, so I took the humane and thoughtful pet owner path and stuffed them both into the half-bath, not easy considering its size and their fury, slammed the door, and let them sort it out themselves. There was blood—lots of it—on me, on Maestro, on Scully.

Darice (who is now a licensed vet tech, but has always loved animals) was horrified. She knew that when cats get into that “kill” mode, it literally means they will fight to the death with the first breathing thing they happen upon. Maestro was the unlucky thing in her path. We still don’t know who would’ve lived and who would’ve died, but Darice didn’t wait to let them figure it out themselves. I took Molly, and Darice went into half of Barbie’s half-bath, and pried them apart. Once she tore Graham off Maestro’s back, she tossed him into the laundry room (directly at the base of the stairs), slammed the door shut, and ran back to inspect Maestro. She had puncture wounds, but they weren’t fatal, and she was able to wash and disinfect them. We let Graham stew a while in the laundry room. When we finally released him, he meandered out, meowed for food, rubbed against my leg (and did not apologize to me or Darice for our multiple cat gashes), with nary a thought of killing anyone.

Maestro visited the vet the next day for a shot of antibiotic. We didn’t see Maple for a week, an Birch the rabbit thumped his back legs in displeasure throughout the following day. Deucy, being deaf, had missed it all, and Scully didn’t lower herself enough to have an opinion one way or the other on the behavior of the peons that shared the house with her (animals and humans). The hermit crabs survived, although all but one have since died. We’re not sure just how much the trauma of that night contributed to their eventual demise.

Molly didn’t have a scratch on her, and survived her first tumble down the stairs beautifully. Darice, though covered in cat scratches, horrified at what happened, and suffering from a nearly-opened-up C-section scar, also survived. Maestro never held it against Graham, who seems to have completely forgotten his appalling behavior. That leaves me. I’m fine, although I’ve noticed I tend to fall down and roll around like a bowling ball more than I used to.

Pizza Party Was a Real Gas

It’s been almost a month now, and I still haven’t figured out why we’re not dead.

My daughter’s a licensed vet tech, so when she was asked to stay after hours for a surgery, she said yes. This was the first time they’d ever asked, and frankly, I don’t know how often it happens. But it happened that night. Darice works four 10-hour days per week, so she’s gone from the house from about 7:15 AM (or earlier) to round 7:30 PM on those four days. On this evening, she arrived home about 10:00 PM. Her friends at the clinic invited her to join them for a bite of food and a beer (craft beer is big up here in Alaska), but she was tired, and knew she’d been gone far longer from home than she normally is. She missed Molly.

While Darice was in surgery, Molly and I prepared our pizza party. We put my gluten-free pizza in the oven after loading it down with extra pepperoni, and after about twenty minutes it was done. I pulled it out of the oven, switched the oven to off (I’m ultra-careful about things like that, particularly since this is a gas stove), and we sat down to a movie (Clifford the Big Red Dog) and ate. Not once did Molly enter the kitchen. That’s important to remember.

Since Molly had slept in that day, and because it was a Friday night, Molly and I were both awake when Darice walked in the front door. The first thing she said was, “How come I smell gas?” I answered, “What gas?” and it was on.

She couldn’t believe I couldn’t smell it, and I couldn’t believe she could. I walked out on the front porch, took a breath of fresh air, and walked in. She was right. The house was full of the smell of natural gas. What’s the matter with my nose? Why weren’t Molly and I complaining of headaches and nausea? Why were we still conscious?

Now this is where we got crazy. In our attempts to figure out what was wrong, I took Darice to the stove and turned on all four burners to show her the pilot was lit. That shows how smart I am. I showed her that the knob for the oven was turned to “off,” just as it had been the last time I was in the kitchen. She called Codie, a friend who lives nearby, who urged her to call the fire department. She did. Darice ran to the landlord’s house, which is connected to ours, to tell them their tenants were in the middle of trying to blow up the entire duplex so they might want to evacuate. They did. Codie arrived, and before the fire department got there, Darice and Codie tried lighting the oven pilot. That shows how smart they are. They heard it “whoosh!” and knew they had it relit—or assumed so.

It was time to evacuate. Molly needed shoes and a jacket, so I ran to her room, switched on the closet light (another no-no), found what I needed, and we headed out the front door. We stood around for a couple of minutes until we heard the sirens. They pulled up—two huge trucks, the EMT truck, and the chief’s car. Firefighters in full battle gear spilled everywhere. And there I was: chic as ever in my jammies, robe, and slippers, while Darice looked at least presentable in her scrubs. Not surprisingly, the chief chose to communicate with Darice. I think my jammies were too distracting for him to do his job correctly.

