It’s Here!

ONE FINAL BREATH

BOOK 3 IN THE DIVE TEAM INVESTIGATIONS SERIES is now available for purchase in paperback, audio, and digital formats!

About One Final Breath:

When investigator Gabriel Chavez had his cover blown by an aggressive reporter, the silver lining was being able to rejoin the dive team. The downside? Dive team captain Anissa Bell–a woman who both fascinates and frustrates him.

Anissa grew up as a missionary kid on the Micronesian island of Yap and always planned to return after college. But she remained stateside, determined to solve the case that haunts her–the murder of her best friend and the disappearance of a three-year-old child.

When Anissa’s fractured past collides with Gabe’s investigation into the tragic shooting death of a teenage boy in Lake Porter, they’ll have to put their complicated history with each other aside in order to uncover the identity of a killer. What they’ll discover is that revenge has no statute of limitations.

Award-winning author Lynn H. Blackburn closes out her nail-biting Dive Team Investigations series with a story that will have you wondering how long you can hold your breath.

Y’all, I love this book. I really do. I love the way Gabe and Anissa overcome so many obstacles and how they rely on their faith in their darkest hours. I love the way their friendship with each other and their friendships with Ryan, Leigh, Adam, and Sabrina have continued to deepen and flourish. I can imagine them hanging out together by Lake Porter for the next forty years, and it makes me happy. 

For those of you who’ve already read Beneath the Surface and In Too Deep, I hope One Final Breath more than exceeds your expectations. And for those of you who are new to the Dive Team Investigations series, I hope One Final Breath leaves you excited to go back and read the previous books in the series. 

Most of all, I hope that as you read One Final Breath you grow closer to Jesus – because He is the BEST!

Note: If the backstory between Gabe and Anissa intrigues you, I’ve written a short story (5K words) that explains, maybe not everything, but a lot! It’s available today to my newsletter subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed, now would be a great time! You can subscribe here!

And tonight, at 9PM (Eastern), we’ll be celebrating the release of One Final Breath, LIVE on Facebook! I’d love for you to join us!

Grace and peace,

 

You know what’s true about August? It’s brutal. Every year.

I know it. I try to be ready for it. I never am.

This August will go down in the history of Augusts as a doozy. But if you looked at my calendar, you wouldn’t be able to tell what had happened.

  • I went to MurderCon. It was AWESOME.
  • Our family went to the lake. It was AWESOME.
  • The boys started baseball practice. Their teams and coaches are AWESOME.
  • Emma started a new high school. Her teachers and the culture there – AWESOME.
  • Our homeschool year began. My boys are doing AWESOME. Our community is AWESOME.
  • One Final Breath releases in a few days. Y’all. My 5th book. AWESOME.

Are you sensing a theme here? August was AWESOME! Right? 

Um . . . Yes . . . But . . .

August brought a lot of change to our family and especially to my personal routine, and here’s a fun fact for you: I don’t have a great relationship with change. It takes me longer than your average bear to regain my footing after any sort of upheaval. I get there. But it’s work, and I can’t say I enjoy it. At all.

I’m exhausted – physically, mentally, and creatively. For reasons that don’t show up on a list of highlights, that don’t make it into social media posts, that aren’t shared with the world, August has just been hard. 

But as August bows out and September takes the stage, the thing that I am most overwhelmed by isn’t the chaos and confusion.

It’s the grace.

Y’all. God is so good. In the past week, He has showered me in grace.

Subtle, quiet grace.

The grace of my mother-in-law having Emma spend the night with her. The grace of friends jumping in to help with the boys when I unexpectedly had to pick Emma up early from school this week.

The grace of a friend quietly saying, “The Lord has already gone before you” in some initial moments of confusion. The grace of takeout for dinner. The grace of a friend joining me for a long drive.

The grace of beautiful music and talented artists. The grace of coffee, chocolate, and grocery delivery.

The grace of the postal employee (shout out to Mindy at the Ace Hardware post office on Woodruff Road) whose kindness and willingness to offer a solution to what would otherwise have sucked an hour of my life away, quite literally brought me to tears.

A week ago, I told some friends that while I knew God was in control, the knowledge was all in my head. I knew it. I just couldn’t feel it. And I asked them to pray that the certainty of God’s presence and plan during this season would move from my head to my heart.

