Talk About LOVE (Upcoming Release & Contest)
Let’s talk About Love with Julie B Cosgrove
BUT FIRST… about the “Love Is” series that’s releasing this month.
PRISM BOOK GROUP, an international Christian based publishing house, is launching a new series of novellas based around First Corinthians 13- the Love Chapter. It is called the “Love IS” series and will encompass 15 novellas between February 2016-February 2017. Each will be a separate eBook for $2.99, and then they will be bound in groups of threes for paperback lovers. Click here for details: PRISM
CONTEST!! During the month of February there is a contest to launch this series! The publisher will have an “Our Sweet Valentine Contest” during month of February. Prism Book Group will offer readers a chance to “be their Valentine” and winning the ENTIRE Love Is series as it releases in their format of choice and a Hershey’s Chocolate Lover’s Square Tower (value $46.95). Two runner-ups will receive the first Love Is book in print (which will include my first novella), and a $10 Amazon gift card. To enter, simply like their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PrismBookGroup/ and comment on what love means to you. For a second entry, simply join their mailing list so you can keep up with each launch date.
JULIE HAS two novellas in the series. The first, Greener Grasses, launches February 19, but is on preorder now on Amazon: PRE ORDER HERE
“Geeener Grasses” based on I Corinthians 13:5- Love does not envy. This is a different type of “love story” – all about siblings. You can view the trailer here.
WHY JULIE B WROTE this story:
“I HAVE a love story about my siblings – I guess most sisters bicker as they grow up. We have a tendency to be a tad jealous of each other. “How come she gets to…” and later, “Why do all my boyfriends notice her?” Even later, “Why doesn’t my husband treat me like hers treats her?” or “”Why are her kids so well-behaved?”
MY SISTER and I are six years apart so by the time I entered my teens she was married. I felt a deep loss and for a long time I felt the odd person out. She and my brother’s wife were closer in age, so they bonded. They always huddled at family events. I felt the pangs of exclusion like the wimpy little kid slumped on the sideline bench whose muscles would never fill out his uniform.
UNTIL MY husband died suddenly in the shower getting ready for work. Though five hours away, my sister dropped her life and rushed to my aid. She boarded her animals at the vets, packed a bag and drove to my door. I honestly cannot tell you how long she stayed with me. Certainly until after the funeral five days later. Having lost her husband a year previously, she guided my numbed mind and aching heart through the planning, the visitations and the arrangements as I sniveled for days on in overwhelmed by it all.
WHEN I sold the house and moved to a one bedroom apartment, all I could afford at the time, she returned. We spent hours rubbing masking tape onto the floors mapping out where furniture would go and plotting what I could bring and what I should leave behind for the estate sale. She then monitored the estate sale like an award winning car salesman, raking in the bucks so I could afford the moving company.
MY BROTHER, an attorney, drove in to handle all the legal affairs pro bono without blinking an eye. All I had to do was show up at the courthouse and swear my husband to be deceased—by far my highest hurdle. Declaring him legally dead before a magistrate made it real, too real. My brother stood by my side as my knees quaked. His even-toned professionalism became my boulder. I watched, wide-eyed and tear-blinked as he handed off paper after paper to the court clerk. Documents all identified by letters and numbers which I never understood.
GROWING UP, my brother seemed a phantom. Eleven years older than me, he was a teenager locked in his world by the time I could toddle. Then came the college years away. When I was in third grade, he walked down the aisle. After that, he moved away, had a child of his own and built a life. Eventually I did the same. For decades we acknowledged each other like shadows at family gatherings. But that day at the courthouse, he became flesh and bone to me.
GOD PURPOSED good from tragedy. My husband’s passing brought me closer to my siblings and showed me what family-bound love is all about. Five years later, we are able to communicate at a deeper level, share our feelings openly, and be there for each other through this rollercoaster called life. Now, that’s true love— a love akin to no other on earth..
SO, I DEDICATED this novella to my sister, Anne Graves. I love you more than you will ever know, Anne.”
-Julie B Cosgrove, author