Somebody checked the gas levels with a device of some sort (I need to get me one of those things), and then one at a time the firefighters entered the house, gas mask and all, for five minutes each. One came out and another one went in. Finally, the chief went over to Darice, explained that the gas levels were off the charts, and that we needed to get away from the house. We couldn’t sit in our car in the driveway for fear of an explosion, but down the road to the corner and across the highway was deemed safe enough. We traipsed down to the corner and across the road.

It started to rain.

So, there we stood at the side of the road, getting wetter by the minute, when a kind neighbor from farther down the road and up a steep hill came to check on us. She trudged back to her house (a good quarter mile away) and brought back coats. Then she walked back and returned with folding chairs and bug spray. She offered refreshments. She did everything but go over and help the firefighters. Just as she was returning from yet another trip up and down that hill she lives on, the paramedic invited us into the EMT truck. Poor lady did all that for nothing. (We thanked her profusely the next day.)

When the fire chief felt it was safe enough for us to return to the general vicinity of the house, he came to the EMT truck and explained to Darice that the levels of natural gas in the house were lethal. They’d opened every window in the house and used fans outdoors to blow the gas out. Darice asked what would have happened if we’d gone to bed and she’d stayed out late. He said she would’ve more than likely found us dead. Yikes.

And then he did what Darice, Codie, and I had been dreading. He looked at us and said, “I want to know who lit the match.” He’d seen it on the counter beside the stove with the box of matches all waiting their individual turns at blowing us to kingdom come. The look on his face when Darice told him what she and Codie had done was priceless. He said the simple act of flicking a light switch (gulp) could have triggered an explosion. I’m sure our pictures are somewhere on that firehouse wall with a “Stupidest Dummies in Alaska” caption beneath them.

The fire chief requested that a representative from Enstar, our gas company, pay us an emergency visit. He arrived and checked every inch of the house and every gas appliance we had. Nothing was wrong, he said. We told him about Darice and Codie’s ill-advised relighting of the oven pilot, and although he was nice, he didn’t seem to think the reason for the gas was a blown-out pilot light. What was the reason then? I know the oven was turned off, Molly didn’t go into the kitchen and accidentally nudge it to “on,” and I know that for certain because I was afraid she’d burn herself on the pizza pan and forbade her entrance. She sat on the couch like a good little kid about to blow sky-high. Darice and Codie both heard the pilot relight, but despite their best attempts to convince him, they couldn’t. It’s our non-provable opinion that somehow the oven pilot blew out when I turned the oven off. How and why that would happen is unknown; besides the professionals disagree.

So here we are, stuck with a mystery. We won’t use the oven because we’re afraid of the same thing happening, and since I can’t smell the darned stuff I’m afraid I’ll start the whole debacle over again. I miss baking things. I miss not being worried about exploding when I light a candle. I miss going to bed and not worrying about not waking up the next morning. Darice does the same.

What we are grateful for, though, is the fact that Darice was asked to work late because she arrived home later than usual after the gas had had enough time to fill the house and arouse her suspicions. If she’d been home at the normal time and we’d gone to bed at our usual time, perhaps all three of us would’ve succumbed to it. Darice reminds me she’d have smelled it, but the fire chief said I probably grew accustomed to the smell gradually as it filled the house, so perhaps she would have too. Don’t know what to think about that. I’d like to think old age hasn’t taken my sense of smell, but who knows? Also, had she gone out with her friends, she’d have arrived home too late.

We’re also grateful that my clicking on the closet light switch didn’t detonate the gas, that my lighting the four burners didn’t set it off, and that Darice and Codie didn’t do the same when they lit the match. In asking a firefighter friend in the Air Force about that, he said that there probably wasn’t enough oxygen in the house to detonate the gas. Makes sense, except two cats, a hermit crab, Molly and I all survived in a house so full of gas it left no room for oxygen? And in looking for the cats after the firefighters left and allowed us re-entry to the house, we found one of them hiding above the kitchen cupboards in that little valley created by the wall and the cornice. Why didn’t he die? He was right above the leak and should’ve been knocked out first thing and dead a little while later.

Perhaps we’ll never know the answers. I wouldn’t believe it was as bad as it was if it weren’t for having a professional firefighter (and his handy-dandy device) tell us it was. Despite our curiosity and all those unanswered questions, we are grateful beyond belief to be alive. (I imagine our landlords are too.) We will take our stroke of luck (or divine intervention) and be happy for it. We have a new appreciation for the brevity and uncertainty of life.

And a whole new dread of our gas stove. 

Until the next time ...

