The Good Girl by Christy Barritt

Tara Lancaster grew up in the shadow of her preacher father. Determined to please him, she burdened herself with following all the “Christian” rules. She even started a blog that taught other young women how to be the good girl. Then, her life changed. Accused of a heinous crime, she flees her current life and hides out at her sister’s. That’s where the haunting begins. Except Tara doesn’t believe in ghosts. She’s not sure she believes in anything. With her new found friends, including a handsome neighbor, Tara is bound to find out who’s behind the scary happenings or die trying.

This question remains— In the midst of the suspense, will she learn to lean on God’s love and grace?

If you enjoy reading Mary Higgins Clark, you’ll love this fast-paced suspense. I confess, I lost a few hours of sleep because I couldn’t put it down.

The book is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com

Here’s what Christy Barritt shared with me when I asked her about the writing journey for The Good Girl.

I wrote The Good Girl ten years ago as Hurricane Isabel was ravaging Virginia, the state I call home. My brother and his wife were going out of town and had asked me to come to Minnesota to dog sit. I didn’t have any kids back then, so I said yes, looking forward to the chance to get away and explore a new place.

Their house wasn’t what I expected. It was older, had squeaky floors, and no curtains on the windows. One night, I heard the gate outside my bedroom window mysteriously open. Another night, someone rang the doorbell past midnight. Just a few little quirky things like that had happened during my stay and got my brain whirling.

That’s when I got my idea for The Good Girl. In The Good Girl, superstar Christian Tara Lancaster comes to dog sit for her sister, who’s traveling Europe with her flavor-of-the-month boyfriend. Tara, a preacher’s kid, has always followed all of the rules, and life in return seemed especially blessed. Then everything came crashing down—her marriage, her career, her reputation. Her sister, on the other hand, followed none of the rules and her life seems seamless and blissful. Every idea Tara had for how her life would turn out is wrong. The story goes from there.

I really had a great time writing this book. As I said earlier, I wrote it several years ago. It made the rounds at several publishers, one of the editors even writing, “Someone is going to snatch up this book. I wish it was us.” I could never give up on this novel, though. Something about it just gripped me.

Of all the books I’ve written, this one has the strongest faith thread. Tara is really struggling to understand if God really loves her not. She’s struggling to know if God is even real or if her whole life has been build on a false premise. Add a ghost, fame-hungry friend, and hunky neighbor to the mix, and you’ve got one of my favorite stories that  I’ve ever written.

People have asked me, “Are you Tara?” The answer is no, I’m not Tara, but I have drawn on parts of my own experiences. I definitely put too much weight into what people think of me at times. I can also be a perfectionist. I’ve been wounded by my brothers and sisters in Christ, deeply at times. God is working on me, though, and my goal every day is to become just a little more like Him.

I hope people will read The Good Girl and walk away examining themselves, and their faith, and how they treat other Christians. The early feedback on the book has been positive. People have said that the book was not only entertaining, but it caused them to think and reevaluate their own thought patterns and actions.

To find out more information about the book, visit my website at: www.christybarritt.com.

Thanks so much for having me here!

Bio:

Christy Barritt is an author, freelance writer and speaker who lives in Virginia. She's married to her Prince Charming, a man who thinks she's hilarious--but only when she's not trying to be. Christy's a self-proclaimed klutz, an avid music lover who's known for spontaneously bursting into song, and a road trip aficionado. She's only won one contest in her life--and her prize was kissing a pig (okay, okay... actually she did win the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Suspense and Mystery for her book Suspicious Minds also). Her current claim to fame is showing off her mother, who looks just like former First Lady Barbara Bush.

When she's not working or spending time with her family, she enjoys singing, playing the guitar, and exploring small, unsuspecting towns where people have no idea how accident prone she is.

Do You Haiku?

I’ve enjoyed writing and reading poetry for years. When I worked in the library of an elementary school, I shared poems with the fourth and fifth grade, and then challenged them to write one for a contest. The haiku, a short poem first written in Japan, was a popular choice for an entry.

We can thank Japanese poet, Basho, for bringing this poetic form to the public. He wrote many of them that are now considered classics.

old pond…

a frog leaps in

water’s sound

         -Basho

lightning—

a heron’s cry stabs

the darkness

         -Basho

A traditional Japanese haiku consists of three lines divided into a five-seven-five sound unit pattern. When American’s translated these small Japanese poems, they found that the sound units and syllables differed. The result, American haiku does not hold to the five-seven-five pattern unless it is natural to the poem.

