A Blog Visit and a Giveaway of Suburban Dangers

Marianne Evans is hosting me and highlighting Suburban Dangers over on her blog, A Minute with Marianne.

I'm also offering a giveaway of an e-book of Suburban Dangers. Head over to her blog to enter. She will announce the winner Friday, May 26th.

Here is what people are saying about Suburban Dangers:

"This book is a page-turner that defies a reader’s ability to stop once the book is begun. Lee is quickly becoming one of my go-to authors for a good read." —Edie Melson, author and blogger

"Megan Whitson Lee has written a book that should be on the “must read” list for all teens, boys and girls, as well as their parents and grandparents."--Amazon Review

"A fast paced, eye opening, well written novel, depicting a problem that may be closer to home than you think. When you start it you will have a hard time putting it down!"--Amazon Review

Cover Reveal and My Place in the Wall

On May 12, 2017, my newest novel Suburban Dangers will be released through Pelican Book Group. It will be published under their Watershed imprint, which is YA—a slight departure from my usual women’s contemporary genre. Originally the novel had too many POVs, one of which was a sixteen-year-old girl. She was only meant to be a backstory, but she became the main story. Steven James says to write what the story needs not necessarily what was written in your original plans (or something like that; I’m paraphrasing).

Suburban Dangers carries the same theme as Captives—sex trafficking. Here is the cover (I really, really love this cover!)

Back in May, I attended the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference in Black Mountain, North Carolina. I attended for the first time in 2015, and it was life changing. It was no different this time. But this year Captives was a finalist in the women’s contemporary category for the Selah Award—an incredible honor and such a surprise.

It was Tuesday, the third day of the conference, and I was having a low spell. No particular reason, I just began to doubt what I was doing. Should I write Christian fiction? Or maybe I should just write for a secular audience. Maybe my subject matter was just too gritty. Or maybe I should write love stories and forget it. Frankly, I felt a little depressed about it. I skipped a class and sat out in the gorgeous mountain sunshine on the backside of one of the buildings, and I prayed. And I listened. And I didn’t hear anything. OK, no problem. Moving on to listen to the key note speech for the evening.

Eva Marie Everson gave the keynote speech that night. The message was that every writer has their “place in the wall,” and she used Nehemiah as her biblical illustration. When Nehemiah, the king’s cupbearer, began to rebuild the wall in Jerusalem, he was ridiculed. Bystanders told him his wall was useless and that he should come down and give it up. Nehemiah’s words: “I am not coming down from the wall. I’m doing God’s work.” Eva Marie asked all of the conference attendees (some 450 of us), to line the walls of the conference room in an illustration that each of us, no matter what sort of writing we were doing, all had a place in the wall in which we did God’s work.

The illustration was powerful. It was what I needed to hear. But the message didn’t stop there.

Later that night during book signings, I asked a well-known writer to sign a book for me (I won’t divulge her name as I do not know if she wishes this to be public knowledge). As I held up my name tag so she could write my name in the book, she suddenly said, “You’re the one that wrote the sex trafficking novel, right?”

Completely floored, I assented that I was.

“Well, thank you for writing that because my daughter is being trafficked.”

If the walls of the building had tumbled down around me at that moment, I wouldn't have been more surprised. She went on to say, “I couldn’t have written that story. I haven’t seen her in five years, have no idea where she is, and the only way I can deal with the pain is not to allow myself to have any feelings about it.”

Right then, I knew God was speaking to me. I have asked you to write this particular subject matter for a reason. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life. It may not be a pretty or fun topic, but it’s real and it’s happening and the stories need to be written.

The next night was awards night and the final evening of the conference, I did not win the Selah Award. That was fine with me. Cynthia Ruchti (a Christy Award finalist for the same book) won for As Waters Gone By, and I was very happy for her.

Near the end of the evening Edie Melson, director of the BRMCW Conference gave out the Director’s Choice Award. I wasn’t even paying attention; I was fiddling with something on the table or with my phone, so when my name and the title of Captives was read out as the winner in the fiction category, I nearly fainted. I fought tears all the way to the stage to accept this most unexpected award. When I stood on the stage with Edie, she whispered to me, “I could not get this book out of my mind, and that’s why you won.”

