NEW RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT!
I’m excited to announce that Book III in my Golden State Trilogy, PAINT THE SUNSET, is available on Amazon!
In this third and final volume of the Golden State Trilogy, a Northern California couple is blindsided by the homelessness and opioid crisis sweeping across the nation.
Newlyweds Jon and Meg Paulson are enjoying the good life in beautiful Marin County, California. Jon runs a successful business, and Meg eagerly anticipates the birth of her first grandchild. But their contentment is shattered when Jon discovers his shop ransacked, and the culprits on the run. With the rampant drug culture enslaving new victims every day, even their own children succumb to addiction. Will Jon and Meg lose everything they hold dear, or does God have other plans?
Meanwhile, an investigative reporter goes undercover to a local homeless camp, and a devastated young woman, Myla, is fleeing from the law and from her own demons. Will the reporter uncover the corruption responsible for so many ruined lives? Will Myla’s tragic past catch up to her, or will she find hope for a new future?
Exploring today’s social problems, Paint the Sunset tells the story of believers navigating a new world of drug addiction and homelessness in the finale to Dawn V. Cahill’s Hot Topic fiction series.
COMING SOON!
I’m excited to announce that Book III in my Golden State Trilogy, PAINT THE SUNSET, is almost ready for publication! Look for it on Amazon in early 2023.
In this third and final volume of the Golden State Trilogy, a Northern California couple is blindsided by the homelessness and opioid crisis sweeping across the nation.
Newlyweds Jon and Meg Paulson are enjoying the good life in beautiful Marin County, California. Jon runs a successful business, and Meg eagerly anticipates the birth of her first grandchild. But their contentment is shattered when Jon discovers his boat repair business viciously vandalized. Who was responsible for such devastating destruction? Was it random, or personal? And is the sun setting on Meg and Jon’s marital happiness?
Meanwhile, a local reporter delves into the explosion of homelessness and drug addiction in the county, and a homeless woman is fleeing from the law and from her own demons. When their journeys collide, what will the reporter find when he digs deeper? Who is responsible for the tragic loss of so many lives to addiction?
Exploring today’s social problems, Paint the Sunset shows ordinary believers navigating this new world of drug addiction and homelessness in the conclusion to Dawn V. Cahill’s Hot Topic fiction series.
High-Achieving and Religious Students At-Risk Youth For Substance Abuse?
New research shows high-achieving kids are more likely to drink and use drugs during their teen years and develop addictions by adulthood.
DO YOU ASSUME THAT since your kid gets good grades and goes to a good school that they’re not drinking or doing drugs? Think again. That’s the takeaway from two new studies suggesting that academically gifted youths are more likely to abuse substances, both as teens and adults. One surveyed 6,000 London students over nine years. Those with the highest test scores at age 11 were more likely to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana in adolescence – and were twice as likely to do so “persistently by age 20.”
Notably, a study taken by Arizona State University (ASU) study found that high school students who were more afraid their parents would punish them were less likely to drink or get high as adults. One professor, Luthar, said her…
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The Life of a Single Parent
I well remember those exhausting days! Like this author, I raised three kids virtually by myself. But seeing what fine young men my sons have turned out to be, I wouldn’t trade those nail-biting, exhausting years for anything.
#Exhausted
If I were to describe my life, my emotional state, over the last few months, exhausted would be the most appropriate word. With three teenagers, a new position in my company, a ministry, my days and evenings are full. I collapse into bed at the end of the day, struggling to get up the next morning.
Add to that a fiancé, a wedding to plan, his two children, trying to find a place to live that will hold five teenagers, and some significant health issues in his family, and I often wonder how we are still standing.
So many days I have awakened, gone outside for a prayer walk, and all I can say to God is, “I’m so tired. Renew my strength.”
And yet I just keep going, wondering when I can take some time to step away, take a deep breath, take time to recharge.
I know…
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Why I wrote Paint the Storm
In case you haven’t seen my latest news, my new novel Paint the Storm was released on October 10. What’s so special about that? you may wonder. Well, PTS deals with a very controversial, and possibly uncomfortable, topic: same-sex marriage. In light of last year’s landmark Supreme Court case, how are we Christians to deal with this new reality?
That is the question I attempted to answer when I wrote this story.
When I began writing Paint the Storm three years ago, same-sex marriage was not yet legal in the US. At the time, I approached the story as if it were a likely future scenario. Two years later, it was no longer a “what if.” It became reality when, in June 2015, the US Supreme Court affirmed the right of same-sex couples to marry.
