Welcome to my stop on the book tour for The Sundered.  I’m featuring a guest post by the author, Ruthanne Reid!

Book Description

Harry Iskinder knows the rules. Don’t touch the water, or it will pull you under. Conserve food, because there’s no arable land. Use Sundered slaves gently, or they die too quickly to be worthwhile.

With extinction on the horizon and a world lost to deadly flood, Harry searches for a cure: the Hope of Humanity, the mysterious artifact that gave humans control over the Sundered centuries ago. According to legend, the Hope can fix the planet.

But the Hope holds more secrets than Harry knows. Powerful Sundered Ones willingly bow to him just to get near it. Ambitious enemies pursue him, sure that the Hope is a weapon. Friends turn their backs, afraid Harry will choose wrong.

And Harry has a choice to make. The time for sharing the Earth is done. Either the Sundered survive and humanity ends, or humanity lives for a while, but the Sundered are wiped out.

He never wanted this choice. He still has to make it. In his broken, flooded world, Hope comes with a price.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
– George Eliot

Of course, there are exceptions to that. If you just started ballet at 78 years of age, you’re not going to win the Prix Benois de la Danse. You may sing beautifully, but at 58, you’re too old for American Idol.

BUT.

You’re not too old to dance.

You’re not too old to sing.

You’re not too old to experience the incredible pleasure of bringing joy to others, not just yourself.

Hope is a big, red button to me. One of my dearest friends recently called me “aggressively encouraging,” and I have to agree. I am aggressive about it, for good reason. Life can be hard. We lose things, people, time, even dreams (if we give up on them, that is – more on that in a minute. That losing-dreams thing is important).

“I am not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward.”
– Thomas Edison

How many small children have you known to have no hope? There’s a reason for this: we aren’t born thinking we’ll die. We don’t go through the first amazing, metamorphosing years of our lives thinking about failures, about past shames, about futures that will never pan out.

Instead, when we trip and fall down, we get up and keep learning how to run until we can.

I know life has pain. Life will give you scars. You will lose people you love, lose things you worked hard for, and even lose chances to do the things you desperately wanted to do.

Here’s the thing: as long as you didn’t lose your life, it isn’t over, and you haven’t failed.

I know about losing things, dreams, and people. I lost my house to foreclosure. My grandmother and mother died within a year of each other – the latter only a month ago. I never managed to get a literary agent to bite my hook – but I still have hope. In fact, I feel better, more hopeful, than I ever did.

Yes, I’ll admit some of this perspective is because I’m a Christian, and I actually believe nothing happens by accident. The other component is that I will not, absolutely will not, give up. I have found consistently that when you DO NOT GIVE UP, another way will open.

“Success does not always come to those who deserve it, but it almost never comes to those who give up.” – Brian Rathbone

Part of this depends on you choosing smart goals. Let’s look at the beginning of this article again. Let’s say you always wanted to be a ballerina, and you put it off. Nothing is stopping you from starting dance lessons at 78. Will you win the Prix Benois de la Danse? No. Will you enjoy yourself, probably lengthen your life, feel incredibly accomplished, bring joy to those around you, have something you can be really proud of, and grow seriously, genuinely happier?

Yes. You will.

If my goal setting out was to Win All The Awards, to gain a readership bigger than Stephenie Meyer’s, or to somehow change literary history so my name is in textbooks, chances are I’d die a fairly unhappy person.

BUT.

If my goal is to write something really excellent, crafted well and honed sharply, something people will read and enjoy and remember… then I have a damn good chance at succeeding.

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
– Dale Carnegie

Good writing takes practice and effort. We all know that. Even a mediocre writer can become a solidly good one. With a goal like that (a meaningful one that actually touches people outside myself), I can succeed. It’s something to aim for that I can reach.

But only if I do not give up.

How do you have hope when all hope seems lost? Keep going. Keep trying. Take alternate paths if you find them. Do not quit.

“When you are going through hell, keep on going.”
– Winston Churchill

It’s worth it to slog through to the other side.

About the Author

Ruthanne Reid was raised in the woods, but fortunately, her isolation was offset by regular visits to New York City. She pursued music for years before realizing she wanted to tell stories rather than sing them.

Ruthanne writes in and around Seattle, owns dust-covered degrees in music and religion, and is generally considered dangerous around household electronics. Her favorite authors tend to be dramatic (J. R. R. Tolkien, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss), but she doesn’t see this as a bad thing. She belongs to a husband, a housemate, and a cat, respectively.

The Sundered is her first novel.

Author Links:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RuthanneReid
Facebook: http://facebook.com/ThisReidWrites
Site/Blog: http://ruthannereid.com

PURCHASE THE SUNDERED

Ruthanne will be awarding a $5 Amazon GC to one random commenter at every stop and a $50 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter at the end of the tour.

The more you comment, the better your chances of winning! The tour dates can be found here: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2012/05/virtual-book-tour-sundered-by-ruthanne.html