Interview with Author Terri Tiffany and Giveaway!

Twenty-year-old Bobbi Snow is more at home behind an easel than on the golf green. After all, being a pro golfer was her twin brother’s goal and her father’s obsession. But when Bobbi’s careless accident causes a fire that leaves her brother crippled, she’s determined to dust off her clubs and follow his dream. Playing the hero might be the only way to save her splintering family. Maybe then her father will forgive her. But can she ever forgive herself?




Today, I want to introduce you to a super talented author - Terri Tiffany!

I met Terri online through blogging. If you need some encouragement, hope, or inspiration, make sure to stop by Terri's blog. Her open and honest approach of her writing journey is refreshing. She also has a love for photography. 

Terri is repped by Linda S. Glaz of Hartline Literary Agency.

Terri's debut novel - The Mulligan - was released earlier this month on February 6th. Please welcome Terri, and let's help her celebrate this milestone on her writing journey.

And yep, I don't see any rafflecopters, so we are also doing an old fashioned giveaway.



THE GIVEAWAY - Terri has generously offered to give away a copy of The Mulligan., and I'm throwing in a Starbucks gift card to one lucky winner. To be entered in the drawing, all you have to do is answer Terri's question at the end of the interview. Answer in the comment section. For those who have trouble commenting on Blogger, leave your answer on Terri's Author Facebook Page - and while you stop in, don't forget to "like" her Author Page! The winner of Terri's book and the gift card will be drawn at random next Wednesday, March 4, 2015, at 9pm CDT, by Terri, and will be announced in a post, right here, on Thursday, March 5, 2015.

Let's Chat!

Welcome Terri! I’m so glad you are here today to talk about your debut novel, The Mulligan.

Thank you for having me today. I've never done a blog interview before about my book so I'm excited to share with your readers. 

I'm so honored to be the first blog interview, Terri! So how long have you been writing? Is this your first novel? 

This is not my first novel. I think it's my seventh and I have two more written in the wings. I started writing back in the 90s for publication but stopped after one novel and one rejection. Then I got serious in 2005 and started writing non-fiction with some success. That's when I also wrote my second novel and began learning fiction.

In your own words, tell us a bit about The Mulligan. What is the inspiration behind the novel?

When my husband lost his job in 2007, he attended a golf college to learn a new skill. We were surprised when one lone female attended too with all those men. She intrigued me and I began to wonder about her life and why she'd put herself through such a situation. The Mulligan was born from that inspiration. 

Is there a sequel or series planned?

Not for the Mulligan. I was able to write a prologue which I think neatly gave a good ending. 

They say that there is a bit of each of us in all of our characters. Which character in the book is most like you, and why?

That's so true. Bobbi, the main character, struggles with the same issues I do. Wanting to take our own path and not wait on God to show us his plans for our life.I am also a fixer. I think that comes from my counseling background. When someone has a problem, I want to find a quick way to fix it, not wait and see what God can do. My husband attending golf college is a good example. He needed a new skill and I suggested going there before searching other options. But God used that choice still, like he does all our choices for good or bad. I learned about golf and was able to sell my first book. My husband also has a great hobby but is back working in his original field.

Love that last answer. So now, what do you read for enjoyment?

I read  a lot of women's fiction and mostly contemporary works. Jodi Pecoult, Robin Jones Gunn, Billy Coffey (Love his work!)and a little Stephen King.

I must ask—what is your favorite writing snack or drink?

Funny you ask that. I just bought a new computer and I promised myself I would not eat at the keyboard. I'm not sure how long that commitment will last. But normally I munch on crackers. 

I'm a cracker muncher too. Well, it's been a real fun chat, Terri! Thanks for stopping in!

Thank you so much for having me!

THE GIVEAWAY!

Now, Terri will ask you a question, and she will give away a signed copy of The Mulligan to one lucky commenter –  and don't forget, I'm throwing in a Starbucks gift card.

Take it away Terri…

My main character in The Mulligan is torn between her passion to paint and her love for her brother. Was there ever a career you wished you'd followed but instead chose something else?

Oooh, great question! 

Author Terri Tiffany

You can find Terri at:

Her blog: http://terri-treasures.blogspot.com

On Facebook: 

www.facebook.com/TerriTiffanyAuthor

On twitter @territiffany1

The Mulligan a Novel by Terri Tiffany

Pelican Book Group

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Between you, me and the gatepost,

Loree

Loree Huebner
Writing with one foot in the past...
On Twitter @LoreeHuebner
On Instagram @lunapickles

www.facebook.com/LoreeHuebnerAuthor 

Civil War Guest Post by Eric Huebner

 "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.”

