Venturing to Other Worlds

Today I’m excited for you to meet Jennifer Fromke, author of A Familiar Shore. See how stories changed her life then comment below on your own experiences to win a copy of her debut novel.

About four feet up the paneled wall of my dad’s home office, there was a square door, just big enough for a kid to climb through. The door led to an attic space tucked up against a stairway in the 1980s tri-level home. My mother conveniently stored huge bolts of soft fabric in that space, making it the perfect spot to hide out.

I remember rainy days when I carefully selected several books and then made my way down to the office and my little “hole in the wall.” Beneath a bare lightbulb, I spent hours and hours getting lost in Narnia, a girls school in London, and the inside of a mitochondrian. Thanks to C.S. Lewis, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Madeleine L’Engle, among others.

Stories transport. They perform surgery on the psyche. They heal some wounds and they create others. They motivate. Commiserate. Demonstrate, desegregate. Domesticate. Educate. Reverberate. Exaggerate, facilitate, intoxicate, and Captivate. What can I say? I’m addicted.

Except now I have added to my daily dose of reading stories . . . the telling of stories.

It’s not as easy as I expected it to be. But it’s not as difficult either. Basically, writing is just a different ballgame. One I’ve spent hours and hours learning. And one I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours practicing.

If practice makes perfect, then at least I’m on the right path. I’d like to see what hidey-hole somebody finds to read one of my books in one day. The greatest compliment I’ve ever received, as an author, is knowledge that a reader has connected with my story. The idea that something I wrote could take flight and be filled with all the magic I experience when I read, thrills me to the core.

So I keep writing.

Meg Marks is a young lawyer raised off the coast of the Carolinas. An anonymous client hires her to arrange his will, and sends her to meet his estranged family at their lake home in northern Michigan. After a shocking discovery, she finds herself caught between his suspicious family and a deathbed promise her conscience demands that she keep. Will she sacrifice her own dreams for revenge? Or will she seek something more?

Though raised in the Midwest, Jennifer Fromke writes from North Carolina where she lives with her three teenagers and husband of over 20 years. In addition to her debut novel, A Familiar Shore, Jennifer co-authored two Christmas novellas (The Christmas Tree Treasure Hunt, 2012 and Ruby’s Christmas releasing Christmas 2013) and published two short stories. Her favorite sport is laughing with her family and her favorite daily chore is to ensure the candy dish never runs dry.

To get to know Jennifer’s characters better, check out A Familiar Shore released in 2012 and available for purchase at here or here.

Congrats to Tricia Harwell, winner of Laura Jackson’s February 5th giveaway!

As always, thank you for hithering and venturing to another world with me. Please visit again next week for the cover reveal of my debut novel on February 18th (I promise it won’t disappoint.) and a visit from Nicole Deese, author of All for Ana, All She Wanted, and All Who Dream on February 19th.