I write romantic suspense books where dogs have a prominent role.  I’ve written over a dozen books featuring K-9 working dogs both for the police and the military. The specialized training that goes into these highly intelligent dogs takes time, money and dedication. Doing the research for K-9 dogs has been extremely interesting and really sparked a passion in me to train a dog. Of course, joining the police department or the military and training a K-9 dog wasn’t a viable option.

But training an agility dog certainly was. In 2016, I brought home an Australian shepherd puppy. We named her Aubrey, as a variant of Auburn, because her coat is red and white. At eight months old, we started agility training.  At first it was very basic obedience work and bonding exercises. So much of agility is the bond between the dog and handler, just as it is between a police officer and his K-9.

I have to confess, learning the sport of agility was a huge learning curve for me.  Remembering the cues, the timing of the cues and staying mentally connected with my dog all were a challenge. I tend to be a bit scatter brained unless I’m knee deep in writing a book,  but agility has really taught me to focus.

And the training never stops. We train even when we’re not at the arena. Going on walks is a lesson to be used in the arena. Learning the command to sit and wait until released is a daily exercise done at feeding time. She has a beautiful start line stay.

This month, after nearly four years of training, I finally worked up the courage to enter agility trials.  I’m not going to lie, the first trial was overwhelming. I didn’t know how a trial ran, wasn’t sure I liked the idea of competing or that she’d listen to me in a strange environment.  Our first run was terrifying. She didn’t listen well, there were too many distractions-strange people and barking dogs.  We didn’t make it through the first course. Our second run was better, but she had three faults (faults are a dropped bar, a refusal to take an obstacle, a late cue or going off exploring).

The following week we went back for our second trial.  Now better prepared, we made it through the first run with a couple of faults, but she stayed with me and ignored the distractions. And the second run, we did great! She was attentive, I gave cues on time, no dropped bars and we finished the course. I was happy. And then I discovered we placed first in our grouping and we received our first qualifying ribbon. Apparently, we can move up to the next level after three qualifying ribbons.  I think I’m hooked.

For me, agility with my dog is my hobby, my passion and my stress reliever. And has helped me in my writing in was I hadn’t expected. Now, when I have my handler giving commands to their K-9, I have a feel for what it’s like to work with a dog and can add realism to my scenes.

I have an April release, Alaskan Rescue, book 1 of Alaskan K-9 Unit, a new continuity from Love Inspired Suspense. There are eight books and two novellas in this series.  I hope you’ll enjoy our books.

Alaskan Rescue by Terri Reed, April 2021  https://amzn.to/3umsdni

Wilderness Defender by Maggie K. Black, May 2021

Undercover Mission by Sharon Dunn, June 2021

Tracking Stolen Secrets by Laura Scott, July 2021

Deadly Cargo by Jodie Bailey, August 2021

Arctic Witness by Heather Woodhaven, September 2021

Yukon Justice by Dana Mentink, October 2021

Blizzard Showdown by Shirlee McCoy, November 2021

Christmas K-9 Protectors by Lenora Worth and Maggie K. Black, December 2021

Terri Reed’s romance and romantic suspense novels have appeared on Publisher’s Weekly top twenty-five, Nielsen’s Bookscan top hundred, Amazon Bestseller and featured in USA Today. Her books have been finalists in Romance Writers of America RITA contest, National Readers’ Choice Award, Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award and finalists three times in American Christian Fiction Writers The Carol Award contest. Contact Terri @ P.O. Box 19555 Portland, OR 97224

http://www.terrireed.com https://www.instagram.com/authorterrireed/

https://www.facebook.com/terrireedauthorpage/

Thanks for stopping by! If you have any questions for Terri about agility dog training, or about any of her books with great dog characters, or this wonderful upcoming K-9 series from Love Inspired Suspense, leave it in the comments for her and she’ll be by today.

The post Extreme Hobbies with Author Terri Reed appeared first on Laurie Wood Author.

Welcome back, Shannon! We’re excited to hear about your other passion – outside of writing, of course!

When I was a kid, my mom sewed most of her clothes and mine. They were simple patterns and I loved my clothes. This was before everything had to be in style and name brands weren’t a thing. One year, I got patterns for Barbie clothes for Christmas. There was a pattern for a skirt, dress, top, and pants. I made simple sew by hand clothing for Barbie and Ken out of my mom’s scraps.