Old Friends, Good Times, and Belly Laughs

A dear friend of mine left my house this morning to return to her home in Michigan. After spending a couple of months in Gulf Shores, Alabama, she asked if she could stop by on her way back north. I jumped at the chance to see her again.

Karen and I met when we both worked at a Social Services office in Michigan. She was a raving beauty (still is, for that matter), with a raucous sense of humor and irresistible smile. We bonded for life during the little time I worked there before moving to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, after my husband returned from Vietnam. After that our lives took weird, yet similar paths over the years. We both were divorced from our first husbands when they left us for women eleven years older than they were and raised our children (two for her, three for me) as poverty-stricken, hardworking, frazzled, single moms. I spent a lifetime working for a school district as the superintendent's secretary (five superintendents over the years), and she joined the school board somewhere in there and is still serving on the board despite my telling her she's nuts. We faced many problems, some serious, some idiotic, during those overlapping years, and she still keeps me abreast of what's happening up there.  Now we're both retired from our "day jobs," while she continues to serve on the board, and I spend my time taking care of my granddaughter, traveling to see my other children and grandchildren, and writing.

Karen is a skilled writer in her own right, and has authored a column for many years. Our political and religious views are about as dissimilar as possible, but we've always found a way to listen to the other's viewpoint and express our own without going for one another's throats. That's probably due to a couple of things: we both respect one another (and opinions, even though they don't mesh with our own), and our combined, wild and wooly sense of humor. I can always look forward to a belly-laughing, deep cleansing renewal of my spirit when I spend time with Karen. Our conversations are intriguing, spirited, enlightening, and inevitably expose me to views and causes I've never known about or considered. She seldom changes my mind, but she presents her points with passion, and I respect her devotion to what she feels is the correct way of dealing with topics as varied as family, school districts, bosses, leaders, and the nation. She's an intelligent, intuitive, educated woman who has helped innumerable people throughout her life.

I'm honored to have Karen in my life, and I look forward to many more in-person and long distance conversations in our futures. The world needs more women like her, women who are passionate about what they've learned from their life experiences, who love people enough to respect them even if she disagrees with their viewpoints, and who give of their time, money, and laughter to keep their friends on the straight and narrow and the world on its axis.

It's a tough job, but someone has to do it. My someone is Karen. Love you, K.K. Wibesep.

Until the next time...

A Lifetime of Time

I doubt if this butterfly worries about the life already lived.
He/She lives for the moment and that next taste of the sweet
nectar God gives to His littlest creatures.

I had two sobering occasions occur recently--my oldest child turned 44, and my oldest grandchild turned 15. That makes me at least 50 years old. Sigh.

Okay, okay, I'm older than 50 years old. How much older isn't important. My point is that despite my best efforts, neither my children nor my grandchildren have remained babies. In the case of my son and grandson, they grew up just as they were supposed to and evolved from adorable infants to fine men. Derek is middle-aged (oh, my gosh, I can't believe I just typed that), and Dustin is on the verge of adulthood. From all indications, he too will turn into a fine young man.

I also have two beautiful daughters (both over 40), and in addition to Dustin, I have four other grandsons (13, 9, 9, and 5) and a 5-year-old granddaughter. All of them share the same compassionate, intelligent, and hard-working characteristics as Derek and Dustin. I'm surrounded by incredible people--and they're all younger than me.

How on earth did that happen? Wasn't it just last month that I was the youngest in the office, the baby of the restaurant where I waited tables? Wasn't it last week that I was the youngest office manager in the state's social services system? What happened to those 40 or so years? How did I go from the youngest in just about every situation in which I found myself to being the oldest person in the room?

Well, if I stopped blathering long enough I'd realize that time is what happened. The passage of time--that slow, but inexorable ticking of the clock, second by minute by hour by day until the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months and the months to years. The years? Well, they turned to decades, and eventually, they'll turn into a lifetime.

A lifetime of time. Sounds odd, doesn't it? But that's what life is. Time. God has given us the time to live our lives, and coupled with the gifts He imbues us with, the opportunity to live those lives, to spend all that time in His service. He desires that we become the men and women He intends us to be and to live out our time on earth glorifying our Heavenly Father.

The older I become, the more clearly I see not only His Hand in my life, but the ways in which He wants me to behave, the paths He wants me to take and those He wants me to avoid. Of course, decades of experience helped make my vision clearer, but looking backward at more years already lived than I have before me can have the same sobering effect as a slap across the face with a large, wet fish. I've already lived many more years than I will live during my entire future on this planet. Not everyone can say that, so I'm careful to remember that I'm fortunate to be growing older. Some people never have that chance. Their lives are sometimes over before they really begin--or at least before they gain traction. The fact that God has allowed me to live this many years means He still has something for me to accomplish in His Name.

