SUZANNE (SUMI) FYHRIE PARROTT
Author, Speaker, Graphic Designer/Illustrator, Writing Consultant, Publisher | Website |
Suzanne Fyhrie Parrott: (nonfiction) Ebook Formatting Guide | The Lost Sigil eBook Formatting Guide | Author SEO
Suzanne Parrott: (fiction) The Bully of Burke | Nellie Stockbridge Mystery (WT) | Tyler Frost and the Sleeping Giant | The Shadows of Icarus
Sumi Fyhrie: Pandas on Parade | Billy Beetle Bug and his Beetle Bug Board | Where is Bear? Let’s Play Hide and Seek | Two Ghostly Tails | The Mysterious Flyer | Lisa Ladybugs Garden | Selma of the Wood | Rune of Panutoo | The Treasure Castle | The Seller of Dreams
Suzanne is the author of the bestselling books the Ebook Formatting and Publishing Guide and The Lost Sigil Ebook Guide. Her guides, which include step-by-step written and corresponding video tutorials were created to help the self-publishing author understand the process of moving from raw manuscript to a finished printed and published work. She has presented self-publishing workshops and speaking engagements for such groups as Road Scholar, Oceana Family Literacy Center, Oregon Coast Learning Institute, Florence Festival of Books, and Willamette Coastal Writers Group.
Parrott currently lives on the Oregon Coast.
LIZZY ARMENTROUT
Author | Website
Shelly Gale Mystery Series: Vengeful Spirit | Covetous Spirit
Lizzy calls the Piedmont area of North Carolina home, where she teaches eighth-grade math in her local middle school. She is also actively involved in her local church where she teaches a ladies’ class, is the church pianist, sings specials, and is part of the church choir.
She loves any opportunity to share how God has changed her life with peace and joy. Armentrout is currently writing the third and final book in the Shelly Gale trilogy.
ALLEN BALLARD
Author, Editor | Website
Keep on Moving | Carried by Six | Where I’m Bound
Allen Ballard is a native of Philadelphia and a proud graduate of its Central High School. He holds degrees from Kenyon College and Harvard University and spent most of his career teaching at the City College of New York and SUNY-Albany.
He’s the prize-winning author of two novels and four works of non-fiction. His Civil War novel, Where I’m Bound was a 2001 Washington Post, Notable Book of the Year.
Ballard presently lives in Clifton Park, New York where, at age 88, from early spring to late fall, he tries not to let a day go by without at least a good thirty minute ride on his adult trike!
LESLIE COMPTON
Author, Speaker, Instructor | Website
Dearest Minnie | That’s Just the Way Life Is . . . | The Forgotten Artist
Leslie Compton is a retired professional musician, music teacher, elementary teacher and childbirth educator and has taught several courses on memoir writing. She is a writer of non-fiction, collecting historic postcards and doing research. While researching the Great White Fleet Compton wrote an article for the Post Card Collector. In her spare time she enjoys fabric-art and quilting as well as attending classes at SOU through OLLI in Southern Oregon. Compton is currently working on my fourth book, living in Talent, Oregon.
MICHAEL DAULT
Author
Sons of Summer
Michael Dault
DANIEL DeNAPOLI
Author
The Bronx Kid
Daniel DeNapoli
M.F. ERLER
Author | Website
The Peaks Saga (7 book series) | The Journeys Saga: Voices in the Past
M.F. Erler has been writing since she was about 14 years old. In fact, some of the initial ideas and characters for “The Peaks at the Edge of the World” were conceived when she was in high school.
Erler and her husband, Paul, have two adult children and make their home in Northwest Montana.
MARK GENGLER
Author
Noah Thorne | Thanks A Lot, God! | Wolf Creek Cider: The Story of Aaron Stroud | MIGRANT!: The Story of Danny Broome | Marshfield 1919: The Story of Wayne Schooley
Mark Gengler
Samantha Lady
Author
Deer Falls
Samantha Lady
EDWARD LEWIS HENRY
Author
Temple Buck Quartet (book series): Backbone of the World | Free Men | Shinin’ Times | Glory Days Gone Under
Other Titles: Poredevil’s Beaver Tales
Edward Lewis Henry
JONI JESME
Author | Website | Joni Jesme.com
OMG! I’m Having a White Chair Day
Joni Jesme is a mom, writer, and creative soul with wet feet, dirty hands, working on her 4th cup of coffee and continuously learning new things. She is employed in the creative world of marketing.
