Meet the authors of the
ICAN Virtual Book Sale
JoEllen Claypool is the author of eight books and contributing author to four more. Besides writing, she is a public speaker, book coach, editor, and is the cofounder of ICAN (Idaho Creative Authors Network). This group consists of four women who facilitate writing events to bring information and encouragement to new authors as well as seasoned authors. She lives in Idaho and is the wife of a country preacher, mother to seven and as of February of 2022 will be the grandmother to seventeen.
Cheryl Taylor was raised in northeastern Michigan and pursued a degree in agriculture communications from Michigan State University. In 1986, Taylor moved to Arizona where she worked in publishing and advertising in the livestock industry, then eventually moving into teaching in 1998 after receiving a masters in education from Northern Arizona University.
Gone to Ground is Taylor's first book and explores how an apocalyptic event might look in the Arizona ranch land. Breaking Free, a sequel to Gone to Ground, was published in September 2023, and continues the challenges of surviving in a post pandemic world.
In addition, Taylor is working on several cozy mystery series, including the Up North Michigan series, which takes place on a trout farm in the northeastern part of the state where she was raised, and the Rock Shop mystery series, which takes place in northern Arizona. In addition she has produced a daily journal and planner featuring loon photography from the area where she grew up, and is working on several photography books, as well as a book on Navajo style locker hooking.
In addition to her publishing endeavors, Taylor also creates wire tree sculptures, sun catchers and pine needle baskets under the business name, Ugly Rock Beautification Project, and loves to create locker hooked projects.
Taylor currently resides in northern Arizona with her family of horses, dogs and cats.
Louise F. Karther is a retired educator whose many years of experience included four years teaching first graders in Port Orford, Oregon. Besides teaching elementary children, she has also taught children with special needs at both the elementary and middle school levels. In addition, she has served as a curriculum coordinator, an elementary school principal, a Director of Special Education, and as a college professor. She received a Bachelor of Science degree from Eastern Oregon University, both a Master’s Degree and a PhD from the University of Oregon.
Debby L Wynkoop has always loved exploring the land and the history of Idaho. Upon completing a 34-year career teaching Idaho kids along with a 25-year stint performing southern gospel music, she istaking her “road not taken,” weaving stories and composing poetry. She makes her home in Southwest Idaho with husband, Dave Johnson, and their cat, Sugar.
Born in Kansas, David Pyle currently resides in Provo, Utah, where he is pursuing his Master’s Degree in Public Administration. With a strong educational background in world culture and languages, Pyle enjoys deeply pondering everyday truths which most people take for granted. This thoughtfulness, combined with his love for comedy and humor, is strongly reflected in his writing. When not writing or studying, David enjoys exploring nature, trying new hobbies, and reading the works of his favorite authors.
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Rebecca Bischoff is the award-winning author of several young adult and middle grade novels. Her middle grade historical mystery, The Grave Digger, as well as her humorous middle grade novel Hole in the Rock were both honored as finalists in the Best Book Awards. Her recent historical YA novel, Streets of Shadow, was honored as a silver medal winner in the 2023 Reader's Choice Awards in the YA mystery category. Rebecca loves to read everything from mysteries to paranormal to historical novels. She tends to research quirky and little-known facts from the past and loves anything that might make her laugh. A dedicated Anglophile, Rebecca loves watching BBC shows and reading mysteries that take place in the British Isles. Rebecca lives in Southern Idaho with her family, where she enjoys not visiting the outdoors. She’d rather stay inside, eat chocolate and write. Visit her website at: www.rebeccabischoffbooks.com
Merri Gammage is a creative and passionate author who wants to share her imagination with others. She has years of ideas ready to be written and presented to her readers.
Raised in the Pacific Northwest, she was surrounded with a visual array of landscapes from beaches to mountain peaks and everything in between. Her stories stem from a fascination with mythical creatures, exploring evergreen forests, combing the beach for oddities, and daydreaming on misty mornings – a perfect backdrop for adventure, fairy tales, and whimsy. Creating makes Merri happy. Her theory is that everyone deserves an occasional get-away, an escape into the imagination.
When Merri isn’t writing or working, she enjoys reading and spending time with her husband and their grown children. They have an older son and a younger set of twins (one boy, one girl). In the summer months, the family enjoys camping and the outdoors. They also find great fulfillment in giving back to their community. All five of them are involved with their local fire department: one full-time Firefighter/EMT, two part-time Firefighters, and two Associate Members (who assist the firefighters on scene, with training and fundraisers).
Merri plans to continue reading, writing, sharing her ideas with others, and living life to the fullest.
Crystal Linn began writing as a small child but never became serious about publishing until the year 2000. Since then she has published articles and inspirational pieces. Her passion for helping others writers prompted her to published several anthologies. She is also an award-winning poet.
