Grit & Grace

by Deborah Rudell

 

 The Transformation of a Ship & a Soul

Memoir

Date Published: February 27th, 2025

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

 




















 

Deborah Rudell’s world unravels when the leaders of her spiritual commune are exposed, arrested, and imprisoned for bioterrorism and attempted murder. Crushed and adrift, she moves her family off the commune to create a sense of normalcy. But when her husband seeks an opportunity to dismantle and rebuild a derelict fifty-foot schooner, Deborah uproots their children once again and joins him in Kauai. For the next five years, she dedicates her life to restoring a boat.

Pouring herself into the work at hand can only distract her so much as disillusionment about the cult’s lies and manipulation slowly rises to the surface. While she grapples with emotional turmoil and contemplates a new life path, Deborah sets out to accomplish something she never thought possible: sailing across the Pacific to the Olympic Peninsula. Will the dangers that come with navigating the ocean be too much to bear, or will she find resolution and fortitude in the turbulent adventure?


Grit & Grace: The Transformation of a Ship & a Soul is one woman’s account of conquering overwhelming challenges with tenacity and ingenuity and ultimately discovering her inner strength.


About the Author



Deborah Rudell, a college professor in San Diego, California, participates in her city’s vibrant writing community. She is a graduate of Hay House Writer’s Workshop and the Certificate in Memoir Writing program at San Diego Writers, Ink. Her work has been published in the International Memoir Writers Association’s anthology, Shaking the Tree: I Didn’t See That One Coming.

Deborah lives with her black cat in a tiny house built in 1906 by a retired sea captain, who carved a sailing ship into the front door. This is her first book.


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The Woke and the Dead

Nostalgia City Mysteries Book 5

by Mark S. Bacon

Genre: Mystery, Suspense

 


Suspenseful political mystery starts when a sunbelt governor attacks Nostalgia City theme park.


The Woke and the Dead

Nostalgia City Mysteries Book 5

by Mark S. Bacon

Genre: Mystery, Suspense

The Governor vs. Theme Park = Murder

 A public war between a governor and a theme park lights the fuse on a story of hate groups, murder, corruption, racism, and political espionage.

 

Ex-cop turned theme-park cab driver Lyle Deming finds the body of a park visitor during an LGBTQ event. The dead man catered gay weddings. Was it a hate crime?

 Arizona governor Rod Gudgel—running for re-election—calls it a random shooting. He mocks Nostalgia City theme park for its inclusiveness, uses homophobic and racial slurs, and later challenges the safety of its rides.

 When park employees demonstrating for gay rights are killed and injured, Kate Sorensen, the park’s 6’-2½” public affairs VP, slams Gudgel’s unsympathetic response. Lyle searches for shooting suspects and finds himself too close to an armed hate group while Kate digs into the governor’s past, unearthing an impossible trail of malfeasance and enraging Gudgel allies.

 Kate and Lyle run into plenty of blind alleys, deception, and dead ends, as they hurry to take down the governor and help the FBI solve hate crimes.

 With Lyle’s wry humor and Kate’s unflappability the story moves quickly as puzzles and subplots multiply and loop together threatening the park, their relationship, and their lives.

 

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Mark S. Bacon began his career as a Southern California newspaper police reporter, one of his crime stories becoming key evidence in a murder case that spanned decades.

Before turning to fiction, Bacon wrote business books, one of which was  printed in four languages and three editions and named best business book of the year by the Library Journal. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Denver Post, San Antonio Express News, and many other publications. Most recently he was a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Death in Nostalgia City, the first in his five-book series, was recommended by the American Library Association. Desert Kill Switch, the second series book, was the top fiction winner in the 2018 Great Southwest Book Festival.

Bacon gets some of his ideas from experience as a police reporter and also from his work as a copywriter for Knott’s Berry Farm theme park. He taught university journalism in California and Nevada and is trying to teach his golden retriever to stop pulling the leash.

 

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