Welcome, Gail Pallotta – Gail shares her latest Y/A novel with us, AND is offering a free Kindle e-book to one commenter. If you have children/grandchildren in this age troupe, you’ll appreciate her plot.
It’s fun to compete and win, and it’s fun to watch winners. People hold contests in everything from quilting and pie tasting to racing cars. However, a problem arises when we fail to put the importance of being number one in perspective.
Unfortunately, I’ve had the misfortune of coming in contact with young people whose inability to cope with not always winning resulted in devastating results. They range from youngsters who had difficulty coping because they didn’t come in first in a race or receive all A’s to young people who attempted or committed suicide. The drive seemed to originate from different sources, parents, siblings, peers or within.
I wanted them to know they didn’t have to be number one for God to love them. He’d given each of them a gift or gifts to use for Him. The desire rattled around in my head for years and finally became the theme for Stopped Cold.
In “A Young Athlete’s World of Pain and Where It Led,” published on June 22, 2016, in “The New York Times,” Tim Rohan tells the story of a young football player suffering from concussions. He didn’t mention it to anyone because he thought it wasn’t the manly thing to do. He ended up killing himself.
The CDC says “suicide among teens and young adults has nearly tripled since the 1940’s.”
According to the Westminster Catechism, which I studied in the 1940’s and 50’s, man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
I’m a fan of healthy competition. It pushes us to do our best, and we often achieve success beyond our goals, or not, but when the game or contest ends, win or lose, we’re still a child of God. Winning or losing doesn’t define our self-worth.
About Stopped Cold
Stopped Cold is the story of a family facing problems existing in the real world in modern times. Even though their situation may differ from that of others who struggle with difficulties, the concerns, reactions and hardships are ones many can relate to. One reader says, “Very compelling with emotions and feelings that have been felt by everyone in their lives at one time or another.”
Blurb:
Things aren’t what they seem in peaceful Mistville, North Carolina.
Margaret McWhorter enjoys a laid-back Freshman year in high school swimming and hanging out with friends—until the day her brother Sean suffers a stroke from taking steroids. Now he’s lying unconscious in a hospital.
Anger sets a fire for retribution inside her, and Margaret vows to make the criminals pay. Even the cop on the case can’t stop her from investigating. Looking for justice, she convinces two friends, Jimmy and Emily, to join her in a quest that takes them through a twisted, drug-filled sub-culture they discover deep in the woods behind the school. Time and again they walk a treacherous path and come face-to-face with danger.
All the while Margaret really wants to cure Sean, heal the hate inside, and open her heart to love.
Buy links:
Amazon.com/dp/B07R7RHF5K
Barnes and Noble – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stopped-cold-gail-pallotta/1117352035?ean=9781522398578
Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=Stopped+Cold+by+Gail+Pallotta
Bio: Award-winning author Gail Pallotta’s a wife, mom, swimmer and bargain shopper who loves God, beach sunsets and getting together with friends and family. A former Grace Awards Finalist and a Reader’s Favorite 2017 Book Award winner, she’s published six books, poems, short stories and two-hundred articles. Some of her articles appear in anthologies while two are in museums. She loves to connect with readers. Sign up for her newsletter at https://www.gailpallotta.com/mainphp.html and visit her website at https://www.gailpallotta.com
Visit her online at the following places:
Blog at https://gailpallotta.blogspot.com
Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorsandMore
twitter at https://twitter.com/Hopefulwords (Gail Pallotta @Hopefulwords)
The high school in Stopped Cold has a twitter site. The heroine, Margaret, loves it when people follow the Meriwether Sharks at Meriwether Christian @MeriwetherCS (https://twitter.com/MeriwetherCS)