Guest Post - Walking Back to Happiness by Penelope Swithinbank

Two vicars, their marriage in tatters with wounds reaching far back into the past, set out on a journey to find healing and restoration. Their route will take them from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, but will it help them find their way home? Along the 320-mile route across rural France, burdened by backpacks and blisters, Kim and Penelope stumble across fresh truths, some ordinary, others extraordinary. But will they be defeated by the road ahead or triumph over the pain of the past? Is there a chance they'll find themselves in France and walk back to happiness? In this simple but enchanting book, part travelogue and part pilgrimage, Penelope invites you to walk with her and her husband on their epic journey as they encounter new faces and new experiences, and reconnect with each other and with God. Every step of the way, you'll discover more about yourself and what's really important to you.

Penelope is an avid walker and spends a lot of her time stomping in the hills and valleys near her home outside Bath. She is a chaplain at Bath Abbey and a spiritual therapist and counsellor for clergy (and some normal people too). Since becoming a vicar nearly 20 years ago, she has worked in churches in the UK and the USA, and has led pilgrimages in the UK and in Europe. She and her husband Kim have been married for more than 40 years and have three children and six grandchildren. Penelope rarely sits down, loathes gardening and relaxes by reading, going to the theatre or playing the piano. She is the author of two books, Women by Design and Walking Back to Happiness and is currently working on her third, due out in 2020: Scent of Water, a devotional for times of spiritual bewilderment and grief.

Comments

Thinkerbeat Guest Post

Welcome to the Thinkerbeat Anthology Interview Q: What inspired you to start publishing? A: I wrote my first story when I was really young. I used to sit with a typewriter and clunk away at the keys for hours. I’d make a lot of mistakes, but I kept trying. Later, I started sending stories out for publication. I got a lot of rejections, just like everyone does. In college I studied the music business and learned about managing talent. I also played around with the idea of becoming a computer programmer, but my creative side won out and I spent a number of years working in the music business. Down the road, I got an offer to write a children’s book for a publisher. I thought, well, 500 words, how hard can that be? It took me months to finish it. You spend more time describing the illustrations on the page than you do putting words on the page. The staff editor was never happy and we disagreed on a lot of things. But I learned from him. I also kept in mind that if I didn’...

Guest Post from Author Samantha Tonge on Her New Novella

How to Get Hitched in Ten Days is my first novella and the story just flew onto the page. It is a tale of friendship, unrequited love and about turning around the challenges that occasionally strike us all as we go through life. Mikey helps the boyfriend of his best friend and flat mate, Jasmine, turn around a disastrous Valentine’s Day proposal. Early reviews are coming in and I am thrilled that many readers are reacting to Mikey in the way I intended – they all love him and wish he was part of their lives. As one reviewer, Coffeeholic Bookworm says: “ I want some Mikey in my life! Mikey isn’t your typical hero. He’s soft, fluffy, sensitive and yummy. His friendship with Jasmine was admirable. He’s a keeper ” Do you have a best friend? Someone you can turn to in your hour of need? I think I created this character because, apart from my lovely husband, I don’t. And sometimes life gets difficult. You don’t necessarily want to burden your fami...

Cathleen Townsend: Dragon Hoard; And Other Tales of Fairie

Featured on my blog today is a charming little story of the origins of this book from author Cathleen Townsend. Enjoy... Dragon Hoard and Other Tales of Faerie came out of a desire for more fairy tales that felt true to the spirit of the original stories I’d read as a child. We were poor when I was young, and any book given to me was a treasure. One day, when my parents were visiting friends, the kind hostess noticed me sitting quietly in the corner with nothing to do, and she gave me a marvelous book. It was old, published in the Forties. The binding was fragile, but it had over a thousand pages, printed on thin paper with double columns like a Bible. It was a collection of children’s literature, with all the old standbys—Mother Goose and the Three Little Pigs and such—but it also had poetry by Shakespeare, and whoever had compiled it had chosen versions of folklore that required me to stretch to read it. It became my most treasured possession. I pored over descriptio...

Suz Korb

Search This Blog