Back to Navarre

It feels so good to finally be writing again on my inspirational romance novel set in Navarre Beach. For awhile, off and on throughout 2014, I was in the hospital a lot and too ill to write.

I had started working on the manuscript in October 2013. Ken and I went down to Navarre about the middle of October, got a lot of pictures, and Tony and I did a lot of posting about it on facebook. Then by the end of the year I was unable to work on it. But I'm back on it now, and really enjoying it.

My first inspirational romance, THE MISTAKEN HEIRESS, was published April, 2014, and I needed to get the second one done long before now, and then get back to a historical one I have started.

I really hope I can keep my blog going again, too. I want to do more about writing on it, and having some other authors share, too. If you are a writer/author or wantabe and would like to share on it, contact me in comment on the blog or email shelbasn@ gmail.com. 

Romance,true love and debut novel

A seventy-six-year-old's debut romance novel?
Yes.  who should know better about romance and true love than a woman who's been married to the same man for fifty-eight years, and is still in love with him?

It was a chicken wishbone at my grandma's house--we called it a "pulley bone" back then--that started it all, even before he gave me flowers (from a florist, no less) for my tenth birthday. That, too, was at my grandma's house next door to my family.

You can read the pulley bone story on a previous blog post.

The flowers came from his aunt's and uncles flower shop, Mable's Florist in Besseemer, Alabama. I think they were carnations. I remember they were in a ceramic vase that was a little girl who had a basket of flowers on her back. I don't know what became of the vase, but I still have the card that was with it.

Kenneth was really bashful around girls. A cousin had told me he didn't like girls. But he was with his daddy who, along with my grandma and some teenage cousins, wanted me to marry him someday. So I imagine his daddy prompted him to give me the flowers.

My grandmother, a cousin, three of my then-five siblings, and I, all had birthdays in July, so we would have an ice cream party together in Grandma's backyard. We had gathered there when Kenneth and his daddy--Mr. Murray, we kids called him--got to the party (Mr. Murray boarded with my grandparents). And Kenneth walked up to me, turned his head, and said, "here."

See how romantic he was, even back then at barely thirteen-years-old?

THE MISTAKEN HEIRESS coming soon

I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11).

Hope and a future? How can Kate believe these words apply to her, when her plans for the inheritance she thought was hers, is claimed by an arrogant stranger with bright blue eyes and a silly grin? To keep an eye on what the stranger is doing with her family's old home place, she agrees to help him repair the deserted farmhouse and clear adjoining woodlands. But after Kate falls for the man, who will repair her broken heart when a lovely, young woman and two small children suddenly appear to help him map out plans for a new house?

For the writing of Kate's story, I drew on my experience writing and publishing short fiction and drama, and as a newspaper columnist and journalist writing about people with a fierce love for the land. While living for several years among descendants of the first settlers to our community and writing numerous stories about them, I have come to understand their love for "the old home place." Living with my husband Ken and several generations of our family on land settled by his ancestors, I have come to love it, too.

Please watch for The Mistaken Heiress by Shelba Shelton Nivens, a contemporary, inspirational romance from Harlequin/Heartsong in April, 2014.