Fay Risner's Blog (132)

Looking for a Christmas Holiday read that is light and humorous. I have written three books just right for the holidays sold on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and for kindle and nook.

Christmas Traditions is the first Amish book I wrote, and I got the idea from the story by looking at a Christmas Card.

Margaret Goodman was traveling into the country to visit her nephew even though she knew her late sister's husband was going to tell her to go home. Margaret had left the Amish…

Once again American's Miss Marple, Gracie Evans is running down clues to a mystery - Locked Rock, Iowa's town drunk's disappearance. She has the help of her two coharts – Melinda Applegate and Madeline Patterford. Gracie doesn't sit and knit like Miss Marple. Instead, she rocks and dozes while she dwells on the mystery at hand.

Join Gracie…

Here it is – Book 11 of the Nurse Hal Among The Amish series.

Available in a couple days on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords.com. For the month of July this book and ebook as well as all of by other books and ebooks will be on sale at Smashwords.com for half price. Give my selections a look through and see if any of them interest you while the…

I am Fay Risner, an independent author. Over the years, I've built up a fan base for my books. The positive comments from readers please me and bolster my ego. I have email contact with many of the people who buy my books. Sometimes, we chat about what is going on in our lives. We have become cyberspace friends. Some of them send me Christmas cards. It makes me smile when the card says Merry Christmas followed by when will your next book be ready to buy. Don't forget to put me on your…

Here’s your chance to try all of my ebooks at half price. I have a variety of storylines to choose from. The book sale lasts at Smashwords.com for a week starting Sunday March 4th. Submit author name Fay Risner and see the whole list of my books. Click on each book for a detailed synopsis to see what the books are about and the reduced price.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/37469 for the first book in my Amish Series – A…

My latest novella Uninvited Visitors started out as a contest entry for a short story. I expanded the short story into romance set during the depression in the 1930's.

Synopsis for the book

 During the Great Depression, Rachel felt lucky to be teaching school in Oklahoma. She was eager to start her second year as soon…

Thanks, NaNoWriMo! For the seventh year in a row you have jump started me into writing a book, finishing it within the deadline and editing it in December. Now that book is published.

My Historical Cozy Mystery is titled Who Killed The Schoolmarm. It is book number 10 in the Amazing Gracie Mystery Series.

Gracie Evans and the other elderly residents…

Having written a book during NaNoWri Mo contest for seven years, I love the challenge of writing 50,000 words by the last day in November. This time I was had over 51,000 by the sixteenth day. According to the site's stats, I have 363,754 words written for the contest in the last seven years. Before I published each of those books, the total was more.

Email…

This story is part fiction and part nonfiction and here is why. Years ago, we lived on a farm that was homesteaded in the 1800's. In the 1970's, an elderly woman and her daughter stopped by one day to reminisce and look around at…

Sometimes writing short stories seems as hard to write when trying to keep to a word limit as writing a book. When a theme is needed for a short story that's to be submitted to a contest that makes my mind search even harder to come up with the story.

I entered the short story Teapot On Whistler Street, which I have enlarged for this book, in the Arkansas…

Katrina’s Gift – A historical story

My latest book, a novella, is in print now. My idea for this book was a short story I wrote for a contest several years ago when the contest theme was vampires and supernatural stories. I expanded the short story into a novella. I happened to see a friend post two pictures of a rainbow last year near her home in Northern Iowa and realized I could use those pictures for my cover. Katrina sees a rainbow aura before she has a vision. The…

The Wayward Preacher – Amazing Gracie Mystery Series – Book 9 Standard The Wayward Preacher – Amazing Gracie Mystery – Book 9 – is another historical cozy mystery book in the series about Gracie Evans and her friends who live in a retirement home in Locked Rock, Iowa. This book was my entry in the National Novel Write Month contest (NaNoWriMo) in November 2016.…

Locked Rock, Iowa Hatchet Murders in Large Print Standard Title sounds like a real horror story. Locked Rock, Iowa Hatchet Murders, an Amazing Gracie Mystery in the Gracie Evans series. Actually, the closest the book has gotten to horror is becoming a prop for a movie – Outcast. However there are murders by hatchet in the book that makes it a who dun it story. A book in the series Amazing Gracie Mysteries A book in the series Amazing Gracie Mysteries Synopsis…

Imagine that! Of course, I must admit I had imagined one of my books being used in a movie some day. With tongue in cheek, I say I had a grander idea in mind other than a prop, but hey I'll take what I can get. The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea.

It was mid August when I received an email from Kristina Baker Smith, Associate Producer, Stephen Folker Films at Davenport, Iowa, wondering if I'd like to donate a book for the film. I emailed back all sorts of questions.…

I've entered the National Novel Write Month contest again this year for the seventh time and have just logged in with my total words for day two. It's always a fun incentive to do the first draft of a book in a month and get over the fifty thousand words to be considered a winner. By the first of the year I'll have this book ready to publish.

My total word count for all the years I've entered a book is 267, 711. That was before I edit and expanded the books.

I've chosen a story…

My husband, Harold, and I arrived in time to set out my books before the audience arrived. Before we carried the boxes in I had Harold take a picture of me at the door. I picked up a box of books from the back seat, and Harold followed me with another box.This was where we were headed the evening of June 16th.…

Second Hand Goods is the ninth book in my Nurse Hal series. I've just published the book in Amazon, smashwords.com and Barnes and Noble in paperback and ebooks.

Back of book synopsis

Early spring is once again turning the snow melted hills of southern Iowa into green, lush pastures filled with livestock and their…

What do you think of when you hear the words second hand goods. When I read those words, I thought of days gone by when clothes were hand me downs from child to child in a family. These days maybe second hand goods are the same as someone's junk is someone else's treasures like the items found at a garage sale or a yard sale. How about Thrift Shops that sell gently used clothing? All that logic seemed reasonable to me.

While researching about the Amish I found the mention of second…

This was my last week of the writing course I was taking online at Future Learn. I enjoyed the eight week free course, submitting assignments and getting other writers thoughts about what I had written. I didn't struggle to hand in a freshly written paragraph and short story. I used from what I already had so it was easier to get the assignments done. Now on to finishing my next Amish book about Nurse Hal.

My last post was about the character paragraph I handed in and the critiques I…

Time has a way of passing faster than I would like when I have other things besides writing on my mind. It's been a month since I wrote a post. The reason why is on Jan. 30th I tried to cross the living room with one foot very much asleep and found out the hard way my foot wasn't going to hold me up. As I fell I heard a snap and realized I had broken a bone. My husband took me to ER for x-rays. A ligament tore loose from a bone and took a piece of the bone with it. The other ligaments in…