RELEASE DAY - Announcing The Life and Death of Terry Dodd!

Today's the day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and The Life and Death of Terry Dodd is at last available for purchase on the Amazon Kindle Store!

Click here to claim your copy at the special release price of $.99!

Today, I'm also so honored to be featured on Author Spotlight, by Kimberly Afe.

 I am very excited to be able to share this story with you and I am so very honored to have you here today! So many people have helped in so many ways, I cannot even begin to fathom their kindness. Without them, this day might never have come!

First of all, my family, for forever putting up with me and encouraging me.

Kelsey Kline, Christa Upton, Andrea Wiesner, Alyssa Tanner, Rachel Hauch, Jenny Shaw, Kimberly Afe, my dear friend Laura Brown, and the countless other writers who have taught me and inspired me.

Thank you all so much! You don't know what you  mean to me!

And now for the final winner of our giveaway contest receiving a copy of The Life and Death of Terry Dodd:

Surprise-surprise! 

I know I didn't warn you about this ahead of time, 

but I decided to choose two winners for this final giveaway.

Tracey T.
&
Leah B.

Congratulations!

I'll be sending your prizes out shortly!
I really enjoyed reading all your entry answers, so inspiring.

Thank you, everyone, who entered and has joined me in this launch week!
I am so grateful for all your love and support.

A little about my writing story:
I began writing as a twelve-year-old in an old notebook my grandma gave me, inspired by Jo March and my favorite girlhood author, Lois Walfrid Johnson. I never finished anything except poems, a short story about a girl in a silver jacket, and a rather worthless, meaningless mystery about a horse camp. Not until I discovered One Year Adventure Novel and National Novel Writing Month did noveling really start to pop! I have now finished a book every year since I graduated from high school. You probably won't ever see half of them, but they all taught me one valuable lesson: how NOT to write a novel.

My inspiration for the story:
One day in 2013 while I was babysitting, carrying a chunk of a six month old baby boy on my hip, I turned on the tv, flipped over to TCM and caught a movie—California, a lone man in white t-shirt and blue jeans, who looked an awful lot like Clint Eastwood, walking across a sandy yard to a white house. I'll never remember which movie it was because my mind was a million miles away and stuck in the 70s.

The Terry Dodd story is the closest story to my heart thus far. Not only because I poured so much of what I love into it, it's because the very theme it is based upon is one very dear to me. In a culture filled with so much racial and social prejudice, I believe it is more important than ever to look past the obvious into the deeper regions of each individual, into their very soul, to accept a person based not on their skin or how much money they make in a year, but by who they are inside. People are so much bigger than just what we see on the surface, and because of that it is so important to love and to care, not just for the Terry Dodd's, but everyone. Because if you look closely, the one most important thing we can do as human beings is to love one another.


Thank you for taking part in my special day. Please check out my new website, www.kmupdike.wordpress.com, and join my mailing list to receive the first chapter of The Life and Death of Terry Dodd.

The Life and Death of Terry Dodd is available on the Amazon Kindle Store, and will be available in book form very soon.