When sharing her first White Chair Day episode, she was surprised by the sharing of stories from others with their own similar, unique and humorous WCD moments. She gathered these moments to share in White Chair Days, the first collection of stories in a series.
Jesme lives in Minnesota and is working on a series of children’s books with her sons, Aaron and Evan. A gardening and water loving gal, you can find her wandering the woods with her side kick, a Labrador named Miss Nala.
EM JOHNSON
Author
Division 53 Novel (book series): The Dark | The Haven | The Hunt
EM Johnson
DIANA (WEINBERGER) KILPATRICK
Author, Speaker, Court Reporter | Website
Weinberger: When Mountains Don’t Move
Kilpatrick: Shae Rose Mystery Series: Off the Record
Diana (Weinberger) Kilpatrick has led a varied, adventurous life, from her days with Youth With A Mission and Mercy Ships to her never-dull career as a court reporter and her work in prison ministry. When she isn’t traveling for work or for speaking engagements, Diana devotes her free time to her writing, and her family.
Diana resides in Idaho.
MARCO LOBO
Author
Mesquita’s Reflections | The Witch Hunter’s Amulet | JINCAN, The Shaman’s Poison
Marco Lobo
LORI McNAMARA
Author, Editor | Website
Bringing Church to the Elderly
Rev. James E. Jimmy Mac McNamara was asked by his pastor to reach out for their church and begin offering church services to the senior community in Las Vegas in nursing homes and assisted living centers. He and his wife Lori began their ministry in 2008. Along with pastoring the senior home ministry, Jimmy also performed weddings. He was named the #2 wedding officiant by Wedding Wire and wrote Tales from the Wedding Altar a book sharing hilarious, behind the scenes moments from weddings he has officiated at. Jimmy and Lori were finishing up this book when he passed away suddenly in 2014. Lori saw the book through to its completion, and is proud to share their work in Jimmy s name.
Lori McNamara has had various careers in the public sector, but finds her greatest joy in serving the elderly. She has recently recorded a music CD titled: Hymns That Take Me Home. She continues the senior home ministry that she and Jimmy once shared for over six years and also serves as president of 320 Ministries International, a ministry she started soon after Jimmy s death to carry on the mission that God had placed on both their hearts.
CARRIE MERRILL
Author | Website
Angel Blade series (4 book series): Angel Blade | Daemon | Archangel | Harbingers
S.P.E.C.T.E.R. (book series): The Lazarus Project
Other Titles: The Key, the Outlaw and the Treasure | Time of Death
When she isn’t delivering babies, Carrie Merrill is a prolific writer who has been putting pen to paper since the age of 8, when she wrote her first story about a dragon that lived in a cave across the river from her house in Idaho. A day has not gone by since that time when she didn’t have a story floating around in her head. She is currently a full-time OB/GYN in Montana with her six rescue cats when she isn’t writing about the things that lurk in the dark.
PATRICIA MURPHY MINCH
Author | Website
The Luckiest Guerrilla
A typical “Army Brat,” by age nineteen Minch had lived in twenty houses located in half a dozen different states, in two countries in Europe, and in the Far East. As her family never, ever “wasted” accrued vacation time, she also traveled extensively beyond those places. Her father aspired to go everywhere and see everything he read about in his many guidebooks. And where he went, the family went!
A National Merit Scholarship finalist in 1958, Minch first attended the University of Texas at El Paso and then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, California. Many years later, she took additional classes at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, where she spent thirteen years as a self-employed “scopist” (editor) for court reporters.
An avid genealogist, gardener, landscape designer, amateur architect, woodworker, and antiques collector/dealer, Minch is also a wife, mother, and grandmother, having written feature articles for local newspapers and recently received an honorable mention for “Writing Paisley,” her very first submission to a Writers Digest competition. She’s also completed a book about my father’s experiences as a guerrilla in North Luzon in the Philippines during World War II, scheduled for publication in 2018. Minch currently lives with her husband, a retired Air Force veteran and college instructor, in Northern California.
MARK MACEDONIA
Author
Beneath a Crescent Moon
Ottoman Empire 16th century historical fiction
Macedonia is currently a resident and a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has taught secondary education for over three decades in the area of Social Studies—specifically history—within the Seneca Valley School District of Western Pennsylvania. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in communication from St. Bonaventure University, with a minor in history, as well as a Masters of Arts in Teaching Degree from the University of Pittsburgh.
