2022 LOUISIANA INDIE AUTHOR PROJECT WINNER

Witness a young man’s battles of mind, heart and soul and follow his coming-of-age journey from selfishness to true sacrifice and from recklessness toward redemption in this contemporary southern fiction novel meant to reside on your heart’s bookshelves.

Jack Calhoun recovers from one tragedy and its consequential addiction enough to glimpse a shimmer of hope for his future—until the day of the second accident. Instead of heading to college with his childhood sweetheart, Rachael, Jack flees the rural southern town that blames him for every bad thing and leaves his loved ones behind.

His journey for purpose, if not peace, brings Jack face-to-face with war in Iraq’s desert, with his past’s nightmares and with a deeper battle on a mountain peak. Along the way, he both finds and loses parts of himself.

Perhaps it was never purpose he required but the ability to discern selfishness from sacrifice. Will he cast off a lifetime of crippling guilt to rest in redemption, or will peace remain as elusive as any good thing for Jack?

This book lends itself to a lively book club discussion or shared read between couples and friends. While readers who remember 9-11 will have an instant bond with the story, anyone who enjoys a well-paced tale full of larger-than-life characters—with a dash of southern charm and a whole batch of tasty food—may just discover a new favorite book in Any Good Thing.

How can you live when you’re dying? That’s exactly what a wife and mom with a countdown clock would like to know.

Carolina Burns faces words no one wants to hear. She’s dying.

She fights for her final year on earth—until she chooses to simply live. Her husband, Ben, and their eleven-year-old daughter, Rachael, must also accept her diagnosis. Their faith will be tested, and their bravery tried.

Carolina writes letters to Rachael for all the life events she’ll miss and spends every waking moment with her loved ones or in the garden where she coaxes beauty from the Georgia soil. Through it all, the Burns family uncovers how to embrace this good thing—life.

Discover the beauty of a lasting legacy through this love story that will break your heart while building you up.

The writer’s life is solitary… only if you want it to be. Writing critique partnerships could solve creative isolation, but confusion on the topic abounds. Where do you find one? How do they work? How do you move past a bad experience? We’re critique partners who, over the years, cultivated a process, redeemed our mistakes and maintained our friendship. Finders Keepers is our conversation analyzing six aspects of critique partnerships.

Defining Critique Partnerships
Evaluating Yourself for Your New Role
Choosing a Critique Partner
Preparing for a Critique
Giving a Critique
Receiving a Critique

We’re more than just talk, though. Each topic has hands-on challenges to encourage introspection and strategic action, strengthening your relationship into an unstoppable team. With this dynamic, you can confidently launch more powerful, polished words that reflect your purpose. We find our critique partnership personally fulfilling and professionally accelerating; we desire the same for you. Are you in it for keeps?

Come on an adventure! Within these pages you'll find yourself battling with faeries against evil, waking on an unfamiliar planet, fighting for survival after an apocalypse, having the strangest conversation with aliens half your size, uncovering mysteries, opening doors to other dimensions, and so much more!

Edited & Compiled by YA author Rachael Ritchey, these short stories are a compilation of entries to the ASF Short Story Contest by seasoned and new authors across the globe. While style and culture vary widely across these adventures, one thing will stand out: the resilience of the human spirit.

Contributions come from:
R. J. Rodda (Chosen for the Fox-dance)
Joy E. Rancatore (Ealiverel Awakened)
Audrey Driscoll (Blue Rose)
Angie Thompson (Restore)
K. R. Ludlow (The BUSS Stop)
E. E. Rawls (Vanished)
R. J. Llewellyn (The Paths We Choose)
Victoria Lynn (Lost and Found)
Gary Jefferies (The God Strain)
Barb Taub (Daddy Forgot Water)
David Jesson (The Cave of Legix)
Sha'Tara (The Knight Errant: An Anachronistic Tale)
Briar Shea (A Journey with Death)
V. P. Grey (Elixir)
Deb Whittam (A Mystery Wrapped in a Riddle)
Rachael Ritchey (The Forever Door)

These are all original works contributed by the specific authors with permissions to publish in this anthology. Many of these stories are now either in development for larger works, and the authors would love to hear from you about how much you enjoyed their stories!

Every person leaves a legacy; so does every character.

Lonely outcasts. Found wanderers. Recovering addicts. War-weary heroes. Homeless families. Grieving loved ones. Good men-gone too soon.

Each one's story stands alone, yet all unite along a common thread of dreams pursued and legacy left in this collection of short stories. One life flows into another as each character connects to the next.

A person's past can deepen their future and their influence on others. In the words of Pete to Jack, "You'll have people enter your life that'll be more of a support than you might think. Some are there for a few minutes; others, decades. Each has a reason for meeting you when they do. Look for those reasons and thank God for 'em."

Revisit beloved characters from Any Good Thing and This Good Thing and descry their legacies of faith, heroism, healing, tenacity and sacrifice. These twelve realistic, hope-filled tales celebrate humans and the connections they share and gifts they leave.

Through a series of unsent letters to the sweetheart he left behind, Jack Calhoun unpacks his rage and grief and wrestles with questions of the soul like, "Who am I?" Rachael Burns, the girl he left, uses her journal to make sense of his abandonment.

Jack escapes the guilt-filled confines of judgmental Bellum, Georgia, and embarks on a rocky path toward purpose. When that mission gets shattered on a dark street in Fallujah, he's left empty-handed.

Rachael clings to thrills and busyness that never heal her heart. She faces her deepest fears and misbeliefs and must cast pride aside for something greater than her emotions.

As their parallel journeys lead toward mountaintops miles apart, Jack and Rachael receive the gift of a truth powerful enough to change their lives forever. In a world where tomorrow isn't promised and tragedies rend lives, who a person is at the core is the only thing that can be unchanging ... if that identity rests in an absolute source.

Fans of Where the Crawdads Sing, hope-filled coming-of-age dramas and post-9/11 fiction will enjoy this dual-POV epistolary novel, which embodies Southern fiction with Christian roots.