"A Soldier's Promise" with Book Giveaway

I am pleased to announce that I am helping to host a blog tour for Cheryl Wyatt and her new book "A Soldier's Promise." I have had the chance to read "A Soldier's Promise" and I highly recommend it. I started it late on a Saturday night thinking I'd read a couple of chapters, head to bed, then finish it up on Sunday afternoon. Well, that didn't happen!! I stayed up until I finished every single page. I was hooked from the first chapter and just couldn't put it down. I was so captured in the world of Amber Stanton - as the female lead, she is a very relatable character.

BACK COVER BLURB
"My name's Bradley. I'm eight and have cancer. I want to meet a Special Forces soldier more than anything. Well, almost anything. Having a family would be nice."

U.S. Air Force pararescue jumper Joel Montgomery promised to make a sick child's wish come true. Well, not the family part—not with Joel's past. And so despite vowing never to set foot back in Refuge, Illinois, Joel parachuted onto the boy's school lawn to a huge smile. But another smile unexpectedly stole Joel's heart: that of Bradley's beautiful teacher, Amber Stanton, who was trying to adopt the boy. And trying to show Joel it was time for new vows.

AUTHOR BIO
Cheryl Wyatt's closest friends would never dream the mayhem she plots during announcements at church. An RN-turned-SAHM, joyful chaos rules her home and she delights in the stealth moments God gives her to write. She stays active in her church and in her laundry room. She's convinced that having been born on a Naval base on Valentine's Day destined her to write military romance.

Prior to publication, Cheryl took courses through Christian Writers Guild. An active member of RWA, FHL and ACFW, she won numerous awards with multiple manuscripts. Visit her on the Web at www.CherylWyatt.com. Sign up for her newsletter for news and chances to enter contests with great prizes. Hang with her on the web at www.Scrollsquirrel.blogspot.com. You can also find her skittering around Steeple Hill's message boards as "Squirl" at www.SteepleHill.com.

INTERVIEW
Your website says that you were born on a Naval base - Have you been able to travel the world? Will those settings be portrayed in your books?

I was born at Camp Pendleton in San Diego California. My dad was in the Marines. However, we moved to New Mexico after he got out of the military. My dad was wounded in action in Vietnam and also MIA for a few months. After being found he was flown to a US military ship before being transfered to a hospital in Japan to recover from his wounds and malaria.

My mother and I moved to New Mexico during this time and my dad joined us after the war was over. Soon after that, my little sister came along. :-) My father got out of the military when I was young, so we didn't move again until I was in high school. Then we moved three times. LOL! Some of those settings will be in my books.

You like to plot mayhem...What's the funniest thing you've ever done?

I am a huge practical joker and so I'm always placing my characters in defenseless situations. For instance, brave, strong Pararescue Jumper Chance gets stuck at the mall with several women shopping. He's been on glacier and ocean rescues with no trouble but really struggles to survive this shopping excursion with four women. LOL! That scene was pretty funny. Not sure if Chance's story will ever sell (the original version received a rejection) but it sure was fun to write that scene. That was probably (to me) one of the funniest scenes I've written.

The funniest personal thing I've personally done was twenty years ago when I worked in the OB ward at a hospital in Carbondale. I was a new nurse and didn't know the department all that well. A tour came in, meaning a woman who just wanted to look around, and I accidentally admitted her. Through miscommunication on the part of another nurse I worked with, I thought the tour woman was a patient who had been sent in from a doctor's office because the baby looked to be in distress on the office monitor. Unfortunately they neglected to tell me a tour was also coming in and we didn't know the names of either women. So I had this woman get in a bed, helped her undress, put a baby monitor on her, and go through the entire admission proceedure. Very embarrassing once I found out she wasn't an actual patient. Her and her husband got a great laugh out of that though. They just thought they were getting the executive treatment tour. LOL! Nurses are STILL talking about that story, especially when they're training new nurses.

The funniest thing that's ever happened to me was some friends snuck to my workplace, got my keys from coworkers while I was busy. They then took my bucket seat out using screwdrivers and put a bean bag there. So I had to drive my sports car home sitting on a stupid bean bag. Another friend filled my car with over a hundred balloons. Unfortunately it happened on a night when I had to leave work on an emergent basis because my mother had had a heart attack. I had to fling balloons out my window for ten miles because I could not take the time to get all the balloons out prior to going to meeting the ambulance at the hospital they were taking my mom to. I got pulled over for littering and speeding. The officer helped me get the rest of the balloons out and gave me a police escort to the hospital. It wasn't funny then, I was steaming mad and yelling names into the air at my friend that Christians ought not be saying. But, it's really funny now, especially since my mom ended up being okay.

What inspired you to write the story "A Soldier's Promise"?

I had two friends lose their daughters to leukemia after valiant battles. The thing I kept thinking all through their heart-wrenching plight and flight was how incredibly courageous their little girls (ages 8 and 9) were, even up to the moments of their deaths.

Talking to their mothers, who were literally living every mother's nightmare, I realized one thing: If courage could cure cancer, these two girls' faith and fight alone would have eradicated it from this earth.

So, to honor these girls' memories and their courage in the face of this devastating illness, I decided to write about a little boy with cancer. Only in my story, I could control the outcome. You'll have to read the book to find out the ending, but suffice it to say that I'd hoped and prayed with everything in me that Brandy and Nanette's precious girls' story would have ended as happily as did Bradley's, Joel's, and Amber's in A Soldier's Promise. In fact in a sequel, I have a secondary character mention that very quote, only he says it in regards to Bradley, the child suffering cancer in the book.

If courage could cure cancer, that child's fight and faith alone would have eradicated it from the earth.

I wrote this book from my heart for every family and every child who has had to face childhood cancer.


If you would like to chance to read Cheryl's book, "A Soldier's Promise," please leave a comment below. Make sure to leave your contact info if I don't already know how to reach you. I'll draw a winner on January 8th. If you aren't my winner, here's the link to purchase "A Soldier's Promise."