Author: Carol Underhill
Friday Feature: New Release
Today I’m featuring the new release from Anaiah Press, Anchor My Heart, by Sara Beth Williams.
About the Book:
Worship leader Matt Lawson has every blessing in life he could ever ask for—a dream job, a woman he can’t wait to spend the rest of his life with, and his God-given musical talent. In one tragic night, the future he’d so carefully planned out for himself crumbles at his feet. In the aftermath, a debilitating past affliction roars back to life and leaves him reeling in despair, unable to face the reality that he has lost everything he held dear.
Tara Pierce has spent the last five years crushing on everyone else’s man. Now, she’s about to graduate college. It’s time to put past infatuations aside and focus on her career goals. At her sister’s urging, the two come together to brainstorm what could be just the jumpstart Tara needs in her Child Development career. When Matt’s grief causes him to isolate himself from everyone he knows, she refuses to stand idly by and do nothing. She has traversed similar terrain before. No one deserves to travel that road alone.
Unexpected attraction flares as Tara reaches into the sea of Matt’s grief and helps ground him in reality. Warning bells clang within and Matt holds back, but their shared experiences only heighten the magnetism between them. Still, Tara senses he’s not ready to give himself away again. Risking her heart and their friendship, she is forced to put distance between them and let God step in to heal where she can’t.
Excerpt:
Matt stepped through the door behind Tara, with three grocery bags in his hands. The intimacy of being at her place—just the two of them—caused his pulse to race. Nervous energy coursed through his veins. Come on, it’s just Tara. No big deal.
But not once in all the years he’d known her had he ventured inside her apartment. She flipped on the lights to reveal a pint-sized kitchen, and a small front room with one couch and a small flat screen TV. Two bookshelves and a standing lamp flanked the TV.
Has she always lived in such a small space?
Somehow, it suited her with its cozy, simplistic layout.
“Where would you like these?” He lifted his bags.
“In here on the table is fine.” She walked into the kitchen. He followed and set down her groceries.
Her body, in such close proximity, radiated heat as she moved eggs and milk from the bags on the table into the refrigerator.
He emptied a bag of dry goods and stepped forward. “Can I help?”
She nodded and directed him to the upper cabinets.
While she focused on the refrigerated goods, he placed the dry boxed and canned goods up high above the stove. A soft flowered scent wafted through the heated air, teasing his nostrils.
“Would you like a drink?” she offered as he placed the last of the groceries into the cupboard above the fridge.
He brushed against her arm; a rush of electricity passed between them. He stepped back with deliberate nonchalance, and waited for her to remove a pair of mugs from the cupboard.
He scratched his chin. Hmm. First, she’d invited him inside, and now she was inviting him to stay longer?
Not like he had anything else to do. Except return to an empty home and try to find ways to distract himself from his crushing grief.
About the Author:
Sara Beth Williams is a wife, mother of two daughters, and temporary caretaker of a lovable old lady pit and a spunky Pomeranian-Shih Tzu mix. She lives in Northern California. When she’s not held hostage by the keyboard, she enjoys music, teaching, reading and spending time with her family. She is all about connecting with readers! Find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads and Bookbub.
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Where to find Sara Beth Williams
Amazon / Goodreads / Bookbub / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter
Buy Link:
Naming My “Baby” Part 1
I feel like I’m about to give birth. Anticipating the release of The Reluctant Billionaire has been almost as exciting as being pregnant. Not quite the same, but just like becoming a mother, this book is the culmination of time spent carrying the story idea and characters in my head.
Like any mother who is expecting a child, I debated for a long time on what to call my book.
One of the most exciting yet challenging parts about being pregnant was choosing baby names. As a young single adult anticipating I’d have children someday, I had some ideas in my head of what I wanted to name a little girl. And my husband wanted a Patrick, Jr.
When we couldn’t agree, I bought a book of baby names and started going through it. Over the course of my pregnancy, I wrote down names that I liked for boys and another list for girls. As our time got nearer, I’d ask Pat if he liked one of the names. If he said no, I crossed it off. If he said yes, I put it in a “maybe” column.
By the time we delivered our firstborn, we had a solid name decided for both a boy and a girl. After our son was born, we named him Travis. At the time, Randy Travis was a popular country singer, and I had a couple of people ask if we named our baby after him. That hadn’t even been on my radar.
For our next child, we went through the process all over again. But we didn’t agree on a girl’s name. When I went into labor with my daughter, I planned to call her Abigail. Then the doctor who delivered us was named Gail so the name didn’t feel quite right. I knew Pat really wanted to call her Holly, and most of the people we’d talked to about choices liked that name best. So we decided to call her Holly.
