Christian/Inspirational authors panel today at 5.30pm EST on The G-ZONE

The week just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Today I have at least three authors on the blogtalk radio show at 5.30 pm EST today. They are in no particular order: Karen Anna Vogel, Karen Malena and Roger Rheinheimer. Will we have fun, you bet, that was a bad question.

Karen Anna Vogel is the author of the hugely successful “Amish Knitting Circle” digital short story series. Her first one “Beginnings-Volume 1”, hit Number One on the Amazon Kindle charts for short stories. Not in its category, for all of Kindle, Number One in the world. Not too shabby. She releases Volume 4 today, “Snowflakes”. There will be a major announcement regarding her and her work during the show.

Here is her something on “Amish Knitting Circle” and about Karen Anna Vogel:

“Granny Weaver is praying for five women in her Old Order Amish community in Smicksburg, PA., but nothing seems to be happening. Spinning wool one day she ponders the fact that fibers wrapped around each other make a yarn that’s hard to break.  Maybe the women she sees unraveling need to be spun together so they don’t break.

So Granny starts a knitting circle to make items for tornado victims in Joplin, MO. She invites Maryann who looks too tired and needs a break from her eight children.  Ella seems mighty down since a doctor told her she can’t have children. Emma feels she’ll never get married because of her weight. Ruth has been depressed since the day she got married and won’t tell anyone why. Elizabeth never married to take care of her handicapped father, but others suspects she has a broken heart over a broken courtship.

Over the course of a year these women open up at the knitting circle. Their hearts are encouraged, being knit together in love as they face trials and troubles…together.”

About Karen Anna Vogel:

A trusted English friend among Amish in Western PA and Western NY, my four grown children call me an ‘Amish Addict.’ My husband of thirty years shares my addiction. Our Old Order Amish friends have taken us back to a time when life was slower. Slow enough to enjoy our faith, family and friends. Slow enough to make me relax and join a knitting circle and learn to spin wool. Wanting to share what I’ve learned from these gentle people led me to write Amish fiction. I’m represented by Joyce Hart of Hartline Literary Agency and blog under Amish Crossings: http://karenannavogel.blogspot.com/   Member of Pittsburgh East Scribes and ACFW. “

Karen Malena:

“              Coming from an old-fashioned Italian family in Southwestern Pennsylvania, I learned passion and love, anger and forgiveness.  Faith in God has sustained me through many ups and downs.  This roller coaster of life has given me the imagination to put pen to paper.

     This story is dedicated to my son, Matt, who has struggled with his own issues of low self-worth, and overcome them.”

Roger Rheinheimer

“Ava Troyer never really considered the possibility of life outside of the warm, protective Amish community.  Even during her state-mandated schooling through the eighth grade, she would dreamily fantasize about whether any of the other Amish boys in the history class right after lunch was going to be the father of her children, or if she would meet the man of her dreams from another state, an exciting possibility.  But the wreck that killed her father and almost killed Ava, that early Sunday morning, at the hands of an all-night reveler, changed everything.  The young man in military fatigues that pulled her to safety spoke Pennsylvania Dutch to her, but he wasn’t Amish.  Or was he?  And how could she be so powerfully attracted to a young man about to go overseas to war, something she fiercely believed was wrong?”

Roger Rheinheimer spent the first eighteen years of his life in northern Indiana. His father was the only doctor for a small town of 1200, and had a hitching rail on a side street by his office for the Amish patients. His father bought an eighty acre farm, and Roger and his older brother worked it, raising cattle and growing crops.

While he was still in high school, Roger learned woodworking skills from Elmer Schlabach, his Amish mentor. They built houses in the old-fashioned tradition, from hand-mixing the concrete for the foundations to hand-nailing the shingles. The only phase they did not do was the electrical. To this day, Roger enjoys using his wood crafting skills, making acoustic guitars and furniture.

Roger earned an undergraduate degree in Behavioral Psychology from a small private college in the Shenandoah Valley, took a Creative Writing class, loved it, and published a short story called My Brother.  He was a regular contributing writer to the college newspaper.

Roger has two novels in print and ebook, Amish Snow and Yield Spread: a novel.  “