Mark Macedonia’s first novel, The Soles of Cyrus Eblis, was published in February of 2019; but it is his second novel that he is very excited about.
The novel, Beneath a Crescent Moon, is an adventure story that follows the rise of a young Christian boy in Croatia, who is sold into Ottoman slavery where he is trained to be a member of the sultan’s elite military branch called the Janissary corps. He is given the Islamic name Haris, whose battlefield heroics are recognized by Sultan Suleyman. It isn’t long before the young man is given the task of tutoring Mustafa, the oldest son of the sultan. They become close friends and will share a series of exciting adventures from seizing an Austrian castle, and foiling an attack on Jerusalem’s holy sites, to becoming dangerously immersed within the political power play of the sultanate.
DOROTHEA WOLLIN NULL
Author
Surviving ‘Uncle Hitler’ – Journey of a German Girl
“What I want most for my story to convey is that the Lord led me through the trials and tribulations of my life in order that I could find meaning, joy, and peace. Because I am approaching the end of my life, I want to inspire my readers to question their own choices, priorities and values in order to find peace with the Lord and joy in their hearts.” — Dorothea Wollin Null
Dorothea Wollin Null lives on the Oregon Coast with her husband, Larry, in a lovely lakeside home. She is frequently visited by her large family of grown children and grandchildren.
RON RICHARD
Author | Website
Group Six (book series): Group Six and the River, Of Water and Brimstone
Hi, my name is Ron and I’ll be your author today. My tastes are what you might call lowbrow. I prefer King Kong over King Lear. While I’ve performed Shakespeare on stage a few times, it’s not my favorite literature. Like Shakespeare, my writing contains occasional scenes of gory violence, but in a fun, light-hearted kind of way, however nonsensical that sounds. Having grown up in Wyoming, the least populated state, many of my fanciful adventures take place in wide-open, wilderness settings. Just natural for me, I guess.
While I was still working at painting crosswalks and fixing traffic signs, there was not enough time for writing. Once I retired, it hit me. “Hey, I can be a writer now!” So I started on page one. Soon after, something happened that gave me even more time. I was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (even though I had never smoked, which ain’t even hardly fair). My doctor told me there was no cure short of a lung transplant. My very first reaction was, “No way I’m going to suffer through that!”
Were it not for the love of a woman, I might have just accepted that I would have a relatively short remainder of my life. But my wife Pat wasn’t about to let me. She saw to it that I saw every doctor west of the Mississippi and regulated my bucket and a half of pills that I take every day. Finally after two years of physical therapy, carrying oxygen tanks around, and endless medical testing, I was placed on a transplant list. Even then, I wasn’t too optimistic, since I had heard that one can be on such a list for months or even years. Twelve days later, I received a call. They had a compatible lung available for me in Denver. The next day I had a new left lung in my body courtesy of a young donor.
I shall be forever grateful to this soldier who served his country and gave me life.
MARY RICHARDS
Author | Website
I am Awesome! A Healthy Workbook for Kids
Mary Richards is a retired health and physical education teacher who is still involved in the classroom. She has always had a passion for wellness and a desire to motivate others, especially her students, towards self-improvement. The majority of Mary’s career was spent in the middle-school classroom. In addition to being in the classroom, Mary has coached kids in sports and directed plays. During her career she launched dance teams, jump rope teams, weight-loss clubs, a drug-free club, a community health fair, a pet fair, and a self-esteem club, Feeling Good.
Her published work, I Am Awesome! A Healthy Workbook for Kids was written in an effort to help kids realize, explore, and enjoy the awesomeness within them. (“I Am Awesome!” Workbooks are available in Full Color or Black & White interior)
MANDIE SCHRADER
Author, Editor | Website
Race Day Blues
An avid reader with an overactive imagination, Mandie Schrader has been creating worlds and telling stories since childhood. She took her love of literature to college, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. After several years of doing administrative work, she returned to her literature roots and earned a Master of Library Science from the University of Hawaii.
Due to the state of the economy after graduation, she returned to the world of event production for several years where she met her friend, Traveling Yoda. In June of 2016 she started Mandieland Literary, a freelance writing and editing business. She hopes to one day add live storytelling to the Mandieland repertoire.
