Okay, I managed to do my first posting for 2017 the last day in January! My goal to update my blog on a regular basis is still intact. The RELEASE DATE for the first book in my new STILLWATERS SERIES, titled SOMEONE LIKE ME, will be sometime in March, 2017.
The series follows the lives of three sisters, ordinary women who experience extraordinary events that changes their lives. Here's a sample:
PROLOGUE
Tears
trickled down Melanie Taylor’s cheeks as she recalled the judge’s declaration.
“Frank
Taylor, Jr., I hereby sentence you to 15 years in the state penitentiary.”
That
meant that her oldest child would be thirty-five years old if he served the
time without parole.
“What
was Frankie thinking when he robbed that store?” Her question wasn’t directed to anyone in the
car in particular, but her mother thought that she might have the answer.
“It
was them drugs that caused that boy to do that,” Faith Carson declared.
That
truth only sharpened the pain that already shrouded Melanie in misery. Her child was a crack addict. He had been high when he committed the crime. Her older sister, Wanda, didn’t make her feel
any better.
“That
boy’s just like his Daddy. He never did
listen to a thing nobody had to tell him.
Look where that got him.”
Melanie
rolled her eyes at her. She suspected
that the only reason Wanda had volunteered to drive her home from the
courthouse was to gloat over Melanie’s failure as a mother. Of course, Wanda couldn’t be voted Mother of
the Year. Her two sons were in and out
of jail constantly and her daughter was on drugs. Melanie’s younger sister, Jolene, hadn’t fared
much better as a parent either with her three boys. She hadn’t even raised them.
Just
like their mother, each of the sisters had been teenage mothers. Between the
three of them they had a total of ten children with Melanie being the only one
who had married the father of her children. But that decision turned out to be a
disaster.
Giving
a plaintive sigh, Melanie looked out the window at the passing scenery, seeing
nothing. This was not the life that she
wanted for herself and her children. How
had things gone so wrong?
She
couldn’t remember when she wasn’t struggling financially. For most of her life, public assistance had
been her main source of income, supplemented now and then by minimum wage jobs
that kept her living from hand to mouth.
Her childhood dreams and ambitions had faded long ago.
Following
in the footsteps of the other women in their family, Melanie’s oldest daughter,
Layla, had two kids by the age of seventeen.
Her younger son, Paul, was a high school dropout and spent his days
hanging out on the streets. Melanie
feared what would happen to her youngest child, Myra.
“Will
we ever see Frankie again?” The nine
year old asked, looking up at her mother with fear filled eyes.
Melanie
tried to muster a smile. “Yes, we
will. We’ll go visit him whenever we
can.”
She
knew that she sounded more confident than she felt. The prison where her son would be sent was
hundreds of miles away. Getting there
wouldn’t be easy. Her old car was always
in the shop, and money for the round trip bus ticket wasn’t readily available.
Lord,
she was tired of this day to day fight for survival. She was weary of sacrificing her children to
despair. Things had to change, if not
for her then for the child sitting beside her.
Myra
was her only hope that one of her children might make it out of the cycle of
poverty that had weighed her family down for
so long. Her baby girl was smart. She was a straight A student, and according
to her teachers, she had a bright future.
Yet, what chance did she have with a mother who hadn’t even graduated
from high school?
At
that moment Melanie Taylor made a life altering decision. She swore to herself and on the life of her
youngest child that a change was going to be made.
