Laura Zera: Finding The Help To Thrive

Everyone's Story welcomes author and world traveler Laura Zera. When first approaching a prospective guest for this blog I emphasize that what I'm really looking to accomplish it to uplift a viewer's heart and offer hope. Laura achieves this with so much zest that I'm very touched and honored to host her this week and hope that you will be encouraged, whether you too have a relative or friend suffering from mental illness or in one way or another can relate. Laura is also a seasoned traveler. If you enjoy exploring other countries or even if you're the armchair traveler type, please check out her amazing giveaway book of her adventures in West Africa. Both Laura and I look forward to hearing from you.

Book Giveaway:
Laura is offering one e-version copy of her fascinating travelogue, TRO-TROS AND POTHOLES, WEST AFRICA: SOLO to one randomly chosen commenter. The winner will be announced here on Friday, March 28th, between 5-6 PM EST. For convenience, please leave your contact information within your comment. Thanks!

Here's a blurb on Laura's TRO-TROS AND POTHOLES:

Tro-tros and Potholes is truly a reading adventure, with the Internet playing a key role. At what other time in history could an explorer stay in almost instant touch with people all around the world? During four months of traveling in West Africa, Laura Enridge thrilled friends and family back home with her vivid stories, often written in "stinky internet cafés with sticky keyboards." Here, her unedited emails are mingled with more detailed memoirs to form a wonderful collection of human stories, written straight from the heart.



A keen observer, Enridge takes an interest in almost everyone she meets. Her colorful glimpses into daily life in West African cities and villages are captured on every page of this delightful book.

From Survive to Thrive by Laura Zera

It was several months ago when Elaine reached out to me about writing a piece for Everyone’s Story. She had come across my own blog, and realized we share a common history: our mothers both have/had schizophrenia. Elaine’s mother passed away from cancer at the age of 46. My mother is turning 79 this summer, and now has advanced dementia.

Neither Elaine nor I had an easy childhood. There was no secure and nurturing home environment. Rather, I grew up with danger and volatility, day in and day out. My mother’s behavior was confusing and unpredictable, her rage incendiary. It created hyper vigilance and anxiety in me. While other kids in my neighborhood could be precocious and carefree, I functioned to survive.

Survive. Endure. Live through. They’re words commonly used in relation to adversity. They’re marginal words, though. They leave us on the margins of a full and joyful life. And while surviving trauma is a triumph in and of itself, don’t we deserve more?

Thrive. Flourish. Contribute. Those are the words that shone like a lantern for me, even at age 15, when I left home and moved in with my older, and only, sibling. Even at age 23, when I estranged myself from my mother and hid for 17 years, nervous every time I turned down a new aisle in the grocery store. And now, at age 45, when I bring cans of cashews to her in the care home, and she has no recollection of anything, past or present.

I went to an event recently where much of what the speaker said resonated deeply with me. It was United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the stage (her own father battled alcoholism, and died from heart problems when she was nine; we really do all have a story). In talking about how she managed to accomplish all that she has and have such an impressive career, she said, “there’s no such thing as a self-made man,” (or woman).

Sotomayor was saying it in reference to her career—how she learned to study from the best students at school, and sought out mentors as a young lawyer, but it applies to everything. Education, love, family, fulfillment. Alone, we are limited, even self-defeating. With help, the sky’s the limit.

We get what we need, and build what we want to build, with the help of others.

It can come in different packages, this “help” thing. Some find it in their faith; for others, it’s available within their families. For me, it first appeared in the shape of a grandmotherly social worker, assigned to my case file when I was 16 and caught shoplifting. I thought for sure she was going to look at my tight jeans and heavy eyeliner and tell me to clean up my act. Instead, she listened without judgment.

I was forced into getting help, and as life-changing as my experience was, it took some years before I became comfortable asking for it. There were all kinds of things bundled in with that: I didn’t want to be a burden, I felt ashamed, I didn’t think of myself as worthy of the time and attention. My baby steps approach was to return to therapy, because my flawed reasoning told me that at least those people were getting paid to listen to me. Later, I started to lean more on the “volunteers,” the people who liked or loved me freely and without strings or monetary compensation. 

When I finally realized that we’re all in this whole shebang together, that our existence is connected at the level of humanity and beyond, it became easier. Not only was giving help an act for the greater good, so was seeking it! And while shame kept me in survival mode, reaching out allowed me to grow. It also allowed me to forgive my mother, and eventually, to embrace my history. Just like Elaine, I still have my dark times, but that lantern is always shining, reminding me that I’m not in it alone.

You’re not in it alone either! What or who have been the sources of your greatest support over the years?