Currently, Mandie is a Young Adult Librarian with the Hawai’i State Public Library System. She and Traveling Yoda spend their free time at the beach, hiking, and crafting works of fiction about bugs, fairies, and the complexities of love and life in general. Her first children’s book, Race Day Blues, was released in September 2018.
MEL SMITH
Author
NAM, The story of the Vietnam Generation
“I grew up in the neighborhood described in my book: a blue-collar neighborhood on the edge of town. Our neighborhood had dirt streets, no sewer service, and one street light on the corner. Beyond my block was prairie leading to East Helena about three miles away. There wasn’t a college degree within at least six square blocks. Many parents didn’t have a high school diploma, including my own.
In ways, the neighborhood was a tough one, but as I look back on it now I can see just how ideal it was and the times were, for personal development.
Other than the threat of thermonuclear war, and we were way too young and active to think on that much, the time was one of general contentment and positive reinforcement. America had won the big war; we were the economic engine of the world; we were told daily how incredibly lucky we were to have been born in America. I felt secure and safe and I would stay in this cocoon until I left for the service.
We had little beyond our friends to keep us occupied or entertained. My folks had one of the first TVs in our neighborhood. But TV in those days consisted of about three channels and there was rarely anything good on it. There were no cell phones, Gameboys, computers or internet. No, all we had were friends and time to play. There was no lack of kids to play with, either. In my neighborhood, mostly the block I lived in, there were 31 kids within three or four years of my own age. We were the boomers. We played hard from early morning until our mom’s called us home at bedtime.”
Smith’s first novel, NAM, The story of the Vietnam Generation, is a historical fiction set during the Vietnam war era (1960’s).
JEREMY SOLDEVILLA
Author
Thief Creek | Murder in the Mountains | Second Chances
Jeremy Soldevilla
LYNN STEIGLEDER
Author
Rising Tide (book series): Rising Tide| Eden’s Wake | Deadly Reign
Other Titles: Terminal Core | Dalon Con
Lynn Steigleder
GLENN VOELZ
Author | Website
The Gisawi Chronicles (book trilogy): War Under the Mango Tree | Operation Hermes | The Third Force
Glenn Voelz served for twenty-five years in the Army as an intelligence officer and spent over a decade living and working overseas in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
He served in leadership positions at the Pentagon on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the White House Situation Room, and at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Glenn now lives in Oregon with his family.
He has published over a dozen books and journal articles on various topics, including diplomatic history, government contracting, and military innovation. His most recent novel, The Third Force, will be released in Spring 2022.
RICHARD van der VEN
Author | Website
The Frisian
Richard van der Ven is the author of The Lordship Series, which he started writing in the beautiful Renaissance town of Leiden, in Holland. At present he lives in The Hague where he teaches English language and literature to senior high school students.
When he was young he already travelled with his family around Europe but especially to their second house in France where he loved visiting all the ancient chateaux that enriched the countryside of the Périgord. He has always loved the history surrounding him in Holland and started delving into it professionally when he finished his literary studies.
Richard van der Ven often visits various medieval sites to envision what his main characters must have felt, heard and seen a millenium ago. Fascinated by different cultures, Richard loves to include multiculturalism and immigration in his books, surprising readers with the richness and diversity of the medieval world. His unique style adds a detailed layer of reality to the tough lives of his characters.
PAT WILEY
Author
Jack Quinn novels (book series): Eyewitness | Round House, a deadly side to paradise | Tattoo 313
After a successful career in the aerospace industry Pat Wiley began his second career as a writer at the New School for Creative Writing. A series of short stories followed about his adventures sailing his boat on a two year, three thousand-mile journey to the islands of the Caribbean and South America. From this journey, he wrote his first novel EYEWITNESS, a nautical murder mystery, Book 1 in the Jack Quinn novels.
The Sinking of the MV Le JOOLA: Africa’s Titanic was his first publication (self-published.) The non-fiction narrative is the result of two-years of research into one of the worst maritime tragedies in recorded history–a tragedy, which tore at the soul of a country. His interviews with survivors and extensive in-country research revealed the shameful loss of life and incredible accounts of survival that form the heart of the book.
Wiley is a licensed Captain and resides in Flat Rock, North Carolina with his wife, an accomplished painter and sculptor.
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