Meet Nancy Massand and her debut novel, The Circle Unbroken. The Circle Unbroken begins in 1964 Mississippi. It won the 2018 RWA Hearts Through History competition.
I
fell in love with the cover and followed it to Amazon and the look inside feature.
This woman can write! She’s giving away three ARC’s because she is a new author
and needs some reviews. I promise you I am entering to win one. Nancy, please tell us a little about yourself.
I live in NYC and teach literature and
writing in a small private school. When I’m not writing, my husband and I are
at the beach or visiting our kids and grandkids. This is my first published
novel. Call me a late bloomer! It's a fabulous start. I love the first two chapters. You have a wonderful voice.
Well, there’s Heathcliff. Not exactly the one
you’d bring home to meet your mother, but jaw-dropping nonetheless. Seriously,
though, I like Jo March in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women for her outside-the-stereotype feistiness, Lizzie
Boylston in Jodi Daynard’s The Midwife’s
Revolt for the same reason, and Johnny Watkins in Jodi Daynard’s A More Perfect Union for his charming
naivete. In other genres, I always liked Aerin from Robin McKinley’s YA
classic, The Hero and the Crown. She
fights dragons and wins. She fights her evil uncle and wins. She marries for
love and lives a long and happy life, but when he dies she rules her kingdom
with her soulmate forever. She’s just a win-win in every respect.
It was a series of moments, but they all
revolve around The Circle Unbroken.
The moment I found out I was a finalist in the RWA Romance Through the Ages
Contest. The moment I found out I won. And then the request from the judge of
the contest, the editor of Soul Mate Publishing, to see the whole manuscript.
And then her offer to publish it. The day they sent me the cover for approval.
And finally, seeing it listed on Amazon. It’s still really new, and I hope for
more surprises to come. I’m kind of shell-shocked.
I go for a walk. That’s how the idea for The Circle Unbroken was born. I was
waiting for the walk light at a busy intersection and noticed an older woman
standing beside me. She had a cane and one foot was in a cast. When I offered
her an arm to cross the street she accepted, since it was a quick light and she
couldn’t walk very fast. We stopped traffic as the light changed three times in
our crossing. As we inched across the street, she told me she had just lost her
husband of fifty years. And she had this beautiful smile. What kind of love
would leave a woman smiling after fifty years? After we parted, her story
followed me home and flowed out of my fingers, changing and growing as I worked
on it. And here it is. I consider it a gift.
First drafts are usually crap. Spill it out
on the page and then delete all the garbage. The sentence or two that’s left is
the story you want to tell. Now you can work with it and make it beautiful.
Don’t rush it! Life is long. You have time. Your aim should not be to publish.
Your aim is to tell a great story. Once you have a great story, the rest will
take care of itself.
I’d also advise finding a writers’ group of
people who don’t know you. Pick the most ruthless critics you can find and lose
your sensitivity and pride. They’ll be good for you. Iron sharpens iron.
What divides you from people you used to love? Or maybe even
people you still love? Wounds cut deep, and grief or hurt can sever the
strongest bonds. You pull away to avoid further injury. Or you build walls to
protect yourself from potential harm. Loving turns to hating, or at least
that’s what you’re saying out loud, because it’s too painful to speak the ache
in your heart.
So you laugh, avoid, deny, eat, drink, binge-watch, [insert your
favorite addiction or guilty pleasure here] to convince the world and yourself
that you’re perfectly fine. But you’re not. And in your most honest moments,
you admit it.
I think we all wrestle with broken relationships in our own ways.
Meet Mavis Powell, the young woman severed from her family in The Circle
Unbroken. She’s trapped in a cycle of loss and regret that feels like a
vortex spinning out of control. And no one, least of all Mavis, is willing to
step out from the fear or anger that isolates them in order to repair the
damage done.
Come on a journey with me through despair, hope, and restoration
in my novel, The Circle Unbroken. Like any story, like life itself, it
is not without pain or loss, for it is life that births our stories. But it
offers hope that we, like Mavis, can get through the hurt that once crippled
us. Not without scars, maybe, for Jesus himself carries the scars of
redemption, but with more strength, more love, more goodness, than we ever
thought possible.
Let’s take the first step together.
Blurb
An impulsive
choice, an untimely death, a shattered family.
Can love survive even this?
New York City. 1964.
My daddy made me go. I didn’t want to. He sent me to his brother’s family in New York City for the summer, because things were getting hot in Mississippi. And he wasn’t talking about the weather.
Nancy Massand’s debut novel, The Circle Unbroken, follows sheltered, sixteen-year-old Mavis Powell from Mississippi on a transformational journey. Mavis is completely undone when she moves in with her cousins up north and meets smooth-talking Harris Brown. But there’s a chasm between Mavis’ religious family and Harris’ roots in the Harlem clubs.
Their new love quickly escalates to recklessness as they head back to Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Although their motives are pure, the result is tragic. Slammed with rejection by her new family as well as the church, Mavis’ first year with Harris threatens to be her last. What does it take to heal a broken family? How do you save a love that’s pulled so tight it’s ready to snap? The Circle Unbroken is a redeeming testimony to the power of love.http://bit.ly/TheCircleUnbroken
Can love survive even this?
New York City. 1964.
My daddy made me go. I didn’t want to. He sent me to his brother’s family in New York City for the summer, because things were getting hot in Mississippi. And he wasn’t talking about the weather.
Nancy Massand’s debut novel, The Circle Unbroken, follows sheltered, sixteen-year-old Mavis Powell from Mississippi on a transformational journey. Mavis is completely undone when she moves in with her cousins up north and meets smooth-talking Harris Brown. But there’s a chasm between Mavis’ religious family and Harris’ roots in the Harlem clubs.
Their new love quickly escalates to recklessness as they head back to Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Although their motives are pure, the result is tragic. Slammed with rejection by her new family as well as the church, Mavis’ first year with Harris threatens to be her last. What does it take to heal a broken family? How do you save a love that’s pulled so tight it’s ready to snap? The Circle Unbroken is a redeeming testimony to the power of love.http://bit.ly/TheCircleUnbroken
And finally, where can we find you?
twitter: @MassandNancy
Instagram: instagram.com/nancymassand
Thank you for being here,
Nancy. Here’s the Rafflecopter. Nancy is giving away the ARC which is in
PDF format and works in Kindle or any eReader. If you win please consider
leaving a review.
Reviews are soul food for authors.
We all love to know someone is reading and hopefully loving our story. Happy
reading.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
0 comments :
Post a Comment
I love reading comments! Please do.