Thanks to Bill Blais for stopping by today. See the bottom for contact information and how to find his book, No Good Deed.
The Strength of Love
Author Bill Blais discusses how Kelly and Shawn, characters from his Kelly and Umber Series, manage to maintain such a strong and loving relationship through the struggles they face.
Thanks to Katy for asking me to guest post, today, and I thought I'd talk a bit about the relationship between Kelly Mcginnis, the protagonist of No Good Deed, and her husband Shawn.
I wanted Kelly and Shawn's marriage to be a strong, well-grounded, mutually supportive one, capable of taking on the 'burdens' I had saddled them with: Shawn's ongoing illness (Muscular Sclerosis), the loss of Kelly's bread-winning job in the middle of a very bad economy, the need to care for two growing children -- not to mention what Kelly gets involved in later.
Now, it's my experience that some of the strongest relationships are those based first on solid friendships, so Kelly and Shawn share that trait, with a history that reaches back well before their courtship and marriage. While they weren't childhood sweethearts, their early friendship provided the foundation upon which their much deeper relationship could be built.
This long-term knowledge of one another is, for me, a fundamental key to weathering any storm that life can throw at us. Strong relationships compensate for difficult times, rather than make them worse: When one person is weak, the other is strong.
Of course, no marriage is perfect. Sometimes we smother our significant others with attention, sometimes we baby them when we should let them go their own way, sometimes we're just not paying attention, and sometimes we get angry. We're human and that's life (just wait until Shawn and Kelly try to Pergo their floor together).
In most cases, though -- whether it's dealing with the debilitating disease of a loved one, the loss of a much-needed job or the 'joyous noise' of raising children -- I firmly believe that a relationship with roots stands a much higher chance of enduring, even thriving, in any adversity.
Book and contact information
Synopsis: Kelly McGinnis has spent her adult life trying to do the right thing, but as a newly down-sized mother of twins and the wife of a man living with Muscular Sclerosis, she also knows that trying isn’t always enough.
While interrupting a scene of police brutality, Kelly unwittingly releases a real, live demon. After she manages to kill the creature through gut instinct and blind luck, she is approached to join a secret group of demon hunters who reveal an underworld of monsters and magic. Kelly’s mill town upbringing proves an unexpected asset and the pay more than covers her husband’s treatments, but the work begins to undermine her sense of right and wrong as she struggles to maintain her ‘normal’ life.
When she encounters Umber, a compelling incubus with an unexpectedly human story, Kelly learns that the truth is far stranger and more terrifying than she imagined.
My review has also just been posted, so please be sure to read it - you should find a link to it to the right under "Recent Posts".
Read a Sample Chapter of No Good Deed.
Purchase No Good Deed on Amazon.
AuthorBio: Bill Blais is a writer, web developer and perennial part-time college instructor. His novels include Witness (winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Award for Fantasy) and the Kelly & Umber urban fantasy series. Bill graduated from Skidmore College before earning an MA in Medieval Studies from University College London. He lives in Maine with his wife and daughter.
Author Website
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Tour Page
Blog Tour Set Up By Illuminated Tours (http://illuminatedtours.weebly.com/)
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