Laura's Ah-hahs To Tweet:

Everyone has a story: author @LauraZera shares how to thrive with #schizophrenic parent. (Tweet This)

Laura Zera: Do you deserve more than just surviving a trauma? (Tweet This)

Like to read about #Africa? #BookGiveaway of author LauraZera’s Tro-tros and Potholes. (Tweet This)

Author's Bio:

Laura Zera is a freelance writer who has traveled to almost 60 countries and lived and worked in Cameroon, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the United States. She is currently working on her second book, a memoir about being raised by a mother with schizophrenia. Laura’s first book (written as Laura Enridge), 2004’s Tro-tros and Potholes, chronicles her solo adventures through five countries in West Africa. Her work can also be found in the anthology Write for the Fight: A Collection of Seasonal Essays, released in 2012 by Booktrope Publishing.

Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, Laura lives in Seattle, Washington, where she can be found walking her pug, driving her Mini, or attending concerts with her photographer husband Francis Zera.

Places to connect with Laura:

Website

Twitter

Facebook

Amazon

Google Plus

Pinterest

Linkedin

***If you're interested in reading about my (Elaine's) experiences with my mother you can check out Part One, Part Two, and my Testimony.

 And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19 (NIV)

Nicole Quigley: The Importance of YA Christian Fiction

Everyone's Story welcomes Nicole Quigley, whose debut novel, LIKE MOONLIGHT AT LOW TIDE, won the 2013 ACFW Carol Award for the young adult fiction category, two years after winning the 2011 ACFW Genesis Award in the same category for unpublished authors. Talk about an exciting 2 years! What a blessing, Nicole! Congratulations. Yet, what also catches my  attention are the grittier topics that Nicole highlights in her novel and why publishers are now interested in them. Visit with Nicole this week as she shares an excerpt from her novel and answers a few questions. Also, check out her Book Giveaway offer. Nicole and I are looking forward to hearing from you.

Book Giveaway:
Nicole is offering one copy of LIKE MOONLIGHT AT LOW TIDE--no restrictions to international entrants-- to one randomly chosen commenter. The winner will be announced here on Friday, March 21st, between 5-6 PM EST. For convenience, please leave your contact information within your comment. Thanks!


              Excerpt from LIKE MOONLIGHT AT LOW TIDE:

Like Moonlight at Low Tide by Nicole Quigley

ZONDERVAN
Like Moonlight at Low Tide
Copyright © 2012 by Nicole Quigley 

People never ask me the right question when they ask me what happened the beginning of my senior year. They always ask what his last words were. They figure he would have had great ones, the kind that would haunt a girl and echo off of empty lockers long after graduation. They wait breathlessly for me to describe the moment he jumped off the boat and into the glass-topped Gulf, cutting the ribbon of moonlight on the surface with the white of his arms.

“Surely he was trying to kill himself,” they’d say. “Why else would he leap into the water without the hope of rescue?”

And so I tell them what they earnestly hope to hear. How I searched desperately for the bob of his head in the water. How I jumped in myself, swimming fifteen feet until I felt the absence of the boat behind me, the vessel leaning away from the edge of the bay and into the dark, magnetic waters of the deep. They want to hear how hard it was to make my way back to the boat, and how, by then, the storm was beginning to unleash its rage. They want to hear how I scoured the cabinets for a radio and failed. How I searched for a flare gun but found no rescue.

And when I tell them of all of these things, they never ask — and I never mention — that I did all of them in complete silence.

The truth is, he said nothing before he jumped. And I never called his name, not once. I knew that he had plunged into that water so that he could not be found.

When the sheriff pulled his boat next to mine, he spoke the first words I had heard in hours. He lifted me from beneath the captain’s console, where I had waited with my knees tucked under my chin. That was the evening Hurricane Paul swept through our state.

This story is not about suicide. But you should know that when I was seventeen, the only boy who ever called me by my full name took his own life. It was the first time I ever saw a mistake that was permanent, that couldn’t be undone with whiteout or atoned for with an after-school detention. Nothing else I do for the rest of my life will ever be able to change this fact.

This story is actually about three boys. One who loved me. One who couldn’t. And one who didn’t know how.

My name is Melissa Keiser, and I was raised on Anna Maria Island, Florida.

The best description of the place I can provide you is a temperature: eighty degrees. It is not always eighty degrees on the island, but the humidity looming off the white foam of the Gulf of Mexico combined with the faint, sickly sweet emission from the orange juice factory always seems to make the place feel like it’s been wrapped in a warm blanket, just soft enough to make you feel safe or sleepy, but always feel slow if you tried to move too much within its folds. In truth, it is the most beautiful beach town I have ever seen. And then the breeze comes and reality finds you hiding behind a sand dune.