The third time around, we had not only Pat’s and my opinions, but our older children were seven and nine and had opinions of their own. I wanted to name a boy Tanner, but the other kids and my husband all liked the name Chad. By the time he was born, I decided I liked the name Chad better, too. So he was named Chad Tanner.
Chad was born on October 24, 2000. A couple of weeks later, the election results were so close that the ballots had to be recounted. The debris from the punches in the ballots were called chads. Dimpled chads, hanging chads, pregnant chads: they were all significant in the vote count. Chad became a popular name overnight.
With all three of my children, the names we chose seemed to fit just right. They grew into the names as their personalities evolved. Now I can’t imagine having named them anything other than Travis, Holly and Chad.
Choosing the title for The Reluctant Billionaire was both as much fun and as difficult as choosing the names for my babies. I knew I wanted Billionaire to be in the title, but there are so many books about billionaires on the market. I needed to know what it was about Liam that set him apart from the other books that I’d read. Once I figured that out, the title came easily to me.
How I named the characters is another story altogether that I’ll share next Thursday here.
Wednesday Pop-Up: Pancakes 2 ways
We ate a lot of pancakes when I was growing up. For many years, we topped them with pure maple syrup processed from our own trees. There was a shanty back in our woods where the sap was boiled down. A few years ago, the shanty was rebuilt, and my sister’s family started making maple syrup again. Four generations have tapped the trees and boiled sap in that woods.
When my kids were growing up, I didn’t make pancakes often but sometimes I made them special. When my nephews spent the weekends at our house playing video games, I made chocolate chip pancakes for them. Those were just regular pancake batter with chocolate chips added. There were a few times when I made blueberry pancakes for my daughter.
Today, pancakes are a treat for me as I seldom cook them for myself. While my favorite way to eat them is with the pure maple syrup that my family makes, I also like to mix it up and make them a couple of different ways.
The following are two ways I like to dress them up.
Cheesy pancakes:
Ingredients:
1 batch pancake batter
1/2 cup shredded cheese
Stir cheese into batter, pour onto griddle to form pancakes. After you flip them, make sure they are completely done before removing. The melted cheese sometimes looks like raw pancake batter and the pancakes take longer than normal to cook.
Topping:
Sour cream
Salsa
Trust me, they are good that way.
Crepe-style pancakes:
Ingredients:
1 batch batter, made into pancakes
Topping:
Raspberry or strawberry jam
Whipped cream
It’s like having dessert for breakfast!
The best way to enjoy pancakes, for me, anyway, is to make them plain and add that pure maple syrup to them. But no matter what way I eat them, pancakes bring back warm memories from my own childhood and the years when my kids were all still at home.
Meet the Author: Sara Beth Williams
Today I’m interviewing Sara Beth Williams, author of the new release, Anchor My Heart. Sara Beth, thank you for joining me today. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am a wife, mother of 2, dog mom of 2. I am from Sacramento, California, born and raised. I love reading, writing, Christian music, graphics creation, coaching and teaching in most any capacity. I currently work as a freelance publicist, and a Montessori teacher’s aide.
What is your book about?
Anchor My Heart tells the story of Matt Lawson and Tara Pierce. Matt has lost everything. In the wake of a life-altering tragedy, anxiety from his childhood rears its ugly head, making it difficult to cope with reality. Tara has walked this road before and refuses to let Matt walk alone. Unexpected attraction flares, but Tara senses Matt’s not ready to give himself away again. Can she risk her heart and their friendship and let God step in to heal where she can’t?
Who was your favorite character to create?
I fell in love with Matt in When Hearts Collide. I fleshed out his back story later on after finishing book one, and had to go back and add in some elements for consistency sake while I worked on book 2 and 3 simultaneously. He’s the strong, silent type, and has a soul-deep love of music. I absolutely love that about him. Music touches me deeply. Though I don’t play professionally, or even past beginner/intermediate stage, Christian music and Christian worship music is how I stay connected to God and has the power to greatly encourage me when I’m going through rough times.
What’s next for you as an author?
I am currently working on a handful of other projects. The one I am pitching to agents is about a pop star who has one summer to pull himself back together or risk ruining his lucrative career—and he’s not about to let his sister’s roommate derail his last chance.
Where to find Sara Beth Williams:
Amazon / Goodreads / Bookbub / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter
Inspirational Author 