Those are the words on a pretty little plaque that hangs in my guest bathroom. It features a very cheery design with bright, colorful circles and a few glittering pom poms. Whenever I look at it, I get the feeling that life is indeed beautiful.

But is it always?

This week the world was saddened and shocked by the suicide deaths of Kate Spade, handbag designer, and Anthony Bourdain, food writer and TV celebrity, famous for his weekly documentary “Parts Unknown.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide rates have risen nearly 30% since 1999. This is shocking to say the least. What is the reason for this? When we look at Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain and other celebrities, their lives seem to be beautiful, but “you don’t know if the roof is leaking until you get inside,” Anthony Bourdain.

You may be wondering why I’m writing about suicide on this blog. The reason is that the second book in my Egypt series, In the Wilderness, deals with this very topic. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, here it is in a nutshell:

Marva, the protagonist, is tortured by guilt after having killed her father as a result of sexual abuse. Certain that the police will one day arrest her for the murder, she sees suicide as her only option. But before she can carry out her carefully-laid plans, something terrible happens – something that uncovers her closely guarded secret and leaves her groping in the wilderness.

Here we see one of the factors that can contribute to depression and suicidal thoughts – guilt – but experts tell us that there’s usually a combination of factors that push someone over the edge. As someone who has worked in behavioral health, counseling suicidal patients, I have some idea of the burden these people carry. That is why I wrote this book – to give hope to people who are hopeless and understanding to those who love them and suffer along with them.

For a limited time, you can download the first chapter of this gripping novel by clicking the link or signing up on the pop-up form.

Happy Memorial Day to all you wonderful folks out there. The day is almost over, but I hope you had a relaxing day with friends and family and are ready to resume your normal routine tomorrow. Maybe you also got in some reading, or plan to do that before bed, which is always a blessing.

As for me, I spent the day catching up on emails and editing my new book In the Promised Land to upload to Amazon. This is the third book in the Egypt trilogy and I’m super excited to be finally putting it out there into the world. If you’ve already read the first two books Coming Out of Egypt and In the Wilderness, then you should be anxiously awaiting the grand finale.

Some time ago, I revealed the cover and blurb. Here they are again to whet your appetite. As a young nun at the Corpus Christi Home for Girls, Marva Garcia has always leaned on the Everlasting Arms for wisdom and strength to meet the day-to-day challenges of mentoring delinquent girls. But then the challenges multiply, and Marva sees her orderly world crumbling around her. As she tries to make sense of all this, Marva is increasingly drawn to another pair of arms that had been there for her all along. Can she love a man and still love God?
Fans of the perennial favorite The Sound of Music will love this Caribbean story of a nun’s struggle to balance her passion for God with her growing love for her childhood sweetheart.

If you enjoy reading this blog, please sign up to receive updates and special offers.

I am still in a state of euphoria following the royal wedding on Saturday, which is why I’m so late writing this post today. I’ve been viewing all the stunning photos splashed all over the internet and reading the comments—some of which are downright, Pulitzer-prize worthy—and berating myself for not doing some work.

So, here goes. This post is intended for my fellow authors, but readers are welcome to peep over their shoulders to see the reason for some terrible reviews you see on Amazon. When agents and editors reject our work, they usually say that the fault is not with our writing. The story is just not the right fit for them. Yeah, right. And I’m the Duchess of Sussex.

Sometimes, the writing is bad, very bad. Typos, grammatical errors, misspellings, you name it, it’s there. Recently, I gave a bad review to a book that was given me in exchange for an honest review, and, truth be told, it contained none of those flaws mentioned above. In fact, the prose was beautiful. Descriptive passages to die for. But that’s where it ended for me. Even though the book belonged to a genre I don’t read, I was prepared to give it a shot, but try as I did, I couldn’t connect with the protagonist, couldn’t understand her motive, and most of the time I couldn’t understand what was taking place. It was a very difficult read.

I felt badly about giving such a poor rating, but I had to write my honest impression. I was happy to see that some other reviewers gave the book four stars, but it just didn’t work for me. So, the next time you get a poor rating, take it with a pinch of salt, as we say. Maybe it wasn’t the right choice for the reviewer, or she was distracted by a wedding—hers or someone else’s.

You can still pick up a copy of Coming Out of Egypt, book 1 of the Egypt series for just 99c. and In the Wilderness for $2.99. If you haven’t joined this newsletter, you are missing out on special offers. So, please sign up on the form below. And look out for In the Promised Land, the third and final book in the series, soon to be on preorder.

Enjoy the video