The Anna Maria I’m writing of is not the same island that you would see if you went online and searched the images posted by Yankee tourists and gray-haired Canadians. Those visitors love the island as much as anyone who has never suffered here can. They post pictures of things like starfish and sandcastles and pelicans at sunset. They marvel at the brightly colored flowers that seem to grow from the ditches like weeds, and the waist-high herons, and the restaurants grilling grouper underneath tin-roofed sun decks. This is, after all, a place overflowing with such abundant beauty that its residents actually chased off native, jewel-colored peacocks to the neighboring cities because it deemed them a nuisance. Only an island sure of its place among beach towns could afford to do such a thing without regret.

But pictures of these things don’t show what life was like for me or for the others who walked these streets that year. To the tourists, we are points of curiosity. They wonder what it would be like to raise their children in a place where the speed limit is twenty-five and the town shuts down for the high school football game. And we oblige to tell them and show them how to pick up crabs with their bare hands. This is what happens when you’re surrounded by people who visit for two weeks at a time, intent on happiness, always reminding us of how wonderful the island is compared to where they live, because where they live is lucky to have a city park and a tree that has kept its leaves. But when the conversation ends, we never make it into their pictures.

In the time since I was a child, those tourists have slowly razed the neighborhoods of my youth, house by house, in order to build pink, tall homes in their place that people like my family could never afford to rent. But that was never the point. Now, their new winter domains sit empty six months out of the year, while locals move to the concrete mainland in search of cheaper rent. It is an odd thing, to love these visitors and to depend on them for supper, while at the same time knowing the more who come will mean less room for us.

But I am writing of the island not pictured on Google, the one that still harbors the necessary number of the working class who have found a way to make a home on a seven-mile stretch of paradise without the rich folks noticing.

Questions for Nicole:

Why YA fiction? What lures you to write and read this genre?

YA is super fun to read and write. YA characters are new to their worlds, and inevitably they challenge me to see the “same old” scenes through new eyes. They also tend to feel more intensely than older characters. When you’re young, even boredom can feel so intense that it becomes unbearable. When you combine the two together, you get a fresh perspective with high emotional stakes. That’s what I call a great read.

I write YA because nothing could be more meaningful to me than to connect young adults with the truth of who God is and who He says they are in Him. I try to write for the 17 year-olds who need to know that they’re not alone—the kids who are too smart for hackneyed answers to the problems they’re facing but who are still hungry to find the truth about what their lives could be.

Your 2013 Carol-award-winning novel, LIKE MOONLIGHT AT LOW TIDE revolves around the plot points of bullying and suicide while interwoven with faith. While these subjects are magnets toward my attention, both Christian fiction publishers and readers have stayed away from these plots in the past. Is there a change happening in the Christian market these days? Did you have difficulty initially selling this novel because of these elements? If these topics are your passion, had you once considered putting them aside to write a “more sellable” novel?

I have to smile at this question because it wasn’t long ago that the thought of selling a novel was so far beyond my notion of reality that it never would have occurred to me to write in order to be “sellable.” I wrote Like Moonlight at Low Tide because I couldn’t not write it. It had to come out.

I start every writing session with prayer, and I ask God to help me be obedient to tell the story He wants me to tell. I know that there are times I’m not going to get it right. I just place it in His hands. While it might be smarter for me to start by thinking about making the WIP “sellable,” my process starts with the story, or a scene, and a feeling I can’t shake about it. I don’t feel like I create story ideas. I feel like I take dictation.

I think the reason Christian publishers are willing to take more risks in the range of works they publish now is because of the great titles that have come before us and opened up the shelf space, built audiences, and really created a marketplace for Christian storytelling.

If you look at the roster of titles from Zondervan (Blink), as well as other great publishers, like David C. Cook and WaterBrook Multnomah, you’ll find titles books that go way off the map. They’re publishing works that go very deep, are very relatable, and still offer tremendous hope.

You have a strong public relations background. What were the pluses and minuses when it came to writing fiction?

My PR work has taught me about the mechanics of building a story, and about the tough love process of being edited. I also learned how to face rejection. Sometimes the story doesn’t work. You shake it off, and you build the next one. The rule is always the same at the end of the day: keep pitching. The reward of seeing a story come to life is worth all the hard work. It’s a thrill that never gets old.  

Would you like to share what you’re currently working on?

Thank you for asking! I have a new manuscript in the works, but I’m not ready to discuss it just yet.  

