For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. Psalm 91:11-12 (NKJ)
Fourteen years ago my first inspirational novel, Scent of Lilacs, was published and readers were taking their first trips to my little town of Hollyhill that is a lot like my town of Lawrenceburg was fifty years ago. It was an exciting time for me with the feeling the sky was the limit. Or shoot, maybe way higher than that, all the way to Jupiter. If you’ve been to Hollyhill and eavesdropped on Jocie and Wes talking, you’ll know why I’m off to Jupiter. 
At the same time I was launching my new writing career after several years of rejections following the first thirteen books I published in the general market, my husband was singing Southern Gospel with the Patriot Quartet. (He still does. You can check them out on their Patriot Qt Facebook page.) For a while the quartet took their songs on the road in a big old purple bus. They traveled around to churches in our local area but they also went on longer trips to other states to present their concerts.
With the bus, the guys and family members like me who went along for the ride shared long hours on the road between concerts. We griped about the bumps in the road, argued over which restaurants were best, couldn’t always agree on restroom stops, and best of all shared a lot of stories. At that time, Jerry Shepherd was the tenor singer in the Patriot Quartet, and did he ever have stories to tell. Several years before he and Darrell started singing together, I’d heard Jerry give his testimony. I’d never forgotten how that testimony had affected me by making me realize that sometimes people have pasts we would never guess.
Jerry and his mother had a difficult relationship. Jerry felt he could never please her and didn’t think she loved him. He got involved with alcohol and drugs as a teen and was often suicidal. After high school he joined the army. This was while the Vietnam War was going on and when he didn’t want to go to college, he knew he would be drafted. He couldn’t handle the program the Army put him into and after another suicide attempt he went AWOL. One thing led to another and at the age of nineteen, he ended up in a Georgia penitentiary after killing a man. That could have been the end for Jerry, but while he had often given up on himself, the Lord had not. Nor had Jerry’s parents. While they were shocked and saddened by what Jerry had done, they didn’t stop loving him and wanting to help him. And they prayed. They never quit praying for Jerry and telling him to pray too.
While we were traveling around to those Gospel concerts, Jerry would share snippets of his story. It seemed impossible to think about the Jerry I knew who loved the Lord and was ready to serve Him however he could was that same Jerry who was sentenced to years in prison for murder. His amazing testimony of how God rescued him from this terrible mess he’d made of his life captured my imagination. I wanted to write his story. I little knew how truly amazing his story was when I first asked him if I could try to write his book. It turned out that he’d always wanted to write his story, but when he tried, he could never get past the opening pages. But now the Lord had put Jerry and me on the same bus and together we found a way to share his story with readers.
Come back Sunday and I’ll tell you more about how I was able to write Jerry’s story. I wasn’t sure I could since I like to make up the stories I write. But this time I was writing truth.
When we first published Angels at the Crossroads, we went with one of the self-publishing companies. The book was expensive and the cover didn’t fit the story. Several years later, I had the cover redesigned and reissued the book with the same company. I still thought it was too expensive for readers. I thought it was too expensive for me to even buy any copies myself. So now I have once more published a slightly edited copy of the story. I just deleted some of those unnecessary words I’d used to write the story and I gave Jerry credit on the cover. After all, it is his story. The price on Amazon is more reasonable at $13.99 for the print copy and $3.99 for the e-book.
A Book Giveaway
To celebrate having copies of the book back on my shelves after years of not having any copies, I’m giving away two copies. All you have to do to be in the drawing for the book is leave a comment on this post. I’ll post about writing the book again on Sunday. Your comment on any posts before the deadline to enter will get you another entry. Deadline to enter is midnight EST February 1, 2019. You have to be eighteen or older to enter. I’ll pick the two winners by random drawing from whatever entries I receive. Contest for a print copy is open to United States and Canada. If an international reader wins, I can send them an e-book.
Does Angels at the Crossroads sound like a book you’d like to read? Do you like the cover and/or the title?