A haiku is meant to capture a moment in time. Written in the present tense and usually containing a seasonal word, the tiny poem is like a snapshot catching that one instance that may have been missed. Most haiku contain a short phrase of description and a fragment or aha moment. This form of poetry is fun to write and collect. I like to sit outside for a while and just observe. I almost always find something interesting to write about, along with that aha flash.

Here are some of my seasonal haiku…Enjoy!

wobbly goats

born before midnight—
spring renewed

 

queen anne’s lace crowns

country roads—

blue chicory salutes

crimson moon floats

across chilly skies—

pumpkins grin

ice covered trees—

crystal glistens, sun

shine through jeweled glass

Do you read or write poetry?

A Day at the Art Museum

“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” – Osho

We live less than an hour from a city and have the opportunity to visit some interesting places.  On Saturday, my daughter and I loaded her kids in the Jeep and took a road trip.

Learning about embossing

As we drove into the museum parking lot, my three-year-old grandson spied a tall, red, metal installment piece. “Look, Mommy, look.” He loved it. Later in the museum he spotted the sculpture of a lion, bigger than him. He walked around and looked and discovered that the ancient cat had lost his tail. He turned to us. “The lion is sad. He lost his tail.” He talked about that the rest of the trip.

Creating a print

My seven-year-old granddaughter loves Van Gogh’s Sunflower and Kandinsky’s circles. Between her mom’s artistic influence and her art teacher’s introduction to various artists, Dylan has gained an enthusiasm for creativity. What a joy to watch art appreciation come full circle, as my daughter shared an original Van Gogh and some of her favorite artists with her daughter.

It’s never too early to introduce the arts to children. God, the ultimate artist, gave these painters, sculptors and designers incredible talent. If you live in or near a city, you most likely have access to an art museum. If not, maybe the local library or historical society exhibits art. If you are an artist, volunteer to lead a program to a group of children. I promise you’ll be blessed.

Do you have a place you like to go to view art? If so, where?

Doodles :)

Do You Doodle?

Some people might not see doodling as a form of art, but I do. I am the person sitting in church with flowers and butterflies penned on my sermon notes (see picture), or the woman in the office with sunflowers and swirls on her calendar. According to psychologist, Jackie Andrade*, drawing while listening assists the brain in retaining information. Evidently, while I’m doodling I’m not daydreaming. Instead, I’m actually paying attention. That’s good news for me. Making tiny pictures can add to the creative process, too. My imagination flies when I draw. And, it's relaxing :o)

Are you a:

~Daisy doodler – drawing flowers or fanciful mini-art

~Shape doodler – drawing squares, circles, hearts, etc.

~Fill-in doodler – coloring in empty spaces

~Name doodler – write names and outline or draw around them

~Anything goes doodler – as long as your pencil’s moving you’re happy

Do you doodle? If you do, what kind of doodler are you?

*Psychologist, Jackie Andrade initiated a challenge to forty people. While listening to a boring phone message, twenty people doodled while they alternately recorded names mentioned on the tape. The other twenty only recorded names. As a result, the doodlers recalled 29% more information than the people who only listed names.

ANDRADE, J. (2010). What does doodling do?. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24(1), 100-106. doi:10.1002/acp.1561

What I've Been Reading

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, OneRemarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon 

For a long time I tended to see the world through the lens of my life in the United States. I grew up in a safe home with electricity, clean well water from indoor plumbing, a warm bed and wonderful meals prepared by loving hands. We even had a colored television.

When I went through college classes that opened my eyes to situations in other countries as well as some in the USA, I realized the plight that many live with. The destruction, poverty and war that tore apart countries was devastating. What saddened me even more was the injustice given to women. We are blessed in the US to have the opportunity to gain an education, work in the field we want, raise our children as we want and worship where we want. Many women are seen as nothing more than a possession. They cannot think for themselves or contribute to their communities.

Ms. Lemmon tells the story of a group of women who conquered fear and created a network for survival. When the Taliban seized the city of Kabul, five sisters lost their opportunity to attend college. They were forced to take backward steps and huddle in their homes, afraid to show their faces in public. But, this is more than a story about a family living through war. These women rose above fear and fought back to keep their home and loved ones safe, while they combined their abilities to create a successful business. Through their work, they reached out to neighbors and taught skills, even as bombs blew and missiles hurtled.

Led by Kamila Sidiqi, one of the sisters, they found a way to use sewing skills and sheer determination to not only come out of the war alive, but to draw the women of the community together. I found their story both inspirational and encouraging.