I made this shirt for my Mod-Hair Ken. Isn’t he groovy. Yes, I still have my Barbies. They were my favorite toy, so I saved them. I only have a son, but maybe I’ll have a granddaughter someday. She can make fun of Ken’s hair, which looked much better back in his day.

In my tweens, I bought precut quilt squares. My mom taught me how to use the sewing machine, but it intimidated me. I remember being afraid I’d sew my fingers, so I ended up sewing the squares together by hand and my grandmother quilted it for me. I still have and used it for years, but some of the squares need restitched, so I put it away. She’s been gone seventeen years now, so I love it even more. One of these days, I’ll repair it.

In high school, my best friend sewed her own clothes. Really, cute, trendy stuff. When I said I wanted to learn, we went to the store for me to pick out my pattern and fabric. I hated every second of it. Though I managed to use the machine and not sew my fingers, I tore out more stitches than I kept. Every little pucker of getting off the line mattered when it came to clothing. I ended up with a cute top, but I wore it only a few times because it reminded me of the frustration of making it.

Early in my marriage, my grandmother cleaned out her fabric stash and gave it to me. I found really simple easy sew dress, tank top, and short patterns and made some clothes. There really wasn’t anything fashionable about them, but the right fabric made them cute.

And then I saw some beautiful curtain toppers at J.C. Penney for way more than I wanted to pay for them since I’m painfully frugal. The next time I went shopping, I looked through a pattern book and found the curtain toppers. I bought the fabric of my choice and made them for a fraction of the cost.

During the process I learned that with curtain toppers, if you make a pucker or sew a bit crooked, it doesn’t matter. I’d found my sewing love. At one point, I made heavy moire drapes with fancy valances for our living room. But now I have simple toppers with blinds.

Over the years, I expanded to sewing comforters. It matters if you make a pucker more, but I buy fabric with straight lines in the print or square panels and all I have to do is sew along the lines. I sewed every comforter our son had from the time he was born until he was about fourteen. He had Noah’s Ark, Bob the Builder, Spiderman, Camouflage, and Big Buck comforters.

When he was fourteen, he crushed my soul and asked if he could have a store-bought comforter like all his friends. I still have all the ones I made him in a tub for future grandchildren though. There’s no hurry since he’s only nineteen now. But I do have fabric I’ve bought with future grandchildren in mind.

I also sew items for friends and family. When anyone has a baby, they get a comforter and curtain toppers to compliment their nursery. My cousin just became a grandmother. Her daughter did the nursery in a national parks theme since she and her husband love to hike. I made a twin size quilt, so they’re new baby boy will be able to use it past infancy.

Even though minimalist décor is all the rage now and most people just have blinds or shades on their windows these days, I still have curtain toppers. And I made them all. My office has pastel, seashell toppers. I bought this fabric fifteen years before I had a use for it. My family room is decorated cabin rustic, so I have burlap with woodland animal trim in there.

My new laundry room has my favorite toppers. There are pictures of wicker furniture, wood rocking chairs, glass tea pitchers, and geraniums. They say, Sweet Tea Sippin, Screen Porch Views, Front Porch Sittin, Neighborhood News. My kitchen curtains blend with the family room since it’s all open. They’re burlap with coffee label trim since my kitchen is all about coffee.

I currently have a fabric stash way bigger than my grandmother did. Since we just converted our tiny spare bedroom/junk room into a laundry room, I’ll soon have a sewing nook in there. No more dragging my sewing machine and supplies to the kitchen table. As soon as the sewing table I ordered arrives, my machine will be at the ready whenever I want. Oh the curtain toppers and comforters I shall make.

Question: Do you sew? If so, clothes, home décor, or both? If not, what’s your craft love?

We’re part of Shannon’s Blog Tour for A TEXAS BOND. Leave a comment to be entered in her Grand Draw. She’ll be doing the draw March 10, 2021 and winners will be notified by email.

Here’s the beautiful cover and back cover blurb for A TEXAS BOND:

A Texas Bond by Shannon Taylor Vannatter

(Book 3: Texas Hill Country series)

Finding his family is only the beginning…

He came to find the children…

Will he stay to win her heart?

Learning he’s an uncle shocks Ross Lyles—but after years of handling his brother’s bombshells, at least this surprise is a blessing. A pair of five-year-old blessings Ross is determined to meet, if he can convince their aunt to give him a chance. Fiercely protective, Stacia Keyes is worried he’ll try to take the children…and lassoing her trust is harder than he ever imagined.

