Any Good Thing

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.

Legacy and identity, founded on hope-filled faith, infuse the tales of the soul written from the heart of JOY E. RANCATORE. Her Carolina's Legacy Collection embraces everyday moments that constitute a lifetime and its heritage. Told around multiple related characters, this collection explores faith, life, death and the demons within through four mediums-novel, novella, short stories and epistolary.An avid reader, student of human behaviors and unwitting empath, Joy absorbs emotions and spills them onto the pages of her work. Joy's technical background includes more than two decades of professional writing and editing. Ongoing training in writing, publishing, business and counseling enables her to package soul-filled stories for her readers. An award-winning, multi-genre Indie Author, Joy believes extraordinary things await her characters and their tales.Despite a fondness for her roles as author, editor, podcaster and speaker, Joy is a hobbit at heart with Bilbo's zeal for mountains. She enjoys a life of quiet stillness with her husband, two children, dog and cat and more books than she's willing to count. When daily homeschool lessons are complete, she eagerly prepares for teatime before writing your next favorite story.

Meagan (Mea) Smith lives in a wooden house on a hill and trips over a multitude of cats while parenting her two rambunctious boys. When she mentally floats too far from home, her cherished husband ushers her back and then grills her chicken for dinner. She has a Master's in English and sometimes scares college students with her passion for semicolons; she fell for their cunning in high school. Mea believes love doesn't deter hateful things from happening, but it always conquers them. Because of this, she creates fictional content tinted with hope set in contemporary and/or fantastical places. Her nonfiction focuses on writing craft for authors delivered with kindness and honesty. Her poetry is based on a true story. Always.

Rachael Ritchey is a dreamer who believes in the resilience of the human spirit. She never wants to forget we are not what has happened to us or what we've done. She believes we are deep wells of compassion and strength, and when unleashed, these subtle superpowers can change the world, even if only just one person at a time. She writes with an eye toward exemplifying these attributes. Her YA fiction reflects these qualities with daring adventure and sweet romance that almost anyone can enjoy. Rachael lives in Spokane, WA with her husband, kids, and their dog named Hashtag.