Nicole's Ah-hahs To Tweet:

Nicole Quigley on Everyone’s Story: why writing YA fiction for the Christian market is important. (Tweet This)

Meet #ACFW Carol-Award-winning author, Nicole Quigley. #BookGiveaway (Tweet This)

Everyone’s Story: why Nicole Quigley thinks there’s a change brewing in Christian fiction publishers. (Tweet This)

Author's Bio:

Nicole Quigley is the author of Like Moonlight at Low Tide, which won the American Christian Fiction Writers 2013 "Carol Award" for best young adult fiction, as well as the ACFW's "Genesis Contest." For more than a decade, Nicole worked as a public relations adviser in Washington, D.C. She holds a B.S. from Appalachian State University, where she majored in Communications and Public Relations and minored in English. Nicole resides on Florida's Gulf Coast.

Places to connect with Nicole:

Website

Twitter

Facebook

Pinterest

GoodReads

  

Lisa Belcastro: When Life Happens

Everyone's Story welcomes the sweet Lisa Belcastro. What does a reader, who is searching for a dreamy read to whisk her or him away from today's worries, find? Novels by Lisa Belcastro! Lisa is one of the loveliest, strongest, and most incredible women I know: she pens beautiful stories, stands strong during difficult times, and runs marathons in every US state. And what's her secret source of stamina? Lisa shares her secret below, as well as offers two of her novels as a special giveaway package. Plus, check out her excerpt. Both Lisa and I look forward to your comments.

Book Giveaway:
Lisa is offering both SHENANDOAH NIGHTS and SHENANDOAH CROSSING, Books 1 and 2 of the WINDS OF CHANGE series (great reads!) to one randomly chosen commenter. The winner will be announced here on Friday, March 14th, between 5-6 PM EST. For convenience, please leave your contact information within your comment. Thanks!

SHENANDOAH NIGHTS by Lisa Belcastro

Rebecca turned to face the captain. “Ready. How do I look?”

When she heard his sharp intake of breath, her fears evaporated like drops of water on hot pavement in the summer sun. His eyes roamed over her body. She fought the impulse to cover herself. She suddenly felt naked under two hundred pounds of cloth. She raised her head and met his gaze. Her heart plunged to her stomach. He was devouring her with his eyes.

“The dress does not do you justice, Mrs. O’Neill.”

“Mrs. Reed,” Rebecca corrected, hoping desperately to divert his attention from the dress.

“I stand corrected Mrs. Reed. Now turn about so I may fasten the laces.”

Rebecca felt Ben’s hands moving up her spine, his knuckles resting on her back as he stretched and pulled the laces together. Why in blazes does the barest touch, through cloth nonetheless, send my heart racing?

Rebecca lost all focus when Ben’s fingers reached the top of the dress and brushed across the base of her neck. Before she had time to recover, Ben drew his thumb over her skin along the edge of the dress. She struggled to catch her breath.

“Relax, Mrs. Reed.” His words caressed her skin as he spoke. “Lift your hair so I may tie these off.”

He is torturing me and surely knows. If I live through this day, I’m going to kill him. Rebecca’s silent vow brought a small amount of satisfaction.

Ben spent an eternity tying the bow, and then lazily, ever so softly, dragged a finger up her neck to the base of her hairline. Rebecca sucked in her breath and dropped her hair. She thought she heard him stifle a chuckle. He leaned closer and whispered, “You have beautiful hair. I can’t get the smell of it out of my mind.”

As he eased back, he ran his fingers through her hair and turned her around to face him. Rebecca was certain every emotion she felt would be reflected in her eyes.

“Ben?” she asked softly.

He grazed his thumb over her cheek, never taking his eyes off of hers. There was such tenderness in his touch. Rebecca wanted. She didn’t know what she wanted. Something. Something to. To what? She felt Ben take her left hand, running his fingers over hers and turning her grandmother’s ring around her finger. She thought of her parents and her grandparents, how happy their marriages had been, and she wondered for just a moment if she could be as happy with Ben. Her eyes misted over and she reached up with her right hand to brush away a tear. Ben practically threw her hand from his.

“I’m sorry,” he said while moving away from her. “I did not think.”

Rebecca had no clue what he was talking about, but she felt the chill whip through the cabin as Ben changed once again into her warden/captain. She held back the sobs pressing to be released. She searched his eyes and saw remorse and, maybe, shame. What had happened?

Why I Seek God’s Will by Lisa Belcastro

Have you ever had a great idea for a book, started the story, and then had life interrupt your progress? I mean the kind of interruption that stops you in your tracks, knocks you off your feet, and makes you want to hide under the covers for the rest of your life?  Me, too!