Available at Walmart from mid-Feb to mid-March. Or online:

A Texas Bond – ChristianBook       A Texas Bond – Amazon         A Texas Bond – BarnesandNoble

Award winning author, Shannon Taylor Vannatter writes contemporary Christian cowboy romance and has over a dozen published titles. A romance reader since her teens, she hopes to entertain Christian women and plant seeds in the non-believer’s heart as she demonstrates that love doesn’t conquer all—Jesus does.

She gleans fodder for her fiction in rural Arkansas where she spent her teenage summers working the concession stand with her rodeo announcing dad and married a Texan who morphed into a pastor. In her spare time, she loves hanging out with her husband and son, flea marketing, and doing craft projects.

Connect with her: Shannon’s Website, Shannon’s Blog, Shannon’s Facebook, Shannon’s Goodreads, Shannon’s Pinterest, Shannon’s Twitter, Newsletter Archives, Shannon’s Amazon Author Page and Shannon’s Bookbub. Sign up for her Newsletter to get a free e-book, recipes, behind the scenes info, & enter exclusive giveaways: Shannon’s Newsletter

Recently, Shannon joined Scrivenings Press as co-owner/acquisitions/content editor.

The post On Blog Tour with Shannon Vannatter for her new book A TEXAS BOND appeared first on Laurie Wood Author.

Air Racing

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: A couple of hobbies that line up well with my career in aviation are aerobatics and air racing. I love the study of aerodynamics and taking an aircraft right to the “edge of the envelope” — making an airplane do things that reach the edge of its design capabilities. Since the airplane which my husband and I own is not aerobatic, we have to rent acro planes when we participate in those events. But air racing is another story!

                                                     Copyright Michael Ely & Linda Street-Ely

Born and raised in an auto racing family in Indianapolis, competition and speed were bred into me. As a kid, I would race anyone on anything. Foot, bicycle, go-kart. I ran track and ran for fun. I raced against the clock on my morning paper route, always trying to best my last record. My father put me in quarter-midget race car lessons when I was seven. It was only natural when I learned to fly that I would want to race.

Flying requires understanding of weather and aerodynamics, as well as an intimate knowledge of the airplane. My first air race was the 2009 all-women’s Air Race Classic, as it is known today. This is an annual race that commemorates when twenty women pilots were denied entry to the National Air Races in Cleveland in 1929, but proved that being male isn’t a prerequisite for flying. They set their starting line at the Santa Monica airport in California and the finish line in Cleveland, Ohio, landing at the National Air Races. The race took several days, and when they finished, the women had gained a new respect from the world.

                                                    Mt. McKinley on the right – Copyright Linda Street-Ely

Today’s Air Race Classic is approximately 2,500 nautical miles, time-limited to four days. The route changes every year, but it is generally across some portion of the United States, sometimes including Canada. These days, the race is so popular that the organizers cap entries at 50 airplanes. I’ve raced it four times, third place being my best finish in 2011. Drawbacks for me are the thick rule book, including the requirement for two pilots per race plane, and the time away from Mike. How excited I was to discover the Sport Air Racing League, which hosted numerous single-day races from March through November, very few rules, and men could participate!

Copyright Michael Ely & Linda Street-Ely

Mike: We joined the League, taking the first year to learn the nuances of these types of races, quite different from Air Race Classic. From that point on, we won the Gold National Title every year until we retired from racing.

What thrills us about air racing, besides the competition, is strategy—planning our altitudes for each leg, depending on the heading and the wind at various altitudes, and the precise point at which we will enter a turn, how many degrees we will bank the airplane, and exactly where we will exit the turn. Like aerobatics, this is precision flying. Our hearts pound as hard as the engine as we listen on the radio for competitors’ turn point calls—are they gaining on us?

Copyright Jo Hunter futurshox.net.

We hold the speed record for our class in the League, at 174 miles an hour. That’s fast for a small airplane with only 150 horsepower. We research the forecast winds at various altitudes across the length of the course, looking for the most favorable. When there’s a tailwind, we let the wind push us up gradually to the altitude where it is greatest. Other little tricks include stuffing the air vents with plugs and taping over gaps with slick and sturdy “race tape.”

After nearly 150 races, it’s not the heap of trophies we love, it’s the experience and the memories that let us relive the thrills over and over.