A cursory glance at the map will show the importance of rivers for any Union force invading Tennessee in 1862. The road and rail network was limited and supply lines would necessarily lengthen with any forward advance. The Federals rapidly constructed a fleet of gunboats and transports, but the Rebels just as quickly fortified key positions along the Mississippi River. The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers could also provide protected arteries for invasion into the Deep South, so the Southerners began construction of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson to block those routes.

On February 6, 1862 a force of Union gunboats began a furious shelling of Fort Henry on the Tennessee. The Rebels fought gamely, but the fort was poorly situated. CSA Col. Heiman withdrew his brigades before U. S Grant could bring his ground forces into the fight.

Fort Donelson on the Cumberland proved to be a more difficult objective. Once again, On February 14, the Federals brought up their gunboats, hoping to batter the fort into submission. This time, after closing to within 350 yards of the fort, the gunboats were driven away and with loss. Unaccountably, CSA Brig. General Floyd with some 18,000 troops remained passive in the fort while Grant brought up his 15,000 (later reinforced to over 20,000) men and invested the fort.

Recognizing their error, the Confederates decided to fight their way out. The next morning, the rebel attack was initially successful and the way out was open, but the Southern generals did not take advantage of the opportunity provided by their hard fighting soldiers. Federal resistance was stubborn, notably by the 31^st Illinois under John “Black Jack” Logan. A counter attack spear-headed by the Zouave brigade of Brig. General Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ) sealed the escape route.

Seeing the way blocked, Generals Floyd and Pillow decided to escape on two steamers which they loaded with troops. The rest of the Confederates were to surrender. The facts the 2 highest ranking CSA officers would abandon their comrades, and that nearly all of the escaping troops were Virginians did not sit well with the other Southerners. Nathan Bedford Forrest refused to surrender, so he led his command through an icy backwater and escaped.

When asked by CSA Brig. General Simon Buckner for surrender terms, U. S. Grant replied, "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” When news of the surrender of 12,000 Rebels reached the North, “Unconditional Surrender” Grant became the hero of the land. The South was open to invasion along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. The Confederates were flanked out of Strongholds at Bowling Green, Nashville, and Columbus. Western Tennessee was under Union control.

Unfortunately, and heart-breaking, many of the Confederate prisoners were sent to the notorious prison at Camp Douglas in Chicago. Camp Douglas was one of the worst prisons, period.

GOOBER PEAS

According to Wikipedia ~"Goober Peas" is a folk song mostly known in the Southern United States. It was very popular with the Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, and is still sung frequently in the South to this day.

The words of "Goober Peas" are a pretty accurate description of daily life during the last few years of the Civil War for the Southerners. After being cut off from the rail lines and their farm land, they had little to eat aside from boiled peanuts (or "goober peas") which often served as an emergency ration.

I remember singing this song in elementary school ~ Loree

 GOOBER PEAS

Sitting by the roadside on a summer's day

Chatting with my mess-mates, passing time away

Lying in the shadows underneath the trees

Goodness, how delicious, eating goober peas.

Chorus

Peas, peas, peas, peas

Eating goober peas

Goodness, how delicious,

Eating goober peas.

Verse 2

When a horse-man passes, the soldiers have a rule

To cry out their loudest, “Mister, here’s your mule!"

But another custom, enchanting-er than these

Is wearing out your grinders, eating goober peas.

Chorus

Verse 3

Just before the battle, the General hears a row

He says "The Yanks are coming, I hear their rifles now."

He turns around in wonder, and what d'ya think he sees?

The Tennessee Militia, eating goober peas.

Chorus

Verse 4

I think my song has lasted almost long enough.

The subject's interesting, but the rhymes are mighty tough.

I wish the war was over, so free from rags and fleas

We'd kiss our wives and sweethearts, and gobble goober peas.

Chorus

Tennessee Sunrise near Columbia, Tennessee
Photo by Loree Huebner

Loree Huebner
Writing with one foot in the past...
On Twitter @LoreeHuebner
On Instagram @lunapickles

www.facebook.com/LoreeHuebnerAuthor 

You are loved...

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Samwise the Australian Cattle Dog - wishing you love, and more love.
Photo by Loree Huebner




Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance ... love will last forever!
~ 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 (NLT)

The open rose - Photo by Loree Huebner

Three things will last forever - faith, hope, and love - and the greatest of these is love.

~ 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NLT)

I know that Valentine's Day seems to be promoted more for the romantically linked hearts, but I believe Valentine's Day is for EVERYONE who has love in their heart. I wish EVERYONE a Happy Valentine's Day!

Let your love radiate! 

And know, you are loved...

Between you, me and the gatepost,

Loree

Loree Huebner
Writing with one foot in the past...
On Twitter @LoreeHuebner
On Instagram @lunapickles

www.facebook.com/LoreeHuebnerAuthor 

Angel of the Battlefield...

