Featuring Authors #9 + GIVEAWAY

Featuring_authors

Hi everyone!

Today is the ninth day of my new weekly series! In this series I feature authors!

To see the other authors I featured click here! To be featured contact me here!!

Today I’m going to feature Beth Durkee an author that has written The Last Day of Avalon, The Bleeding Love, The Disposable Noble Wife, Memory of Miracles and many many more!! In this post there will be a bio about the author and about one of her books, a giveaway and an interview!

About beth Durkee:

Beth Durkee lives in the United States. A Reader’s Favorite Award winner, she holds a BS degree in Liberal Arts from Carroll University and has been imagining stories for as long as she can remember. In her spare time, she enjoys long talks with family and friends, travel and DIY projects. Find her titles listed at major online retailers and on her website at www.bethdurkee.me.

Memory of Miracles

About the book Memory of Miracles:

Memory of Miracles is an inspirational story of faith, healing and miracles that was recounts amazing events in the author’s own life. It was written with the intent to strengthen the faith of those in need of encouragement and can be downloaded in English, Italian and Spanish.

The plot: An inspirational story of faith, healing and miracles.
When I was a child, I would sit in the church captivated by the calming resonation of chanted prayers. It provided a great sense of comfort to me—like leafing through a well-read leather-bound book. This was the first inkling I had of the place where my heart belonged—the Catholic Church.

As the years passed, no one would have known that my bright childhood would take a turn towards a seemingly dark and isolated future.

There were many times when I skirted death—birthing complications and multiple emergency surgeries stemming from malformed blood vessels in my brain. What had saved me at these moments, were miraculous chance happenings that came at times when I prayed the hardest for them.

I lost a great many things—my balance, my gift for math and sciences, my visual clarity and my short term memory. It was a heavy burden that I still carry today. Even so, I knew that it was not the end… God must have had other plans for me. I was still here and there was a child that counted on me. I attained a Bachelor’s degree in a prestigious Wisconsin university and found myself anew. If there is one thing I believe with conviction, it is that everything happens for a reason and that He has a plan for each and every one of us.

Allow me to recount the memory of these miracles with you.

Goodreads | Amazon

Interview

Arvenig: Tell us a little about yourself and your background!
Beth: I am a middle-aged mother of two adult children. My children live very far away from me but call to talk to me pretty regularly. I am also a university graduate who minored in Communications. I chose to stay home to raise my children rather than go into the workforce. Until a few years ago, I led a very full life (and loved it) in central Texas but now I contentedly reside in a quite town in the northeastern reaches of Wisconsin. A creature of routine, I eat lunch at the same restaurant almost every day. The servers and management love to hear my personal stories, and a few of them enjoy talking to me about my writing. One of my life goals is to someday travel to Italy, where my great-grandfather was born, and I am currently beginning to learn Italian to that end. Learning a language at my age is challenging, to say the least, but I have already learned how to say I want to eat lunch, so I have learned one of the two most important things. (The other is “Where is the bathroom?”)

[THAT’S SO AWESOME, I wish you good luck in learning italian, it’s difficult, but the basics are simple, even if the pronunciation is weird for people who speak english.]

A: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
B: I began writing my first book when I was about 13 years old. I spent months handwriting a few thousand words into a notebook that I carried with me everywhere. Then I stopped writing for no reason. Thank goodness because the story was awful! It was not until my mid-thirties that I began writing anew. Now it is what I do with my time when I am not distracted by other things.

A: Is there a message in your story that you want readers to grasp?
B: Memory of Miracles is a personal story with a clear message. I am not a very religious person, but this story and its soon-to-be-released sequel show how really present God is in our everyday lives. The message of this story is that we may not always be aware of Him in our lives but He is aware of us, He is present and He listens when we pray. The story is intended to be inspirational and I believe it succeeds. Two of my three beta readers report they were brought to tears at its end and I received a personal email from a nun who thanked me for sharing my story.

A: What are you working on at the moment?
B: Right now, I am working on marketing the sequel to Memory of Miracles. It is a very short piece titled Memory of Romance that is due to release on September 13th. As for writing, I am currently working under my pen name for Young Adult Fantasy stories, Efran Myles. The story is about two druid youths who have left Avalon to join the ranks of Caledonia’s dragon lords. It is the sequel to The Last Day in my “Of Avalon” series, which is itself a prequel series to The Legend of Lord Randall Cas series. In other words, it is the second eBook in series one of a two-series suite of books that I am writing. It is a massive project but I think readers will really enjoy the storyline when it is complete.