We began a column in our local paper almost 14 years ago. We write about aviation, but we write for the non-flying public. We aim to put a face to a world that’s unfamiliar to many, with engaging stories about people, places, and adventures. We’ve met the most amazing people in our flying lives.

As we approached the ten-year anniversary of our column, we thought it would be fun to select our favorite stories from the first decade and put them in a book. We narrowed it down to 100 stories, but it took two volumes to contain them all. In our two-volume set, “Ely Air Lines: Select Stories from 10 Years of a Weekly Column,” we offer short pieces about the world of aviation, told in entertaining, informative, and touching ways.

Our stories are for everyone, not just aviators. We hope you’ll check out our books and let us know what you think by dropping us a line and leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or your favorite site.

Copyright Michael Ely & Linda Street-Ely

Ely Air Lines: Select Stories from 10 Years of a Weekly Column

Volumes 1 and 2

 Delightful stories of flying adventures from around the globe. Adventurous and heartwarming. Written by pilots.

Ely Air Lines is a captivating 2-volume set of 100 short stories that inspire and educate, written by pilots Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely. Step aboard to enjoy a collection of stories that explore the vast realm of the flyer’s world.

Buckle up and fly with Mike and Linda to discover amazing people, interesting places, and the conquest of flight.

You can find these books here:

BUY LINKS:

Amazon:

Ely Air Lines Volume 1 – https://tinyurl.com/y2elhfdz

Ely Air Lines Volume 2 – https://tinyurl.com/y3dbh83d

And you can find Michael and Linda online here:

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:

Website: Paper Airplane Publishing

Facebook: Paper Airplane Publishing

Instagram: Paper Airplane Publishing

Twitter: Paper Airplane Publishing

Linda’s Amazon Author page

Mike’s Amazon Author page

Linda’s Goodreads Author page

Mike’s Goodreads Author page

Linda’s Bookbub Author page

Mike’s Bookbub Author Page

Thanks for joining us today and learning about airplane racing. If you have a question for Linda please leave it in the comments!

The post More Than Authors – The Extreme Hobby of Linda Street-Ely & Michael Ely appeared first on Laurie Wood Author.

There are very few crafts out there I haven’t tried. My husband (and my garage) can attest to that. Everything from jewelry-making to crochet and sewing to painting, I’ve probably at least dabbled in it. But there are a few crafts that are go-to’s for me when my writer brain needs a break from creating stories and wants to recharge by being creative another way.

Crochet is something I love, but I don’t get to do much. However, for a birthday and Christmas, a friend from college commissioned me to make a couple little amigurumi birds for her son. They turned out cute, but my hands complain if I do it too much anymore because I have a tendency to hold the yarn and hook tightly.

I love to paint. For my niece and each nephew, as well as my son and daughter and a few others, I’ve now made a set of peg dolls. Since my sister’s family is living in England right now, and my youngest nephew is obsessed with buses, I thought it would be fun to do some British peg dolls. Here’s the end result, and he was thrilled when he opened them up for Christmas. Can you tell who they’re supposed to be?

Another go-to is sewing. I have made clothes for myself as well as my children, but lately, my skills have turned to doll-sized outfits as my six-year-old and her cousin have developed a love of Barbies. Since my daughter is also obsessed with mermaids and with the baking shows on TV, I’ve made her dolls a mermaid fin AND an apron. I think it turned out cute.

Every now and then, a crafting hobby creeps into my writing. I’ve had characters who scrapbooked and stamped greeting cards in the past. And with the sense of achievement that comes from each project complete (minus a few that didn’t work out in reality as well as they had in my head), I know crafting will continue to be a large part of my life, passed down from many generations of crafters.

Here’s Amy’s latest book:

Can letters from the past spur a couple on to the future of their dreams?

Christiana Jones dreamed her whole life of living in Huntsville, Alabama, so she can’t figure out why it doesn’t feel like home. Her relationships—on social media and in real life—seem shallow and empty. When she unearths a stack of her grandparents’ letters, it spurs an idea. Could she find something deeper with a penpal?

Jordan White is taken aback when his cousin Tina suggests he become penpals with her childhood best friend. What could a Louisiana boy have in common with a girl two states away? After all, he’s happily settled on his family’s property and working the job he always wanted. But every letter they exchange has him wishing for more.

As they grow closer through their written words, the miles between them seem to grow wider. Can love cross the distance and bring them home?