He has more than answered that prayer.

He is so, so good.

Let those who fear the LORD say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Out of my distress I called on the LORD; the LORD answered me and set me free. The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?

~ Psalm 118: 4-6 (ESV)

I am thrilled to be joining the mystery panel at Fiction Addiction on September 7th at 2 p.m. We will be talking books and writing and it’s going to be fantastic and fun!

Tickets are $10. And here’s the best part–that $10 can be put toward the purchase of a novel at Fiction Addiction! So if there was a book you happened to be interested in . . . maybe One Final Breath? You could pick it up while you’re there!

I would love to see some familiar faces so please make plans to attend!

Tickets are required for this event and can be purchased here.

If you can’t join us on September 7th, you can still order your copy of One Final Breath from the lovely folks at Fiction Addiction. The information for pre-orders can be found here.

Fiction Addiction

1175 Woods Crossing Rd

Suite 5

Greenville, South Carolina 29607.

Grace and peace,

Everything

hinges on this!

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.

And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”

And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.

Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

~ Luke 24:1-12 (ESV)

 

Happy Easter!

 

Hey y’all!

I shared this photo on my FB author page and Instagram earlier today and I’m thrilled with how excited y’all are about One Final Breath!

I also did a video (how goofy do I look in this thumbnail?!) with a little bit of  “behind the scenes” information and a few questions for my readers.

 

I’d love for you to check it out and give me your thoughts!

 

One Final Breath releases September 3, 2019, and is available for pre-order at your favorite bookseller!

 

 

Grace and peace,

Do you BookBub? 

Here’s the description from the BookBub site…

BookBub is a free service that helps you discover books you’ll love through unbeatable deals, handpicked recommendations, and updates from your favorite authors. BookBub doesn’t actually sell books. We simply introduce you to books you’ll love that are available on retailers like Amazon’s Kindle store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, Apple Books, and others.

When you sign up, you choose which genres you’re most interested in and which authors you want to follow, and then you’ll receive a daily email with a listing of books that are curated to appeal to you, and that are steeply discounted. Typical e-reader prices are less than $3.

If you do most of your reading on an e-reader, BookBub is a slam dunk. You’ll receive an easy to scan email every day with book deals that are designed to appeal to you.

But what if e-readers aren’t really your thing? I get that! I didn’t jump on the Bookbub train right away because while I do read on a Kindle from time to time, I prefer the feel of a book in my hand.

But I’ve found BookBub to be an excellent resource for several reasons:

  1. It’s a great way to try out a new-to-me author. Sometimes $15 is a bit much to spend on the unknown. But $1? I can take a chance on an author for $1!
  2. Author updates! I follow my favorite authors on BookBub, and BookBub sends me an email whenever they have a new release. They also will send me recommendations from my favorite authors.
  3. Sale priced e-books can often be used to land steeply discounted audio books. What? Follow me on this. When you purchase a book on Amazon, it is not uncommon to see an “add Audible” option. While many audio books run $20+, when you purchase the e-version for $1.99, you can often grab the Audible version for an additional $3-$9. You wind up with both the e-version and the audio version for under $10! THAT is a STEAL! (And an Audible account is NOT required). I have recently fallen in love with audio books, so this feature has been a game changer for me!

So why am I talking about BookBub now? Well, it turns out that the e-version of Beneath the Surface, Book 1 in the Dive Team Investigations series, is currently discounted to $0.99 (and sometimes as low as $0.79) and if you follow me on BookBub (@LynnHBlackburn), you should see something about that later this week (3/27/19). And at the time of this post (3/24/19), you can add the Audible version of Beneath the Surface for just $7.49 which will land you both the e-version and the audio version for less than $10.

If you already have your copy of Beneath the Surface, THANK YOU! If you don’t, this would be a great time to claim one before the price goes up in April.

Grace and peace,

 

It’s here!

Dive Team Investigations Book 3 has a cover and a title and I couldn’t be happier!

Say hello to One Final Breath!

Here’s the blurb:

When investigator Gabriel Chavez had his cover blown by an aggressive reporter, the silver lining was being able to rejoin the dive team. The downside? Dive Team Captain Anissa Bell—a woman who both fascinates and frustrates him.