In addition to writing books, she has taught many writing workshops and now writes a syndicated column on health and wellness.
Ms. Linn lives in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys reading a good mystery, and sailing or hiking with family and friends.
C. S. (Carol) Kjar is wife, mother, grandma, friend, and an award-winning author. The author’s last name is pronounced “care.” She loves that name and hopes that’s what everyone will do. Care about each other.
Her book Finding Love in the Snow placed fourth in the 2023 National Excellence in Story-Telling competition and was a finalist in the romance category of the American Writing Awards in 2022. The Secrets of the Clock was an Awards Finalist in the 2018 National Book Awards. Her short stories have won awards in various competitions and have been included in several anthologies.
Her books fall into sweet romance, adventure romance, or cozy mystery genres. They are wholesome stories about small-town people searching for something they lost or think they need. Their searches lead to hard decisions they may not wish to make, but difficult choices sometimes lead to better lives. In the end, good always overcomes evil.
Carol has always enjoyed the writing process and worked for many years as a technical writer/editor for government agencies. When she retired, she found her next career: fiction writing. This opened up new worlds to explore and gave her imagination the freedom to run rampant. She is a member of the Black Hills Writers Group, the Idaho Writers Guild, and the Idaho Creative Authors Network. When she has spare time, she loves to read, visit with friends and family, make sun tea and pizza, and travel to new places.
Sora Garrett is a visionary-creator, spiritual mentor, and life simplification guide. She has a way of inspiring deeply through her writing, calling forth both beauty and need for outer-world change, as she explores a deeper meaning in the inner realm.
Writing is about more than putting words on paper for Sora; it's an art form. Her books are beautiful, their messages both simple and deeply rooted in wisdom. She guides readers to open their hearts and remember the magic as they connect with the everyday wonder of life.
Sora lives in Star, Idaho. When she is not writing or creating, she enjoys traveling, gardening, walking, skiing, and sharing time with her husband of 40+ years, their two grown children, one amazing grandson, and a mini-schnauzer named Emma-Joy.
Connect with Sora on Facebook or through her website, SoraGarrett.com, where you will find her Simply Shine blog, as well as descriptions of her books, courses, free e-books, and other inspirational products.
Writer, artist, librarian, blogger and genealogist, Gail has written several family histories, short stories and a newly-released ghost mystery. After traveling the world as a military spouse, Gail now resides in Idaho with her husband and their Anatolian Shepherd, Loki.
Catherine Bridwell was born in and lived most of her life in a small town in the mountains of central Idaho where she raised her three daughters and worked as a public school business manager. She is currently a financial consultant, specializing in public school finance. She is a member of the Idaho Creative Authors Network and won the award for best children’s short story in 2017. Her first novel, A Capable Woman, was published in 2020 and is available on Amazon. Cathy currently lives in southern Idaho with her husband, Brian.
A graduate of the University of Idaho, Paul worked most of his 40-year engineering career as a project manager for industrial mineral processing companies located in desert parts of the western United States. The craft of writing was honed by that work as proposals were an important aspect of the job. Several years after retiring from the business world, he completed his non-fiction title, In the Desert With God. Writing continues to be important to him. Retirement has also opened the door to realizing a lifelong goal of reading the great literary classics that were collecting on the bookshelves at home.
Summers in boyhood and as a young man were cherished for excursions into some of the most remote wilderness areas of Idaho, Wyoming, and eastern Oregon. Raised with five brothers to be an avid outdoorsman, Paul continues to seek adventure in the wild places of North America. In addition, his days are now spent living on the land in western Idaho, caring for and putting it to productive use.
Carol’s motto is “Learn to laugh and laugh while you learn,” because - what else are you going to do? Once you have learned, put it on paper and help others to learn. Gold Pans and Iron Skillets is her first book—a collection of essays that teach a lesson. Some of them, however, are just for fun.
She believes in living a relatively healthy life—no fanaticism here—and she writes about it as an online journalist with Examiner.com. She dispenses her sage wisdom regarding family activities, healthy recipes, and the value of getting out into the cold weather. You won't find tips on how to run a marathon, but you will find links to 5K races and sprint triathlons.
Carol’s blog, CMG Writes, is for those lessons that can't wait for a special project. It is also a tool for procrastinating. If she is blogging, she is not actively seeking an agent or publisher for her novel.
The novel: Three hundred pages complete with flashbacks, war, emotional depression, love, death, love again, and Florence Nightingale, is her first stab at historical fiction.
Six short stories, some of them published and some of them not, round out her repertoire.
Carol Green believes there are lessons in everyday life one should not only learn from but should then dispense that wisdom to others. She shares her lessons on her blog, in essays (Gold Pans and Iron Skillets, J.A. Rock & co. Publishers), poetry, and by word of mouth whenever she finds a captive ear!