Unfortunately, it’s an issue which has polarized our nation, and even our churches.
You may be wondering why I would tackle such a controversial topic. In essence, I saw an unfilled niche in the Christian market for edgier fiction that dealt with issues unique to our time, and came up with the concept of Hot Topic Fiction (HTF). My stories aren’t afraid to explore the question, how does God want us Christians to live out our faith in this not-so-brave new world? Without insulting the reader by offering pat or easy answers—because there aren’t any—my books tell of ordinary Christians following hard after Christ in a world of terror and violence, upside-down morality, and hostility to Judeo-Christian values. The characters in my stories face situations that would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago. We live in a vastly different world than our parents did, and that’s the world I write about.
Yet very few Christian fiction books contain gay characters, even though fiction is a great medium for imparting life lessons. I don’t claim to have all the answers. My goal was not to push an agenda. I simply wanted to tell the story of one Christian mom, and how she chose to live out Christ’s law of love without abandoning her convictions.
Download here.
I hope that more Christian authors will be courageous enough to tackle this and related issues in the future. After all, this is the world in which we live. And we Christians need to be prepared to deal with it.
Here’s the blurb:
GOLDEN STATE TRILOGY, BOOK I: Set amidst the spectacular scenery of California’s Marin Peninsula, Paint the Storm tells a timely story that resonates in today’s culture. It’s a saga of God’s power to heal relationships and answer prayers in the unlikeliest of ways. It’s a tale of loss, danger, and ultimately love.
When her daughter Linzee announces her engagement to her partner Nena, artist and single mother Meg struggles to understand how God wants her to respond. Should she follow the culture around her by embracing and celebrating Linzee’s same-sex relationship? And what does Christ think of a local church notorious for its hateful anti-gay messages? While she wrestles with these questions, she turns to a Christian support group where she learns what it means to love like Christ did. An intriguing new man makes life interesting, but while she is getting to know him, another man from her past suddenly shows up, further complicating matters.
Meanwhile, a cyber bully is targeting Linzee. His hateful messages turn threatening. Meg and Linzee rekindle their bond as together they determine to uncover the stalker’s identity. When the clues point toward Meg’s own family, she is paralyzed with fear. The violence escalates–until the day Linzee turns up missing. In her search for Linzee, Meg joins up with the unlikeliest of allies – and begins to see God’s hand at work. It’s only when she turns to her support-group friends for comfort and prayer that she finally understands God’s faithfulness through the deepest of trials.
Join Meg on her adventure toward love, healing, and a heart-warming conclusion.
Source: Why I wrote Paint the Storm
Black Lives Matter- That’s Why I’m A Marriage Advocate
Black Lives Do Matter. So do black families.
On their website, Black Lives Matter lists this Guiding Principle: “We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure…” On that front, there is very little work left to do, as currently only seventeen percent of black children will reach their 18th birthday living in a nuclear family headed by their married father and mother.
Deion is one of those black children. He grew up in a family that was comprised of four half-siblings and his white grandmother. His mother brought four children into the world, all with different fathers, all absent. After a few years, his mother was absent too. Deion’s father was black; all of his siblings were white.
Deion was pissed off.
His siblings were pissed off.
Because when your father is not around, kids often feel unwanted and as a result… angry. Deion’s anger was a constant and he was only fourteen when he had…
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Finally…an e-zine for single parents.
In my first year of single parenting, the internet was a mere infant. Most family and parenting magazines were targeted to intact families. Women who kicked their abusive husbands to the curb were still looked upon unfavorably in most evangelical circles, especially among the older generation. [Someday I plan to blog about that tough first year.] When I did find reading material targeted at me, it made me shudder. The statistics were dire: children of single moms were more likely to drop out of high school. Daughters were more likely to get pregnant as a teen, and sons were more likely to engage in delinquent behavior. Both were more likely to use drugs.
I couldn’t win for losing.
But I also knew my sons didn’t HAVE to take the path to loserdom. Check back again for more on how, with the help of God and a support system, my sons overcame all those negative forces threatening to take them under.
How much easier if I’d had this:
http://singleparentfamiliesmagazine.com/
The founder is herself a single mother. If you are too, I encourage you to save this link and refer to it frequently.
Blessings to all,
~DVC~
Narcissistic mother.
This mother is just a shell of a person, like most narcissists. I bet Dr. Phil wanted to wring her neck. I wanted to say, “Repeat after me…It’s clear I screwed up and I’m terribly sorry.” I had to apologize to my own kids SO many times.
Dawn V. Cahill - Hot Topic Christian Fiction 