With a Joyful Noise: Birthday Bash!

Today, I'm excited to be a part of my friend's book birthday bash! When I first heard about Faith Blum, her book titles intrigued me (I mean, combine hymns and western and I'm so hooked!). I have since gotten to know this lovely young lady and recommend her books for those who like clean westerns. If you're a writer, keep reading to the end of the post, because I invited Faith to share some of her research gold mines. But first, let's celebrate!!

November 19^th was the third birthday of Faith's debut novel, AMighty Fortress. To celebrate, she has all sorts of fun going on. First, she’s released a newly revised version of A Mighty Fortress. Second, she has most of her published books on sale. Third, she’s releasing the box set of all five of her novels for a special discounted price. And fourth, but not least, she now has the audiobook of her AMF available! Read on for more party fun.

ABOUT THE BOOK

“Stay back!” Joshua ordered. He kept his eyes on the scene below while waving his arm in Ruth's direction. “Get deeper into the woods and stay down low to the ground.”

Joshua hazarded a glance behind him. He could no longer see Ruth and breathed a sigh of relief. In one swift move, he grabbed his rifle and lay flat to the ground. Extending the rifle, he aimed at the shorter man whose gun was pointed at Bradshaw.

Joshua and Ruth Brookings are traveling by stagecoach to finally join their parents in Montana. Attacked by murderous outlaws, the teens barely escape with their lives and must survive in the barren Wyoming and Montana territories and escape the man who's hunting them.

Seven years ago, Jed Stuart ran away from home and joined Tom's gang. Jed is tired of the lawlessness and wants out. The only problem? He is the boss's right-hand man and will never be able to leave. And what's one more stagecoach robbery, anyway?

Can Joshua lean on God's strength to keep himself and his sister alive until they find a town? Will Jed be able to face his anger or will it consume him completely? All three are running--the hunter and hunted. What will happen when they meet?

GIVEAWAY

Faith is offering three prizes!

Grand Prize:

· Audiobook of A Mighty Fortress (MP3 download)—Could be a short delay

· The Solid Rock Notebook

1^st Prize:

· Feather Quill Necklace

2^nd Prize:

· eBook set of Hymns of the West: The Complete Series

a Rafflecopter giveaway

FROM FAITH

Amanda has asked me to share some highlights of my favorite research gold mines. It really varies between each book, but I’ll give a stab at it.

Old West Name Generator

Amanda actually sent this link to me, but I have found it extremely helpful. On the sidebar there are also options for other name generators, so even if you don’t write during the Old West, you could probably find something useful.

Tiki-Toki Timelines

If you need a timeline to keep you story straight, this is a great resource. It’s simple to use, free, and you can color code things, too.

Family Echo Family Trees

When I decided to connect many of my series’ together, I knew I needed to create some family trees so I made sure not to duplicate too many names, that this couple really could have a baby in this year, etc. Family Echo is a great place to create family trees.

The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in the Wild West by Candy Moulton

I got this book just last year, but it has been a wonderful reference for everything Wild West. If the information wasn’t specifically in this book, there was a bibliography at the end of each chapter. Using that bibliography helped me find other books I could use to research pretty much anything I needed.

The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

I can’t believe I was able to write without this book before! The Emotion Thesaurus has been absolutely essential to helping me add better descriptions to my books. I highly recommend getting a paperback copy of this book.

The Cowboy at Work by Faye E. Ward

I haven’t used this one a lot yet, but I got it from the library first and used much of the info I found in there, so I bought it, too. What I have used, was extremely helpful to make my books more accurate, especially since I’ve never personally done any ranch work.

www.Startpage.com

I use this search engine a LOT. It is my go-to search engine for one simple reason, the founders knew security and privacy are important. They use Google search results, but they will not track your IP address, your searches, or target ads to what you searched for. That’s kind of comforting to authors since they don’t really want a government organization to come knocking at the door asking where the bomb is that they are building…

Those are the top seven research tools I can think of at the moment. I’d love to hear about some that you may have found, though, so feel free to share in the comments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Faith Blum started writing at an early age. She started even before she could read! She even thought she could write better than Dr. Seuss. (The picture doesn’t show it well, but there are scribblings on the page of Green Eggs and Ham). Now that she has grown up a little more, she knows she will probably never reach the success of Dr. Seuss, but that doesn’t stop her from trying.

When she isn’t writing, Faith enjoys doing many right-brained activities such as reading, crafting, playing piano, and playing games with her family. One of her dreams is to visit Castle City, Montana, someday to see the ghost town she chose for her characters to live in. She currently lives on a hobby farm with her family in Wisconsin.

There are many ways to connect with Faith online. All of them can be found in one convenient place: http://FaithBlum.com. On her website you can find links to her various social media sites and both of her blogs.

Mega-Sale

Every eBook in the Hymns of the West series is on sale. A Mighty Fortress is permafree, and the other eBooks in the series are $0.99. In addition, the spin-off novella series has a book on sale as well.

Links:

Hymns of the West: The Complete Series

Life and Salvation: Hymns of the West Novellas 1-3

Faith also has the paperbacks on sale if you buy them from Createspace with the discount codes.

A Mighty Fortress

$2.00 off (8.99) with code: MBJB3XSY

Be Thou My Vision