Carol is a founding member of ICAN - Idaho Creative Authors Network where she facilitated writing workshops for new and established writers in Idaho. She left the organization when her life adventures took her to Montana in 2018. There, she began writing for The Valierian, a local paper and has continued that weekly project until present.
After a long 27 year career as a graphic designer/web designer and owner of Image by Design, LLC, I retired and decided to make graphics for myself and created my first of many coloring books! Of course I had to draw one of my favorite passions - horses! If Wishes Were Horses Coloring Book is now available for purchase or you can simply download your favorite pages, print them out and color them whenever you desire!
I am currently working on my first Devotional/Coloring Book series on The Promises of God set to be released in January! In addition, I recently published my first book and study guide on Hope's Transformative Power! I've started working on my second book, which will be released sometime this summer if all goes as planned!
I hope you enjoy coloring my artwork as much as I enjoyed creating it! Thank you for supporting my dreams!
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Writing Romance with Humor, Suspense and Inspiration... Writing Language-based Children’s Books that Educate, Inspire and give Hope.
As a late bloomer, I started writing at age 36, and with practice and encouragement, I started writing romantic fiction and became a member and officer of a writer’s group.
My story writing really took off when I discovered the pines, firs and rocky knolls of Northeast Oregon. My husband enjoyed panning for gold in the creeks, but I fell in love with the mining ghost towns and the history surrounding those areas. Three of my magazine articles based on ghost towns in Northeast Oregon, and the history of the Chinese miners who followed the white man to the mines, were published nationally. I’ve written books with gold mining or boom town settings, including a time travel series back to 1870 in Cracker Creek, which is now called Bourne, Oregon.
In 2007, Black Lyon Publishing published my first book and then three others. With help from other writers, I learned to self-publish the rest of my manuscripts and have since become a publisher, and a leader and speaker for the Idaho Creative Authors Network.
I graduated from college and taught speech and language classes to K-12 students. I loved teaching idioms, sayings, expressions and proverbs that are important for language deficient students to learn. My first children’s book deals with the phrase, THE BIG GUY UPSTAIRS (title). My husband has Multiple Sclerosis and over the last decade we’ve seen firsthand that when unwelcome change comes along there is always something to be thankful for. I wanted people to know this, that there is hope in silver linings. My latest children’s book is called BIJU SILVER LINING.
A native Idahoan with Cherokee heritage, Sherry Briscoe writes paranormal suspense mysteries and urban fantasy. Her childhood heroes were Alfred Hitchcock and Edgar Allan Poe, and she insists that episodes of The Twilight Zone made perfectly fine bedtime stories.
With degrees in Journalism, Photography, and Adult Education, Sherry covers all her passions of creativity and teaching others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, who keeps her well stocked in chai tea lattes and lemon drop martinis, and her Burmese cat, who shares her popcorn, pizzas and even an occasional beer.
Sherry is a world traveler, US Army Veteran, and active member of her writing community.
She’s the founder of the Idaho Screenwriters Association, an active board member of the Idaho Writers Guild, Romance Writers of America, and professional speaker and workshop facilitator. Follow sherry for news and specials at www.sherrybriscoe.com
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Author Kimbre Christopher was born and raised in Idaho and enjoys life in the country. Her family and friends guarantee that there is never a dull moment. As a homeschooling mom, she has learned to make the most of every opportunity when it comes to teachable moments. These everyday lessons have spilled over into her writing as well as her business as a virtual assistant. No matter the situation, Kimbre is here to help you help yourself.
Mom. Homeschooling veteran. Widow. Author. Amateur photographer. Child of God. From the shores of California to the rolling hills of Missouri, Sharon has traveled many roads through theatre, archery, and even her husband’s cancer. She resides in the KC metropolitan area, writing, editing, and helping others bring order from chaos. Sharon writes contemporary Christian romance with an overriding desire to share a love of God’s word through written fiction, and encourage readers to discover #LoveOnPurpose and to #LifeYourFaithBoldly!
Phyllis Vavold Nettleton lives with her husband, Seth, in Nampa, Idaho. Accents throughout their home are the porcelain dolls Phyllis has made and costumed across the years. Her love for sewing has given her the opportunity to create a handkerchief quilt from antique hankies handed down through the years. One of the more recent quilts Phyllis made is called Storm at Sea. Done in purples, it displays a cross in the center of the storm. This is a pictorial of Phyllis' life and testimony.​
Since her accident and miraculous recovery, she has become an inspirational speaker and author. She shares her journey of faith at Stonecroft Ministries, women's luncheons, women's retreats, and churches across the northwest.