Anissa grew up a missionary kid on an Indonesian island and always planned to return after college. But she remained stateside, determined to solve the case that haunts her—the murder of her best friend and the disappearance of a three-year-old child.

When Anissa’s fractured past collides with Gabe’s investigation into the tragic shooting death of a teenage boy in Lake Porter, they’ll have to put their complicated history with each other aside in order to uncover the identity of a killer. What they’ll discover is that revenge has no statute of limitations.

One Final Breath will release in September and the pre-order links are already active at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Christianbook.com.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes over here in my world and more exciting news to share in the days ahead. Stay tuned!

Grace and peace,

An invitation to join us on on Facebook, Thursday, February 7th, from 7PM – 9PM (Eastern).

Click here to go straight to the Facebook Event page. 

If you have questions you’d like for any of us to answer, feel free to leave them in the comments.

 

Grace and peace,

I first want to say a huge THANK YOU to those of you who have prayed this week as I edit Book 3 in the Dive Team Investigations series.

I have certainly felt your prayers!

My editor, bless her, found a rather significant plot hole. What’s crazy to me about this is that five people have read the book up to this point and none of us noticed! I’m thinking I may need to send her chocolates or something! 🙂

Thankfully, after a quick brainstorming session with my friend Lynette Eason (this involved a text where I said, “Can I call you…now?”), the plot hole has been filled. Whew!

Did you know that the editorial process involves a lot of back and forth between the author and editors? The part of the edit I’m working on now is usually the biggest and most daunting, but after this point there will be multiple emails over the next few months as we do everything we can to get Dive Team Investigations Book 3 to be the very best it can be.

So since this week is all about the editing, I’m keeping today’s blog post short and sweet.

I did an interview a few months ago with author Johnnie Alexander and the video is now live at her site, Novelists Unwind. Johnnie was an absolute joy to talk to you! We had such a great conversation! You can hear my southern accent and see how it’s impossible for me to talk without using my hands and also get the scoop on my writing journey, scuba diving, and all sorts of fun topics. I hope you’ll check it out!

Grace and peace,

It’s time to edit the third book in the Dive Team Investigations series. While this is exciting and wonderful because it means that this book is getting closer and closer to being in the hands of readers, I have to say that, well, editing and I don’t have the best relationship. Please note that I said editing – not to be confused with editors – my editors are amazing and I’m extremely thankful for them!

As I’ve been processing my feelings toward this part of the process, I wrote this prayer and I thought I’d share it with you. I’d be honored if you would pray with me over the next two weeks as I dive into this story and try to make it all it can possibly be.

Dear Heavenly Father,

It’s me. Again.

I’m dreading this. Again.

Dreading opening the file and seeing all the places I got it wrong. All the places my meaning was murky and my words were misunderstood. 

I’m dreading the hours of work ahead. The rewording, rearranging, and rewriting. 

I’m dreading having my mistakes pointed out to me—over and over and over again.

Deep in my core, I want perfection. 

In some ways, I know it’s because that’s what I was created for. A perfect world where every day began—and ended—with no mistakes in it.

But the same sin that ended that perfect place also corrupted my desires. 

Now, my perfectionism is more about control. More about saving face. More about longing to be be impressive. More about the desire to be praised than about the desire to put something into the world that will draw others to praise You. 

Father, pry my fingers from my words. Open my hands and my heart to the beauty that is waiting on the other side of this journey. Open my mind and my will to make changes that will better convey the story that You gave me, the story that You want told. 

Jesus, thank you for dying and rescuing me from my own tiny world where I want to reign and rule. Thank you for living now and interceding on my behalf, even when I regularly try to take the throne away and sit on it myself. As I dive into this story would you, the Word made flesh, fill my mind with the words that will best draw readers closer to You?

Spirit, I long for a fresh breath of Your creative power. I need You to give me the desire to do this work with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. And when I falter, to remind me that all things are possible through You.

I’m so thankful that You’ve already gone before me into this day, into this story, into the future where readers will someday join me on this journey. You’ve proven yourself faithful—time and time again—as I wrote this story. Why would I doubt that You will be faithful as I finish it? Please help me see this part of the process, not as a painful necessity, but as a glorious opportunity to make every chapter, scene, paragraph, and word, matter for eternity. 

To You, the Author and Finisher, be the glory.

Amen

 

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