Guest Post (and a Giveaway!): Becca Whitham & The Telegraph Proposal

Welcome to the Blog + Review Tour & Giveaway for The Telegraph Proposal by Becca Whitham and Gina Welborn, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

Title: The Telegraph Proposal
Series: Montana Brides #3
Authors: Becca Whitham & Gina Welborn
Publisher: Zebra
Genre: Western Romance
Release Date: October 29, 2019

In the rough and rugged Montana Territory, the journey to true love is filled with unexpected twists–and sweet rewards–for daring frontier women who faithfully believe every heart has a home . . .

With the help of the Archer Matrimonial Company, Yancey Palmer has finally put Hale Adams, the man she’s loved for ten years–sometimes not wisely or well–behind her. Yancey is so sure of her love for the man the agency matched her with, she readily promises a friend that she’ll help Hale with his mayoral campaign without chasing him.

Hale has also engaged the services of the matrimonial agency. He’s so pleased with one lady, he requests that she join him in Helena to commence a sixty-day courtship. But instead, the Archer ladies arrive in town to reveal the true identities of both Hale’s and Yancey’s matches: each other. Can they look past their misunderstandings and hurt to see that they are still a perfect match?

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Becca Whitham (WIT-um) Award-winning author, paper crafter, and Army wife, Becca and her twelve-foot long craft cabinet follow her husband of thirty-five years wherever the army needs a good chaplain. She thinks the cabinet should count as a dependent. So far, neither the army nor the IRS is convinced. In between moves from one part of the country to the other, she writes stories combining faith and fiction that touch the heart. She’s a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Romance Writers of America.

CONNECT WITH BECCA: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

Check out my Q&A with Becca from way back yonder in 2016

Gina Welborn is the bestselling author of twenty inspirational romances, including the Montana Brides Romances from Kensington Publishing. She’s a member of Romance Writers of American and American Christian Fiction Writers. Sharing her husband’s passion for the premier American sports car, she is a lifetime member of the National Corvette Museum and a founding member of the Southwest Oklahoma Corvette Club. Gina lives with her husband, four of their five children, a rabbit named Hobbit, and two cats that don’t realize rabbits are edible.

CONNECT WITH GINA: Website | Facebook | Pinterest

Do you want a little behind the scenes information about The Telegraph Proposal? Well, here you go…

I put the heroine, Yancey Palmer, in a position I prayed for God to put me in when I was about seventeen years old.

I don’t think it will come as a surprise that I’m a romantic at heart. That can be great, but sometimes you give your heart to the wrong kind of person. I “fell in love” with several boys who weren’t good for me. Then I heard a woman talk about how she’d had the choice between two men to marry and had to make a pros and cons chart to decide between the two of them. Knowing it would be good for me, I asked God to put me in a similar position so I’d have to use my head instead of my fickle, not-always-wise heart. Which He did. Lest you think I led one of the men on, Man#1 told me not to wait for him when he went to the Philippines for two years as a missionary. I’d loved him since I was twelve. I didn’t figure another two would matter much.

And then I met Man#2. We started dating six months before Man#1 came home. Short version, I had my choice between the two and deciding between them involved a pros and cons chart. In truth, both were (are!) wonderful men and I would have been a happy wife either way. I ended up choosing Man#2 because his projected employment choices were more in line with the security I so craved. Funny thing happened after the wedding, though. He started talking about wanting to go to seminary. Let me tell you…that was NOT why I chose him. So he did the worst thing possible: he kept praying for God to change my heart because he wasn’t going to seminary without my full support. It eventually happened, but that’s another story.

Back to Yancey Palmer.

When it came time to craft her character, we made her madly in love with Hale Adams from the time she was twelve. Yep…straight out of the pages of my life. At the very beginning of the story, she must choose between remaining in love with Hale or letting him go for Nathan St. John. You won’t see her pros and cons chart in the story but it happened off stage, I promise you. Because—in that way—she was me.

However, we wanted Yancey to have a lively spirit, so she’s also my daughter in some important ways. That girl brightens the room by walking into it. She’s never met a stranger, only a friend she doesn’t know much about yet. She is the “life of the party,” a term I double checked was appropriate for the novel’s time period. Thankfully it was because Yancey is the very epitome of the saying—as is my daughter. I don’t understand that. I always walk into a room and judge who seems to be the least likely to hate me on sight. I then make a beeline for her.

As for Yancey’s love story with Hale, that too comes from straight from my experience. If you’ve heard me speak or visited my author blog, you know that I’m motivated to portray “true love” as I understand it. One of those ways is that I don’t believe God has a “one and only” or “Mr./Miss Right” out there for us to find. I have heard a couple great “God told us to get married” stories, so I won’t discount that He can choose a specific mate for us. But—for the vast majority of us—I believe God calls us to BE the right person rather than to find him/her. And then, to quote my mother, “You have to be smart.” This was God’s lesson for me when giving me the choice between two men. Both were Christians of good character, so my list got persnickety. In fact, when all was said and done, my decision to choose Man#2 had more to do with externals than personality. It’s also why I’m convinced that I could have been quite happily married to Man#1 had I chosen him instead.

I believe God reveals principles for choosing a mate through the Bible, and that we need to mine wisdom from it like gold nuggets. One of those comes from I Cor. 6:14 which says to be “equally yoked.” But what does that really mean? I grew up thinking it was marrying someone who shared my faith, period. Then I met some fellow Christians I wouldn’t want as a guest in my home no less the leader of it. I came to realize that—in addition to faith—it meant someone who shared my priorities, shared enough interests to keep date night going, and someone who had characteristics which balanced my flaws and challenged me to think more deeply. Yancey not only had to fall out of love with the Hale of her twelve-year-old hero worship but fall in love with the real Hale, flaws and all. Because you can’t truly love someone unless you know them well.

Hubby and I are coming up on our 35^th Anniversary in December. People are asking more and more often, “What’s your secret?”

My answer? “We chose wisely,” spoken in my best Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade voice. As for keeping a marriage going? “Never underestimate the power of being nice.”

TOUR GIVEAWAY

(1) winner will receive a $50 Amazon gift card and a Montana huckleberry syrup and jam gift box!

Be sure to check out each stop on the tour for more chances to win. Full tour schedule shown below. Giveaway will begin at midnight October 28, 2019 and last through 11:59 PM EST on November 4, 2019. US only. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize.

Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.

ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE

Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!

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What about you? What interests you most about Becca Whitham’s post and/or The Telegraph Proposal?