 

God hugged me. I felt it. It was truly as though God reached down and grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Do not come down from this wall. You’re doing My work.”

So when Suburban Dangers turned into a YA novel, I figured that was God’s work too. He alone knows who needs to read it.

Have you ever felt like you received confirmation that you were on the right track?

Set Free

Recently, a lot of people are getting involved in the fight against sex trafficking. Jaida Pinkett Smith, Natalie Grant, Ricky Martin, and Ashton Kutcher are just some celebrities who have lent their name and clout to the cause. Many other artists are joining in the battle against sexual exploitation. There is a position in the war for all of us.

Singer/Songwriter Joy Lippard is an inspirational artist and worship leader. After learning about the magnitude of global and domestic sex trafficking, Joy recorded an album called Set Free, with songs like "Let the Truth be Heard" and "I See a Light"--songs to educate and encourage. The music on this album is designed to help shed light on the hopelessness of the sex industry and offer a balm of understanding for trafficked victims. You can listen to the songs on her website and purchase the album here.

Joy is actively involved in the fight in other ways. She visits at-risk girls in detention centers and continues to minister to those in need of hope. She also has several other albums out and available for purchase on Amazon. I'm excited to see where and how God uses this young and talented musician.

Review of CAPTIVES

Head on over this evening to A Bench with a View to check out a review of Captives.

Betty, my blogger buddy, was kind enough to feature Captives today on her wonderful blog, A Bench with a View. It's a great review, and she also features a new suspense novel by Chris Fey, 30 Seconds.

Check out the review and Betty's blog HERE.

Meet the Characters of CAPTIVES

Three very different people--all of them on a journey where their lives intersect...

Blaise Timothy is a world-renowned cellist who has made her living traveling all over the United States and Europe, but her success in her professional life is in direct contrast to the failure in her love life. Moving from man to man, she is easily sucked into romantic relationships that are toxic and ill-fated. When her sister, Amy, goes missing, Blaise puts her life on hold to search for her younger sister. In the process, she learns more than she ever wanted to know about human trafficking as well as the darkness of her own heart.

Andrew Victor lives across the street from where Amy’s body is found and witnesses her covered body being carried out of the ravine. By profession he is an artist, but at thirty-one he has returned home from New York City without any money or direction. Andrew must live with his parents as he struggles to gain control over his life and an ever-increasing and dangerous addiction to pornography.

Asha Edgewater and her husband live in Washington, DC and work as missionaries. As a girl in Nepal, Asha was sold into sexual slavery—a bondage she didn’t escape until she was well into her twenties. Haunted by her past, Asha attempts to help others who have fallen victim to the enslavement of prostitution, and she feels a particular connection to Amy Timothy—the young girl whose life is snuffed out too soon. But for the grace of God that fate could have been hers…

Who are some of your favorite characters in literature?

An Excerpt from CAPTIVES

Okay, folks! Here’s a short excerpt from the opening of Captives…

 

A

my’s coffin had been closed for over an hour, but Douglas Timothy still couldn’t get the image of his daughter’s dead body out of his mind. The girl in that box looked nothing like the Amy he had known—the Amy he had loved and raised. Instead, the girl in the coffin was an emaciated skeleton with sunken-in cheeks and eyes, pierced and tattooed beyond recognition. It had been difficult for them to dress and make her up in a fashion that hid signs of the life she had been leading before her death.

When they identified the body, Anne, his wife, had even gone so far as to say, “That’s not Amy. That can’t be Amy. It doesn’t look anything like her!” In his own desire to believe that Amy might still be alive, Douglas had been swayed momentarily. Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe she was still out there and they just needed to keep looking. But he knew it wouldn’t do them any good to deny the truth. It might not have looked like Amy, but there was good reason for that.

Amy had been seventeen when they last saw her, a junior in high school preparing for college. Although hospitalized briefly when she was sixteen for an eating disorder, she had always appeared to be a strong-minded girl who filled her life with all sorts of activities. Amy was a member of the school’s swim team, drama club, and her church’s youth group. She was, by most accounts, a typical seventeen-year-old. The girl on the slab in the morgue was twenty, a prostitute shot full of drugs, a victim of sex trafficking.

