Welcome to the Blog Blitz for The Mosaic Collection, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours! Today I am delighted to welcome Deb Elkink to the blog to chat about her cornerstone message for her The Mosaic Collection novel The Red Journal, which releases in October 2019.
ABOUT THE COLLECTION
For His glory…
The Mosaic Collection is an international community of women authors who use faith-based fiction to touch hearts with the good news that Christ’s finished work on the cross has made us one family, and to nurture affection for the people God has placed within our circles of influence, so that the grace and glory of God may become visible and personal to everyone we meet.
…and our good
We are sisters, a beautiful mosaic united by the love of God through the blood of Christ. We have experienced the redemptive, restorative power of God’s grace in our marriages and families, and we believe our God is able to heal, restore and redeem our brokenness. His love fills us with the courage to persevere, and to offer others a Christ-like compassion that is full of His wisdom and grace.
Visit Deb Elkink on the Mosaic Collection Website to stay posted on each new release & follow the collection blog for all kinds of good stuff!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deb Elkink lives with her long-time husband in a cottage beside a babbling creek in rural Alberta, Canada. She grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and studied in Minneapolis–Saint Paul (B.A. Communications), publishing a dozen or so short stories and articles as a young adult. She spent the next twenty years as a rancher’s wife and homeschooling mom (rounding up cattle on horseback, cooking for huge branding crews, earning her private pilot’s license, readying kids for high school).
Graduate studies (M.A. Theology) then prepared her for editing a professional quarterly magazine, doctoral dissertations and scholarly articles, and an online expository Bible study. Today she writes and edits, travels like mad, drinks lots of creamy decaf with friends, and speaks to women’s groups about the Christian faith.
Her debut novel (The Third Grace) received Canada’s prestigious Grace Irwin Prize in 2012, and her literary work on the fiction of a late-Victorian British writer (Roots and Branches: The Symbol of the Tree in the Imagination of G.K. Chesterton) was published in 2015. Her upcoming novel is a contemporary women’s fiction with a historical/theological twist: Eat, Pray, Love and The Wizard of Oz meet the Book of Hebrews in showing that “home” is a state of soul, a state of inner rest.
CONNECT WITH DEB ELKINK: The Mosaic Collection | Facebook
ABOUT THE BOOK
Author: Deb Elkink
SERIES: The Mosaic Collection
GENRE: Inspirational Women’s Fiction/Romance
RELEASE DATE: October 2, 2019
A child’s antique ring and a message from beyond the grave point to the treasure of a legacy lost.
Flirty globetrotter Sybil badgers her friend Libby to travel along in seeking out the world’s “sacred places”—a monastery in Japan, a mountaintop in Africa, a mosque in Istanbul. Her footloose wandering far from family values costs her more than money.
But Libby can’t afford to travel, and she’s plagued by a different kind of restlessness. Grieving the recent death of the grandmother who raised her in their inner-city Minneapolis tenement now slated for demolition, Libby faces homelessness in both heart and habitation.
When Libby discovers a cryptic message from beyond the grave and an antique ring pointing to a mystery in an inner room of a mansion museum in North Dakota, she sets out on a quest of her own for the meaning of heritage and home.
My Cornerstone Message From The Collection
Look for God in the Bible. Everything (art, literature, fashion design, engineering, philosophy, travel, cooking, health, romance, community, fitness . . .) can be a way to express or illustrate God’s action on our world, but only the living and breathed-out Word of God can give us knowledge of the Father our hearts are longing for. Only the mind of God revealed to the minds of mortals by the Holy Spirit through Scripture can bring us into alignment with the Person of Jesus Christ. In today’s increasingly pagan culture, “spirituality” has become a buzzword for any belief but the truth—the more mystical the better. But the Holy Book of God is the only source containing all we need for salvation and spiritual life.
A Deeper Dive into My Cornerstone Message
I grew up with the scraped knees of summertime and the frost-bitten cheeks of frigid winter in Canada, about five hundred miles north-west of Minneapolis. When I was very young, not yet school aged, I learned that sin sullies even the child’s heart. I cried in shame and guilt to my mom, who told me that Jesus’s blood washes me clean as new-fallen snow–the moment of my spiritual rebirth. Later on, in junior high, my curiosity was piqued by the peculiar and the quaint; I watched scary movies at pyjama parties and told creepy fireside tales at camp, and then I discovered the ouija board–a so-called game to get in touch with spirits. A passage of Scripture warned me against the occult, but I insisted on personally experiencing the “fun” and scared myself silly with a devilish fear that took years to rout. Both childhood experiences signify to me that what I see on the surface (the red and white of blood and snow, thrilling story and dark imagination) has a reality beneath the illustration.
One sad day many years after my youth, I experienced another living illustration–that is, an outward expression of an inward reality–when I lost a deep and meaningful relationship. Had I focused on the immediate (my pain and grief) rather than what I knew to be the undergirding reality (that is, the truths in the Word of God), I’d have crumbled completely. But I read that God is love, and that my bubbly personality still hides a bruised and darkened heart, and that forgiveness has been given to me to pass along. I read that faith is the substance of things unseen, that this substance will carry me through that surface level of blood and snow and fear of the Enemy. Trusting in the truth lets me affirm but look beyond the things merely seen.
see previous posts in this series:
TOUR GIVEAWAY
(1) winner will receive a $50 Amazon eGift Card & an ebook prize pack*!
Winner will receive an ebook of:
- Where She Belongs
- Pieces of Granite
- Lifelines
- Christmas on a Mission
- Vigilant
- Other Side of the River
- The Third Grace
- Carolina Grace
- The Benefit Package (a devotional)
- Dance of Grace
- When Love Calls
Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway will begin at midnight July 10, 2019 and last through 11:59 PM EST on July 24, 2019. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. Open internationally, but international winner will receive a gift card only *(may be substituted for a Book Depository gift card if winner cannot accept from US Amazon)
Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.
See tour landing page for a complete list of authors & book release dates.
Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!
*NOTE: This post contains affiliate links.
What about you? What resonates most with you about Deb Elkink and her cornerstone message for The Mosaic Collection?
Carrie, thanks for welcoming me onto your blog today! It’s so much fun to meet new readers, bloggers, writers. I especially like giveaways. Maybe one of YOUR audience will be the winner!
Hi Deb! It’s my pleasure 🙂
Deep and powerful thoughts Deb – thank you for sharing.