Amy R Anguish

Author of An Unexpected Legacy, Faith and Hope, and Saving Grace

Amy R Anguish grew up a preacher’s kid, and in spite of having lived in seven different states that are all south of the Mason Dixon line, she is not a football fan. Currently, she resides in Tennessee with her husband, daughter, and son, and usually a bossy cat or two. Amy has an English degree from Freed-Hardeman University that she intends to use to glorify God, and she wants her stories to show that while Christians face real struggles, it can still work out for good.

Follow her at http://abitofanguish.weebly.com or http://www.facebook.com/amyanguishauthor

Or https://twitter.com/amy_r_anguish

Learn more about my books at https://www.pinterest.com/msguish/my-books/

And check out the YouTube channel she does with two other authors, Once Upon a Page https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEiu-jq-KE-VMIjbtmGLbJA

Do you have a favorite craft or do you vary your crafting depending on time of year or mood?

The post Creative Lives with Author Amy Anguish appeared first on Laurie Wood Author.

I’d planned on buying my first fleece at our local Manitoba Fibre Festival in September, but thanks to COVID-19 it was cancelled this year. However, a friend in my spinning group got a line on about 28 fleeces from a shepherd who raises sheep for meat and didn’t want the fleeces after they’d been sheared. And best of all, the price was FREE! I decided to try my hand at a Wensleydale-cross sheep fleece because I knew it would be a long-lock fleece, meaning the actual locks of wool would be long for spinning, and hopefully, it would be softer to the touch than some of her other fleeces.

Copyright Wikipedia

This isn’t the sheep I got my fleece from, but you can see what I mean about the long, lustrous locks of wool hanging down. Here’s what I came home with from my spinning meeting: (pardon the shoes at the front door)

My husband’s reaction was “Oh WOW!” at the sheepy-smell, but I assured him I’d already “skirted” the fleece, which meant I’d laid it out on a screen at my girlfriend’s place and removed all the poopy-bits and hanging edges that aren’t going to be able to be made into decent yarn. That took a couple of hours to do with her helping me. And I wound up with this 90 litre garbage bag of fleece. Next, I did this:

After I collected enough wool and separated it into a “batch” this is what I did with it:

You’re going to laugh when you see this from the next morning!

And this is basically how you “wash” raw wool. Then I put the wool in hot water (as hot as I could get it) in the same plastic tote, with some blue Dawn (it HAS to be the Blue Dawn) and left it to soak for 40 minutes. I got rid of that dirty water, and then soaked the wool again the same way. (It should be clean and the water pretty clear on the second soak.)

Then I put it into lingerie bags (split into three or four bags) and ran a cold rinse into my washing machine. I let the bags sit and soak in the cold water – I DID NOT run the rinse cycle because that agitates the wool and it felts together – and then I ran the spin cycle to get all the water out of the wool.

I took it out of the bags, lay the wool out on a plastic tablecloth over my laundry rack and let it dry overnight into the next day or so. Each batch took different times to dry depending on the basement temperature over the summer time.

I don’t have any more videos for you but here are some photos I took of carding the wool after it dried to get the rest of the hay and burrs etc out of it, and what it looks like when it’s finally done being “processed”:

This is “clean” and dry wool but it needs to be “carded” with my hand carders to brush out the bits of hay and vegetable matter before I can spin it up.

This is after a couple of passes with my carders. You can see the hay etc is falling out and the wool is fluffing up. Yes, there ARE easier ways to do this but I don’t own what we call a “picker”. That’s a much bigger piece of equipment full of dangerous metal tines into which you can throw huge batches of this clean wool to shake it back and forth and all of the hay etc will come out without you breaking a nail or cutting yourself, which I always do with my carders.

And voila – clean, white wool ready to spin just as it is right off the carder. I have six HUGE bags of this stuff to spin up now and I’m happy to say, it’s coming out at a lace weight which means I should get many, many yards of yarn from this fleece. I’m going to keep track and on my next blog about this fleece I’ll let you know what it looks like spun up and how many yards I got out of it.

I’m super-happy with my Summer Project and looking forward to plying it with some silk I’m also spinning. I did all this washing and carding in between edits for NORTHERN PROTECTOR (Heroes of the Tundra Book 2) – coming December 8, 2020, as well as starting my next book.

Have you tried a new hobby, or expanded one of your hobbies during the pandemic? Leave a comment and I’ll enter you for an e-book giveaway, your choice between either of my books!

The post Here’s What I Do When I’m Not Writing…Plus a Giveaway! appeared first on Laurie Wood Author.