Captives Released!

It's out! Well, at least it's out on Kindle. The paperback version should be available by next week.


For the next few days, I plan to post on Captives, its characters, and its inception. I will also have a few posts on the very real problem of sex trafficking.


This novel has a long history that starts in 2006 with a paragraph I wrote as a brainstorming exercise. I’d wanted to write about human trafficking for some time, but the right story never surfaced. At the time, a good friend of mine was the sexual trafficking liaison at the Salvation Army, and she had supplied me with tons of good material, case studies, and statistics. It was grim reading, but I realized then that this was something important that people needed to know about (and a lot of people really didn’t know about it).


I started with Blaise’s narration telling the background of her sister’s disappearance via trafficking; I later added Asha’s story to show the international side; once I realized that pornography and prostitution were linked, Andrew’s narrative came into play.

The novel originally came out in 2009 and was titled All that is Right and Holy. That year it won second place in the Christian Choice Book Awards through Xulon Press.

In 2015, a lot has changed in both the spectrum and spread of trafficking, especially within the United States. With that in mind, I decided to update the novel and re-release it under a different title. My husband designed the new cover. I love it! What do you think?

When did you first become aware of human trafficking?

Survivor's Ink

Last month I wrote about CNN's documentary on sex trafficking hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith. This month they are featuring Survivor's Ink, an non-profit organization founded by Jennifer Kempton, a sex trafficking survivor who spent five years of her life as a sex slave, branded three times by different traffickers. Her organization now provides financial help for women trying to cover these brands.

You can check out the video here.

Jennifer's trafficking horrors ended in a basement while trying to hang herself. When the rope broke, she heard God's voice telling her He had a purpose for her life. And it wasn't dying in the basement with a rope around her neck. Once free of her trafficker, Jennifer endured several years with her brands before she was able to scrape up enough money to cover the one on her left arm with a colorful tattoo and a scriptural verse from Corinthians. She now helps other women do the same.

Formerly trafficked women are constantly reminded of their past when they look at themselves in the mirror and see "Property of..." tattooed on their necks, their arms, their stomachs, their groins. As they try to put the horrors of that existence behind them, many of them find they cannot afford the costs of a cover-up tattoo, much less laser removal. Survivor's Ink helps provide them with scholarships so they can finally put one part of their past behind them.

You can check out Survivor's Ink at this link.

The Best Book I Read in April: Runaway Girl

It's time again for The Cephalopod Coffeehouse--a blog hop for book lovers who gather to discuss the best book they've read each month.

This month, the best book I read was Runaway Girl, a memoir by Carissa Phelps.

 

 

I heard about this book while reading Walking Prey: How America's Youth are Vulnerable to Sex Slavery, another memoir by Holly Austin Smith. Both of these books deal with the aftermath of sex trafficking and life on the streets, and both are formidable in their retelling of their troubled childhoods and the events that lead to the chronic desire to run away and join life on the streets. But Phelps's memoir takes that extra step and really delves deep into the emotion and the pain leading up to her decision to run...again and again and again.

 

Raised within a sort of dysfunctional Brady Bunch, Phelps grows up as one of thirteen kids--the product of a blended family. Suffering from neglect and abuse, she makes the decision that living from day to day, floor to floor, couch to couch, is preferable to fending for herself emotionally and physically in her own house. Soon she's within the clutches of a pimp, and even when she escapes that terrible situation and is returned home, she's off and running again.

 

When you've grown up in an average household with an average upbringing, it's hard to imagine why living on the streets at the age of eleven or twelve is preferable to living in a family, even if that family isn't as loving as one would like. But Phelps describes her need to run as nearly physical--she describes it as an impulse, uncontrollable and necessary. 

 

Runaway Girl is a riveting book. I couldn't put it down, and it's important from the perspective of America's youth and their need to feel safe, protected, and loved. The frightening part is when a teenager's need is so great, their view so twisted, that they see validity in the "protection and love" of a pimp rather than their own family.