Now I can either bemoan the years that have passed as if their passing were a bad thing, or I can rejoice that those years happened in the first place--that my children and grandchildren were born and grew into fine human beings. They have their paths to take; I have mine. Just because I started out on my path before theirs began isn't a bad thing. Mine will end before theirs, as well, but that will be because I've accomplished all I was supposed to. They still have things to do, places to go, people to meet and influence, spouses to marry, children to raise, jobs to work at. Lives  are staggered that way for purposes that only God knows fully, but I know one thing. If we were all born at the same time, lived our lives and died at the same time, life would be one big train wreck.

God knows what He's doing. Allowing me to celebrate the birthdays, anniversaries, births, joys, and triumphs of my children and grandchildren is a privilege only He can bestow. How dare I diminish that great blessing by bemoaning the fact they're growing older along with me?

I am blessed beyond comprehension and have joys that defy explanation all because of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Thank You, Lord.

Until the next time ...

Dropping the Devil's Bonds

It's been ages since I posted, and you'll never guess why! Ready? Here goes: No good reason. None. None at all. I just didn't know what to post and had that "deer in the headlights" look in my brain whenever I realized I hadn't posted in forever. So I just didn't do anything.

Not a very good reason, huh?

I know it's not, so I finally decided to simply blog about why I haven't blogged. I think this is a problem many of us face whether we're writers, moms, dads, employees, bosses, whatever. We don't know what to do next (because Heaven forbid we make a mistake), so we make the worst mistake of all and don't do anything. We're paralyzed by uncertainty, and instead of doing something--anything--we choose to do nothing.

And yes, it's a choice. I chose not writing because I was afraid I'd write something dumb (like this post, perhaps?) and make a fool of myself. How's that for dumb? In my not-so-gallant effort to avoid looking like a dolt, I spent months doing nothing and looking more doltish (doltisher?) by the minute.

But that's all behind me now. I've spent a lot of time lately evaluating why I do or don't do certain things. Most of it boils down to being afraid of looking bad/amateurish/dumb/ignorant/unkind and on and on. This applies to the rest of my life, by the way, not just my writing.

Uncertainty is a tool the devil uses to bind us so we don't do what God created us to do. And he's been binding his evil heart out around me.

That stops now.

Just because I'm not sure what to do about something doesn't mean that what I do choose to do will be wrong. Maybe it'll take me on a journey to what is right. Maybe it'll bomb. But in any event, I'll be actively seeking an answer rather than twiddling my thumbs and giving the devil something to grin about. Confusion, indecision, uncertainty, fear, prudence, whatever you choose to call it or whatever situation you find yourself in that causes any of the above will probably require some action on your part. Yes, some things resolve themselves without our assistance. There's nothing wrong with a "wait and see" attitude unless it's a "wait and see forever because I'm so darned afraid of doing something wrong that I'm tied in knots and basically useless." But if it's clear that action is needed, do your homework, make your best guess, and then take your best shot.

My most recent conundrum has been how to best market my latest novel. Because I couldn't come up with a sure-fire way to become an instant bestselling author, I came up with absolutely nothing. Oh, I tried lots of stuff all right, so much in fact that it all became useless. You can take all the shots you want, but if you don't have a clear target you're shooting blindly. Rather like using a water pistol to put out as forest fire. It doesn't do any harm, but it doesn't do any good either. My mind was filled with ideas and although none of them seemed perfect, some were not so bad. I immediately eliminated what I couldn't afford, which was a good start. But after that, I had no idea what idea was the best idea for me, so I did the worst possible thing. Nothing. If I'd tried some of them back when I first thought of them, I'd have a good idea by now which ones worked and which didn't. As it is, though, I'm left with a brain full of ideas and still no idea which ones will work. The only way to rectify that is to try them out--one at a time, two at a time, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I try. 

I can feel the devil grinding his ugly teeth. His hold on me is lessening; his ropes of indecision and insecurity are loosening. I am almost free of his grimy, slimy bonds, and it feels so good.

So very good.

Until the next time ...

Cynthia T. Toney and her "Bird Face" series!

Today I have Cynthia T. Toney, author of the "Bird Face" series with us today to discuss how she started writing, as well as the first two releases of her series, 8 Notes to a Nobody and 10 Steps to Girlfriend Status.

Cynthia, welcome to Deborah Deetales. It's great to have you here. To start things off, please tell us why and how you started writing. 