A few years ago, I had signed my first book contract with OakTara Publishing. They bought one book, Shenandoah Nights, and asked if I could write a couple more to have a trilogy. Like most aspiring writers, I’d agreed wholeheartedly and set out to complete the task.  I was on chapter four of book two, going along with my life, thinking I had everything fairly under control, when I found myself on my knees at the foot of the cross.

My past, the pain from childhood, and the many poor decisions I’d made since then all merged to crush me at the same time. My pastor suggested I go away on a spiritual retreat. Go away? I didn’t have time to go away! I had children to care for, bills to pay, school and church activities I’d volunteered for, and a couple of books to write. I couldn’t afford to take time for myself.

After a week of tears, screams, and agony, I signed up for a two-night, three-day silent retreat. Driving to the Get Your Life Together Center, I listened to a CD my brother had given me weeks earlier.  Even though my brother hadn’t told me, I knew that I wasn’t going to like what was on the CD.

Sure enough, my estranged father’s voice boomed out over the speakers. The recording had been done while he was speaking at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Minutes before he had a heart attack. Seconds before he died.

I listened to all thirty-two minutes and forty-six seconds of his talk about his life. I didn’t hear him fall on stage. I didn’t hear anyone call 911. I didn’t hear the words I longed for and so needed to hear. When I parked my car at the retreat center, I was soaked in tears.

I felt a strong nudge to write down my thoughts. After checking into my room, I grabbed a pen and notebook, and headed out to the waterfall garden. Sitting in the sun, water rolling gentling over rocks, flowers blooming all around me, I wrote the words that were constricting my heart:

“I cannot tell you the moment my father took his last breath. I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that my father did not utter a breath about me. No memory. No regret. No apology. If you had heard him speak that night, or if you listened to the recording, you would not know he had a daughter.  You wouldn’t know I existed. I was not worth mentioning. In my father’s half-hour speech, he confirmed what I had believed for the last thirty-three years: I am nothing. Not worth mentioning. Worthless.”

Forty-eight hours later, I left the retreat with dozens of pages written. Another “nudge” told me to keep writing and put what I learned into a book. I heard that voice nudging me for weeks. I did my best to ignore it. After all, I write romance novels. I had no desire, absolutely none, to write about my past. I’d buried it for a reason, thank you very much!

I went back to work on book two, Shenandoah Crossings. Only one problem, I couldn’t think of anything to write. My story was stuck on chapter four. No matter how much I pleaded with God to give me the words to tell a good story for Him, nothing came . . . except the voice telling me to write my life story. I hated that voice!

After a month of getting nowhere on Shenandoah Crossings, I gave up. I went back to that notebook from the retreat, and delved into my past. I journaled every thought, feeling and experience.  For six months, I revisited every nook, cranny and corner of my past. I invested another six months writing So Long, Someday: An Abandoned Daughter’s Journey to Healing.

I won’t tell you it was easy, but I will tell you it was the most rewarding year of my life. There are still bumps along the road of life, but I know whose I am now. I know without a doubt that I am a loved and cherished child of God, a daughter of the King, a princess nonetheless. With this knowledge filling my heart, I completed Crossings and the third book in the trilogy. The first two books in the Winds of Change trilogy were released last year. Shenandoah Dreams is scheduled to hit bookstores this summer. 

As for So Long, Someday, I entered the manuscript in Thomas Nelson’s Women of Faith novel contest last year. Out of five hundred entrants, I finished in the top ten. I’ve got one more edit to go through, and then I’ll spend time in prayer deciding if and who to submit the finalized copy to.

As a writer and a believer, I learned a valuable lesson throughout the process of drafting So Long, Someday: before I can write any story, I must first seek God’s will for my life and then try to follow it to the best of my ability.

Can anyone else relate?

Lisa's Ah-hahs To Tweet:

Author Lisa Belcastro on Everyone’s Story: what happens when life gets in the way with writing? (Tweet This)

Lisa Belcastro, author of historical romance with a touch of time travel, shares uplifting words. (Tweet This)

Stories that will whisk you away: Lisa Belcastro’s #BookGiveaway of #ChristianRomance (Tweet This)

Author's Bio:

Lisa Belcastro lives with her family on Martha’s Vineyard.  She loves chocolate, reading, writing, running, working in her gardens, including weeding, and almost all outdoor activities -- as long as the temperature is above sixty degrees! Being on or near the water is pure joy for Lisa.

When she’s not at her desk working on her next novel or writing the cuisine column for Vineyard Style Magazine, Lisa is volunteering at her daughter’s school, serving in her church community, gardening, trying to run a marathon a month, or walking the beach with her husband looking for sea glass.

Places to connect with Lisa:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Amazon