Please welcome author Luana Ehlrich, our first spy/thriller author. I love the part her father plays in her passion for this genre–he allowed her to read the thrillers he brought home in her youth. Wow – what a wonder to share a genre with him!

Anyone who signs up for Luana’s newsletter will be able to download a FREE copy of Titus Ray Thriller Recipes with Short Stories.

Link to newsletter with FREE book:  https://www.subscribepage.com/TitusRayNewsletter

Luana, your protagonist, Titus Ray, intrigues me – please tell us about him.

Titus Ray, a CIA intelligence officer with the Agency for almost twenty years, is a loner and battle-hardened veteran of the covert wars. When his mission in Iran is blown, he escapes from the secret police and is forced to seek shelter with some Iranian Christians. Before he’s smuggled out of Iran, he makes a decision to become a believer himself, and once he returns to the States, he’s faced with figuring out how he can live a life of faith in the world of espionage, while battling his own demons and carrying out the responsibilities of his career.

Titus Ray tries to maintain his religious compass while entrenched in the world of espionage. What do you think is central to that struggle and his success?

Titus grew up in a home with no religious affiliation. His father, an alcoholic, was emotionally absent from family, and the only time Titus ever heard God’s name was in cursing. When Titus is forced to live with a group of Iranian Christians for three months, he’s amazed at their ability to be joyful in the midst of persecution. As he observes their faith, their love of the Bible, and their relationship to Christ, he desires to have such a relationship for himself. After he makes his commitment, that relationship becomes a thread running throughout all the books in the series.

A thriller isn’t a typical genre of Christian fiction. How did you come up with the idea for this series?

This type of series came to mind when I first heard about the persecution of Christians in Iran about six years ago. Because I’ve always been an avid reader of mysteries and thrillers, I knew my first book would be in this genre. However, when I heard about the Iranian Christians, I began asking several questions, the backstory of my first book, One Night in Tehran.

What would happen if a veteran CIA intelligence operative in Tehran  became a believer? How would his conversion affect his career? How would a man trained to lie and deceive follow the teachings of Christ in the real world?

Could you give us a sentence or two about each book in the series?

 In One Night in Tehran, Book I in the series, Titus goes on the run from an assassin and encounters an Iranian couple in Oklahoma who may have ties to the killer. He also gets involved in a murder investigation with beautiful local detective, Nikki Saxon, who considers him a suspect in the case.

In Book II, Two Days in Caracas, Titus travels from Costa Rica to Venezuela in search of Ahmed Al-Amin, a Hezbollah assassin, before he murders a high-profile government official. Along the way, a family crisis jeopardizes his mission, an Agency division head threatens to destroy his career, and he becomes more involved with Nikki Saxon.

In Three Weeks in Washington, Titus races across two continents pursuing Jihadi terrorists who plan to attack the nation’s capital with chemical weapons. Titus puts his own life on the line when he exposes an Iranian deep-cover operative with close ties to American government officials and jeopardizes his relationship with Nikki.

In Book IV, Four Months in Cuba, Titus arrives in Santiago de Cuba determined to rescue his fellow operative, Ben Mitchell, from the Los Zetas drug cartel. Within days, he discovers it won’t be a simple rescue mission, and in the months that follow, he almost loses his life, as well as his faith.

Book V, Five Years in Yemen, will be released in the fall of 2018. The prequel to the series, a novella, is also available. One Step Back gives readers the backstory of One Night in Tehran.

All the books in the series are available on Amazon as print books, eBooks, and audiobooks.

What a treat to have Margaret Kazmierczak, my online author friend from across the Atlantic, with us today. Brew yourself a cup of hot tea and enjoy her musings on winter. And leave a comment if you’d like to win an e-copy of her memoir – with a definite U.K. flavor and humor. 

Why do we call it the middle-of-winter blues – blue? I see no blue outside nor inside! Personally, I believe we ought to change it to the middle of winter greys. The sky is grey; the atmosphere is grey, people’s faces are grey, clothing is grey, the snow, if we get it in the South of England, is grey and slushy, and the days are grey with fewer hours of daylight – do I need to go on?

We eat more than we should and decide that we need to lose weight. So then we get the weight loss blues/greys.

Woe is winter with its rain, cold, damp, grey weather. Welcome to my England – actually, that’s not true as my winter is far from grey. The only grey is my hair! But it was not always like this. I too suffered from the blues for a long time until I realised that January 1st was just another day and February a step closer to brighter mornings–therefore, I didn’t need to put a blue-grey tint to these months.

Grey is a matter of opinion or perspective. Winter always leads to spring. Nature needs to die to reinvent itself. The gorgeous colours of Autumn give way to the life spine of a tree, its scars highlighted by the sun.

Landscapes become visible without the foliage concealing the beauty beyond. There is crispness as you walk, a fresh painting of a spider’s web glistening in the low sunlight. Ice producing dazzling displays of rainbows in fragmented puddles.

Snowflakes whirl in the wind, dancing to the heavenly music of the angels.

Birdsong greets me to a new awakening.

The flowers now gone promise to rise again in Spring in a celebration of hope.How can this season be blue/grey?

We need a break in the seasons, to reassess our lives. Are we at the ending of a story, or at the beginning? Winter allows for both, the blues followed by the yellows. How long you remain in the blue will depend on your winter.

Winter is a great reminder; it tells me of how fortunate I am to live in a country where we have heating at the click of a switch. We can snuggle under duvets in the safety of our homes. Water comes out of a tap, and the air is relatively unpolluted. Christians can freely worship, and there are life choices we can make each day without fear.

I need winter to remind me that without death I cannot begin again. Nothing is permanent…only God.

January is often a difficult month for many, with the bright lights of Christmas doused. It is easy to sink into the dull months and respond accordingly. But what if we shone brightly during the downpours and sing in the rain, so to speak? How many sad faces could be turned upside down into a smile?

I don’t do New Year resolutions, but maybe this year I shall target the blues with a sunshine beam to get the happy juices going in my fellow human beings. Perhaps the seeds will break through early this year if we turn our faces to the Son and remember that after the blues (the passion) comes the resurrection. Now, that is something to celebrate!

One of my favourite experiences is walking into my home after escaping the frozen outdoors and feeling the warmth hug me. Peeling off my coat, scarf, hat and boots and flopping into a comfy chair with a steaming cup of hot tea. It is by far the epitome of joy in winter – a spirit lifter.

And that is indeed one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone else who is suffering from the middle-of-winter blues. To be a spirit lifter. To share a picture of hope in a person’s life. To show the beauty of winter in all its glory, because nature never stops creating breathtaking pictures.