I want to introduce you to a major player in the Civil War, and in American history. This person was not a Major General, Colonel, President, or even marching soldier. She was a woman who heard military stories and the tragic tales of the casualties of war when she was a young girl. She took all of this knowledge, and with a heart filled with compassion and a will of iron, used her assets to start one of the most enduring institutions still in existence today ~ The American Red Cross.

Clara Barton circa 1866
"The Angel of the Battlefield"

CLARA BARTON was one of America's greatest heroines—a genuine patriot and humanitarian. When she saw pressing needs of those in distress, she gave every bit of her courage and strength to take matters in hand, and see them through.

She was born on Christmas day in 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts, to a farmer, who had been a soldier in his younger days. Her father regaled her with war stories that she would carry deep within her and would inspire her later on in her adult life.

Clara was shy. To overcome her shyness, she started teaching at the young age of 15. At some point, she was requested to teach at a private school. It was during this period that she saw the real need for free education. She helped set up one of the first free public schools in the state of Massachusetts. Eventually, in 1854, she moved to Washington and it became her permanent home. In Washington, she worked in the U.S. Patent Office as a clerk.

In 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, a train loaded with Massachusetts soldiers came to Washington. The regiment had lost all of its supplies when attacked in Baltimore by Confederate sympathizers. The regiment was housed in the unfinished Capitol Building. Clara immediately saw a real need and went to work collecting sheets, handkerchiefs, socks, and anything they could use. She also cooked for the home state regiment.

After the battle of Bull Run in 1861, she heard that there was a terrible shortage of supplies—bandages, blankets, medicine—and set out advertising in local newspapers for donations. The response from the public was overwhelming. She established a supply depot to get the provisions and materials where they were needed quickly. In 1862, she won approval from the government to personally deliver supplies on to the battlefields.

 “In my feeble estimation, General McClellan, with all his laurels, sinks into insignificance beside the true heroine of the age, the angel of the battlefield.”
~Dr. James Dunn, surgeon at Antietam Battlefield.

In September of 1862, Clara Barton arrived at the famous “cornfield” in Sharpsburg, Maryland, not too far from Antietam Creek. How she got there is a story in itself—a true miracle by God. When she arrived, she got a full view of the gruesome side of war during the battle. She watched the fretful army doctors dressing wounds with corn husks or anything else they could find. The army’s medical supply wagon was far behind the quick moving Federal troops, and she gave the grateful surgeons her supply wagon.

Once there, Clara got to work quickly. With artillery shells and bullets flying, she cradled the injured and dying in her arms as she coaxed them to take a sip of water or bandaged their wounds.

As she bent over a wounded man to give him a drink of water, she felt something hit her sleeve. She looked and saw a bullet had pierced the puffy part of the sleeve. Unfortunately, the bullet hit the man she was caring for, and he died shortly thereafter. He died right there in her arms.

"A ball has passed between my body and the right arm which supported him, cutting through his chest from shoulder to shoulder. There was no more to be done for him and I left him to his rest. I have never mended that hole in my sleeve. I wonder if a soldier ever does mend a bullet hole in his coat?"   
~Clara Barton at Antietam

With her dark dress, bonnet, and red bow, she was what we could call a living icon. Her unselfish mercy and compassion for the wounded earned her the title—The Angel of the Battlefield. Her self-appointed duties took her to some of the most horrendous battlefields in the war where she nursed the wounded, wrote letters to home for the men, and listened to their personal stories.

She worked in and out of the field until the end of the war.

In 1865, she started a new project. Clara helped with the effort to identify more than 13,000 unknown dead Union soldiers at the ghastly prisoner-of-war camp in Andersonville, Georgia. Her Civil War duties climaxed when she proposed that a national cemetery be built around the graves of the Union dead there at Andersonville. She helped raise the flag over the grounds at the dedication in 1865.

During a trip to Europe in 1870, she witnessed the conflict between Prussa and France. Once again, she was drawn to the battlefields to help. When she returned to the United States, she was more determined to establish The American Red Cross. The United States government was unenthusiastic about the idea because it could not imagine itself entangled in another brutal Civil War. Finally in 1881, at the age of nearly 60 years old, Clara convinced the government to identify the Red Cross as an aid for natural disasters.

Miss Barton never married. She continued her work in the field well into her seventies. She was the president of the American Red Cross until 1904. She died in 1912 at the age of ninety.

This is just a brief description of her life. In each of these stories, there is the tale of what she endured and fought for—what she won, lost, and battled against—so many depths to the complete story. Clara Barton was a true American heroine.

Who is your favorite real heroine or hero of the past or present?

Between you, me and the gatepost,

Loree Huebner

Loree Huebner
Writing with one foot in the past...
On Twitter @LoreeHuebner
On Instagram @lunapickles

www.facebook.com/LoreeHuebnerAuthor