Hello, Mission 51 family!

It has been three quick months since you pushed Mission 51 into the top three of the Nerdist Sci-Fi Contest on Inkshares, guaranteeing its publication. I have taken this time to continue polishing the story before turning in the manuscript to the Inkshares editing gods. I have now come to realize that I might never be satisfied. I might always want to change this, delete that, embellish and refine, cut and paste, drag and drop, etc., etc., etc.

I had given myself this three-month limit for final polishing, and my time is up. Overall, I am happy with the story, so I am going to hand it in by the end of the week and get in line for the real editorial work. I fully anticipate making further changes as I work with Inkshares’ developmental editing team. I can’t tell you how exciting it is to be starting the process.

Along with the manuscript, I am to hand in my responses to an extensive questionnaire that will direct the Inkshares team on how to best approach my story, create a stunning book cover, and develop a successful marketing plan. It will be a long process, and I look forward to the hard work of putting it all together. I will keep you updated with progress reports from time to time.

Again, I want to thank you very much for this tremendous opportunity. It is only through your kind and generous support that Mission 51 will come into existence. I will never forget what you all have done for me!

Before I go, let me recommend four books that are currently in Inkshares contests, written by authors I greatly admire. They would certainly love your crowdfunding support. Please check them out!

In the prestigious Launch Pad Contest:

Susan K. Hamilton’s The Devil You Don’t https://www.inkshares.com/books/the-devil-you-don-t

TCC Edwards’ Far Flung.     https://www.inkshares.com/books/far-flung

In the Inkshares 2017 Horror Contest:

André Brun’s Arcadia.     https://www.inkshares.com/books/arcadia

M. Robert Randolph’s The Dark Mountain https://www.inkshares.com/books/wings-of-the-crallow

Thanks again! Peace and love to all!

~Ferd

Hello, readers and friends of "Nowhere Else I Want to Be":

Happy Fall, everyone! I thought you’d like to know that the September issue of A&U Magazine has a lovely article about Miriam’s House, my book and me - "A Calling and More" - by Tammy Banks.

Read the first few paragraphs below, then click on the link to read the rest of the article.

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For Carol Marsh, starting Miriam’s House was something that she felt called upon to do. “It felt like coming home,” she recalls, “and I think that is the hallmark of a calling.”

Marsh founded the Washington, D.C., residence for homeless women with HIV/AIDS in 1996. But in many ways, she had been moving toward this kind of work since her teen years, when she’d read Catherine Marshall’s Christy. The 1967 bestselling novel about a young school teacher doing her damnedest to bring education to children in Appalachia had fired Marsh’s imagination: She’d seen herself as being “a benevolent helper of others” and making sense of all “the cruelty and inequity” in the world. There’d been comfort in “dreaming of a life of service in which I would make things perfect for some small village or group of children. For that they would, of course, love and appreciate me.”

But the path to our true callings is seldom a straight one. We take wrong turns, get waylaid, or lose sight of where we’re headed. “I lost that vision for a while,” Marsh admits. “I moved to Washington, D. C., at thirty-five, and that’s when I reconnected with a passion that had been mine as a teenager.”

She threw herself into the work of bringing her vision of Miriam’s House to life. “We didn’t want to create a cookie-cutter program that forced women to comply or leave,” Marsh writes in her memoir Nowhere Else I Want to Be (Inkshares 2016), “so we opted for an open-to-the-possibilities, organic kind of growth that, while it achieved its goal of allowing residents to help shape this new program, also left us in chaos much of the time.” She started out “with a few rules about sobriety and violence and being able to live cooperatively in community” but soon realized that she needed to go beyond that.

For the disease was, she saw, only part of the story that each woman brought with her. The other part of the story—call it the back story or the subtext—was even more disturbing. (At Goucher College, she was, Marsh explains, encouraged to dig deeper and go “underneath the stories.”) Juanita, for instance, had begun shooting up at fourteen in an attempt to escape from a reality that included savage beatings by her own mother. Alyssa had been pimped out by a drug-addicted mother when she was twelve; despite that, she still loved and kept reaching out to the parent who never came to see her during her time at Miriam’s House.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE

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Have a great day!

Carol

WEBSITE          FORUM for GROWTH in SERVICE          

TERRIFYING! 

And humbling.

Sitting in 3rd place in the Horror Contest…

When a very talented and accomplished author JUMP SCARES in at the top of the list.

With 109 READERS!

Under the bed I go.

But we all know the monster will find you there.

Shivering in fear awaiting my doom…I unexpectedly feel humbled…and appreciative.

The pressure is off. The contest is lost. I accept my fate.

And am sorry for any dick moves made in my over-zealous attempts to gain more followers.

The monster was me.

Thank you all so much for your support and for that lesson.

Intended or not, Dr. Karl appreciates the results. 

~Dean

ps: Dr. Karl is the protag in Murder Happens

Good morning friends,

First of all I want to say thank you. Without you guys we would not still be in first place in this contest.

PodCastersUnite are raising money for the relief from Hurricane Irma for the American Red Cross.

For all pre orders after September 11th , I will donate 2$ pre pre-orders to PodCastersUnite campaign this will last until September 30th.

Here is a little preview of the next story titled : Carolina.

Carolina Hempsey,                                                    Murdered                                                                          Age : 22                                                                 April 28th  2016   and May 1st 2016                                     Washington Heights, New York                                                                                                                           After she tries to call off the engagement, her fiance believe she was possessed. He locked her in a room, starved her and beat her for 14 days. After she died, they tried to resurrect her for 3 days.                                    

We still need your help , please pre order a copy here, and share the word with your friends.

once again thank you for your amazing support.

next update by the end of the week