Thanks for inviting me, Deborah. I tried different types of writing as an adult—advertising and marketing copy, greeting cards, and nonfiction articles. The writing bug latched onto me with its teeth and wouldn’t let go until it convinced me that I should tell a story.

Did you make a conscious decision to write for teen readers or did it just happen gradually? Tell us something about that.

When I decided to write fiction, it had to be a novel for young people. There was so much I wanted to show pre-teens and teens about how wonderful and powerful God made them. They have the ability to overcome adversity and help shape their own lives. But I knew I couldn’t lecture them. I had use story to entertain while I demonstrated through the characters’ actions how they could react to, work through, and possibly overcome life’s problems.

You have two books out now in the Bird Face series, 8 Notes to a Nobody and 10 Steps to Girlfriend Status. Can you tell us something about each?

In 8 Notes to a Nobody, originally titled Bird Face, shy Wendy discovers that most of her peers have problems, some of them hiding serious ones. The reader sees different characters react differently to similar problems, with very different results. I hope it helps young people understand to think carefully before they make some of the choices they make and to seek help for their problems. The mystery element in this story involves anonymous sticky-note messages and leads to a special relationship for Wendy.  

10 Steps to Girlfriend Status may sound like a teen romance, but there’s much more to it than that. Wendy is now in high school. Two boys are interested in her: David, from the first story, and Sam, the hearing-impaired grandson of Wendy’s surrogate grandmother, Mrs. Villaturo. Her friendships with both boys and the start of an innocent romance show girls that it’s best to get to know boys as people and friends first. At the same time, Wendy discovers that Mrs. Villaturo suffers from Alzheimer’s, and she fights Mrs. V’s son to try to keep him from moving Mrs. V to Alaska. The mystery in the story has to do with a relative of Wendy’s who disappeared in the early ’60s, and the mystery winds up involving two people in Wendy’s life in an unexpected way.

You must have a special place in your heart for teens. Are your books based on personal experience as a teen yourself, or perhaps the experiences of a daughter, niece, or neighbor, or are you just empathetic toward teens in general?

I drew on my own memories of youth, my daughter’s life experiences, and some of the insecurities and struggles I witnessed in the lives of many young people she or I knew. We both were devastated by suicides among her peers, and because of that, I chose to delicately address a teen suicide in book one, 8 Notes to a Nobody.

You have a third one in the series, too, right? Can you tell us a little about that one? Are all three books so far about the same characters?

Wendy remains a constant character because these are her stories now. David, Alice, Jennifer, Gayle, and Sam appear, recede at times, and come back in force. In book three, Wendy gets into some serious trouble at school. Jennifer, who was Wendy’s best friend in book one but receded into the background in book two, becomes a major character again in book three. And of course, there is another mystery.

How many books are planned for the series?

Write Integrity Press has three under contract for now, but I would like to keep writing about Wendy and have her advance in years until she graduates from high school.

Are you available for speaking engagements?

Yes, thank you for asking. There are so many variables regarding that, anyone interested should contact me through my website, cynthiaTtoney.com. (Be sure to include the middle initial T.)

You’re being published by Write Integrity Press. Where can we buy your books?

The first two titles are available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. I’d love for ChristianBook.com to carry them. The more people ask ChristianBook.com for them, the more likely they will carry them, so I’m counting on the public’s demand to assist me. Of course, I’d love for readers to ask their local bookstores, too.

And finally, is there anything you’d like to tell your readers? Any advice? Please tell them why you consider them so valuable and why you devote so much of your life to writing about and for them.

Never give up on your dreams. Believe in yourself even if no other human being seems to. God loves you. And authors like me who write for teens wouldn’t do it if we didn’t care.

Thanks so much for being with us today, Cynthia. Can your readers contact you for answers to questions or information about your books? I’m sure they’d love to visit your website and your other social media sites. Can you give us those addresses?

I love to hear from readers, young and old. I can be reached at any of these:

Website:  http://www.cynthiattoney.com 

Blog:  http://birdfacewendy.wordpress.com

Facebook Author Page:  https://www.facebook.com/birdfacewendy

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7872181.Cynthia_T_Toney

Follow me on Twitter:  @CynthiaTToney
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Cynthia is a former advertising designer, marketing director, and interior decorator who holds a BA in art education with a minor in history. While employed by a large daily newspaper, she rewrote some ad copy without permission and got into trouble for it. At that point, she knew she was destined to become an author.

When she’s not cooking Cajun or Italian food, Cynthia writes historical and contemporary teen fiction containing elements of mystery and romance. Cynthia loves animal-shelter dogs and the friendly South from Georgia to Texas, where she resides with her husband and several canines.