If Tomorrow Never Comes -- RELEASE

Hi Friends,

Whoo Hoo - today's the day! If Tomorrow Never Comes hits the shelves. So, if you're at your local bookstore, see if you can find it and let me know! I'd love to hear if it's available at your local store. And of course, you can always order online.

Plus, if you want bookmarks or postcards to give away or use yourself, just let me know and I'll send some to you.

And now, as promised, here's a little taste of the book, from its opener, along with online ordering info at the end:

IF TOMORROW NEVER COMES
By Marlo Schalesky

They say you should reach for your dreams.
This time, they’re wrong…

Childhood sweethearts Kinna and Jimmy Henley had simple dreams—marriage, children, a house by the sea…everything they needed for happily ever after. What they didn’t plan on was years of infertility, stealing those dreams, crushing their hopes. Now, all that’s left is the memory of young love, and the desperate need for a child to erase the pain. Until…

Kinna rescues an elderly woman from the sea, and the threads of the past, present, and future weave together to reveal the wonder of one final hope. One final chance to follow not their dreams, but God’s. Can they embrace the redemptive power of love before it’s too late? Or will their love be washed away like the castles they once built upon the sand? The past whispers to the present. And the future shivers. What if tomorrow never comes?


Excerpt:

Only the fog is real. Only the sand. Only the crashing of the sea upon the restless shore. The rest is a dream. It has to be. I say it again and again until I believe it, because I cannot be here. Not now. Not with mist dusting my eyelashes, sand tickling my toes, salt bitter on my lips. Not when the whole world has narrowed to a strip of beach, a puff of fog, and a single gull crying in an invisible sky.

This is crazy. Impossible. And I’m too old for crazy. I won’t be some loony old woman with a house full of cats. I refuse to be.

Besides, I prefer dogs.

I touch my neck, and my breath stops. The chain is gone. My locket.

My mother’s voice teases me. “Not impossible, hon. Improbable. Because with God all things are possible.” Her words, spoken in that ancient, quavering tone, hide a laugh turned wheezy with age. I hear her again. “Someday you’ll lose that locket, Thea Jean. You just wait.” Her grin turns the sides of her eyes into folds of old parchment. “And that’s when the adventure will really begin.”

But I don’t want any adventure. All I want is a comfortable chair, a good book, the sounds of my grandchildren playing tag under the California sun, and my Boxer at my feet.
I want to go home.

I glance out over the ripples of Monterey Bay. White-capped waves. Dark water. And then I know. That’s what I need to wake me up, get me home. I need a cold slap in the face. Something to shake me from this crazy-old-cat-lady delusion.

I stride forward until the surf kisses my feet, the waves swirl around my ankles, knees, waist, arms. Cold. Icy. Welcome.

The water engulfs me. And suddenly it doesn’t feel like a dream.

* * *
Fog closed in around Kinna Henley as she fell to her knees and pawed in the sand. The grains bit into her hands, filling her fingernails like black soot. And still she dug. Deep into the oozing wetness. Deep enough to bury her sin. Or at least the evidence of it.

No, not sin. She wouldn’t call it that. Desperation, maybe. Determination. But not sin. God wouldn’t bless that, and He had to bless today. He just had to. She was betting everything on it.

Kinna glanced over her shoulder. Somewhere, a gull cried. Once. Only once. Somewhere, water broke along rocks and sand. Somewhere, the sun rose over the horizon.

But not here.

Here, there was nothing but the fog, and the shore, and the sand beneath her fingers. Alone.
Barren.

She hated that word.

With a deep breath, Kinna reached into the pocket of her nurse’s smock and pulled out six empty prescription vials that didn’t bear her name. She held them in her palm. Minute bits of liquid shimmered in the bottoms, reflecting only gray, all that was left of the medication that held her hope, flowed through her veins, and ended in her ovaries. Expensive medication she couldn’t afford on her own. But she needed it. She’d tried too long, prayed too long, believed too long…for nothing.

This medication, this Perganol, would change all that. It had to. She closed her fist.
What’s done is done. I had to take it, God. Don’t You see? I had to.

She turned her hand over, opened it, and dropped the vials into the hole. Then she covered them and pushed a fat, heavy rock over the top. Gone. Buried.

She wouldn’t think of how those vials had been accidentally sent to the hospital. Of how they were supposed to be returned. Of how she said they had been. Or how she slipped them into the pocket of her smock instead. She’d told herself it didn’t matter, no one would know, no one would care, no one would be hurt. She made herself believe this was the only way. And it was. Nothing else had worked. Not charting her temperature, not a million tests, not herbal remedies, not two failed attempts at adoption. Not even prayer.

A dozen long years of it all had taught her that. God promised happily ever after, but so far, all she’d gotten was month after month of disappointment, pain, and the fear that nothing may ever change.

But now, change would come. The medication was gone, the vials hidden, her ovaries full to bursting.

Finally.

A sound came. A shout, maybe. Kinna leapt up and turned, but no one was there. No one walking down the beach. No one swimming in the surf. No one making sandcastles along the shore.

She wouldn’t think of that. She would not remember the first time she had knelt in this sand, dug in it, made castles at the edge of the water. She wouldn’t remember the boy who made her believe fairy tales could come true. Or what happened between them after that.

That was gone. Past. All that remained was the promise that had flowed out of those stolen vials and into her blood. That was all that mattered.
Today, everything would change.


For more information, including an audio interview with Marlo about IF TOMORROW NEVER COMES and helps for the infertility journey, visit http://www.marloschalesky.com/

If Tomorrow Never Comes is available for purchase at:

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601420242?ie=UTF8&tag=marloschalesh-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1601420242

Christian Book Distributors: http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?event=AFF&p=1136938&item_no=420244

And fine bookstores everywhere!

Copyright: Marlo Schalesky, 2009
Do Not Reproduce without permission