January 2010 Phyllis’ Story radio broadcast aired. The broadcast was heard in over 325 stations around the world. She along with her daughter, Cheryl, shared how faith in God helped them through a very difficult time of life.​
One of life’s most difficult circumstances is the untimely and irrational loss of a loved one to a sudden, unexpected death. Phyllis has personally experienced this loss and found a way to walk through this dark valley in God’s company. Her book is completely honest. It is unvarnished. She shows, through her own experience, how one can survive.​
Phyllis' first book, Grace for the Raging Storm, was featured at the 2014 Writing for the Soul Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, hosted by Jerry B. Jenkins. Only three authors were selected to participate in a Shark Tank like program. Phyllis commented, "To be selected to share was an honor and to be encouraged by those who know the writing journey was overwhelming."
Sundance Mountain, Black Buttes, O’Haver Hill, Inyan Kara Mountain
Kathy “K.D.” Gearhart grew up on a ranch south of Sundance, Wyoming with the above geological formations as her playground.
Now retired and living just across the Wyoming border in Spearfish, South Dakota, she draws inspiration for her suspense novels from driving the back roads of the Wyoming and South Dakota Black Hills.
Connect with her on FaceBook @booksbykdgearhart, or at gearhartkd@gmail.com
As a child, Cindi believed in the magic of fairies. As an adult, Cindi believes in the transformational magic of positivity. Through her own life experiences and extensive studies in positive psychology, the Science of Happiness, and the Law of Attraction, she has formulated a technique for creating happiness that lasts. Her trademark FLIP IT exercise, which helps students move out of negativity and into a positive perspective, is the foundational step into contentment and well-being.
Her work in First Create Happiness—whether in the book, online classes, or coaching— is based on solid research pulled from the pioneers of the positive psychology movement, studies into the correlation between the heart and the brain, quantum physics, and from the spiritual masters of the unseen realm. First Create Happiness provides a roadmap for anyone who is ready to take the first step on their journey to joy, creating an authentic life that reflects who they are and the manifestation of their deepest desires.
Cindi has a master’s degree in Instructional and Performance Technology, and has studied positive psychology and Appreciative Inquiry (a transformational change methodology grounded in the disciplines of sociology, psychology, and organizational behavior). She spent her career in training and development supporting a Fortune 500 company.
The Bearlodge Writers have been meeting bi-monthly in Sundance, Wyoming, since 1979. The Hills have drawn us from different directions. We are ranchers and homemakers, artists and teachers, musicians and business people—but most of all, we are wordsmiths.
We encourage and support one another in our writing endeavors, help each other improve our work, share information, and provide workshops and writing retreats.
We produce poetry, essays, novels, short stories, articles, and columns. Our
published work ripples outward—regionally, nationally, and internationally.
The writer was born and raised in Los Angeles California. She is the seventh child of eight children. Her son Ben lives in Idaho.
She obtained a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Fullerton in Business Accounting.
She worked for over 40 years in banks and in a credit union. Her career began as a bank teller at the age of 17. As a loan Officer she approved and processed loans from small signature loans to corporate loans and anything in between. Her favorite type of loan was processing Real Estate Loans as she enjoyed in the excitement as people purchased their residence. She retired as the Mortgage Servicing Administrator.
In her youth the writer knew about God but her walk with God began in 1980. She was encouraged by two wonderful people. The writer began her journey as a Christian as she learns and grows in her faith constantly with God as her companion. She loves God and puts her faith and trust in Him.
Danney Clark thinks of himself not as an author per se, but more of a Scribe, thus the name Danscribe Publishing. In his mind God is the author who gives him ideas and thoughts which he in turn transcribes into stories. A native, third generation Idahoan, he enjoyed a forty -year career helping people find answers to their insurance needs before beginning his writing career. Married to his wife for well over fifty-five years, they together share two daughters, two granddaughters, and currently have a sixth generation Idaho born great granddaughter.
He is currently finishing his 20th offering which like its predecessors will be available in print, as and as an E-book. Once an avid outdoorsman he has settled into semi-retirement as part-time medical courier, husband, father, grandfather and now a great grandfather and Christian writer. He invites you to sample some of his work and follow him on Facebook.
Kathy Collard Miller is the award winning, best-selling author of 60 books and an international speaker in 9 countries and over 30 US States. She has written Christian Living books, women’s Bible studies, Bible commentaries, and over a 1,000 blog posts, guest posts, and articles. Kathy has appeared on The 700 Club, 100 Huntley Street, and numerous other TV and radio programs, plus podcasts. Kathy is the wife of 53 years to Larry and they live in Boise. They are parents of two and grandparents of two.
Connect with her at:
www.KathyCollardMiller.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/KathyCollardMillerAuthor
Twitter: @KathyCMiller
Pinterest/Kathyspeak
YouTube.com/@kathycollardmiller13
Instagram: @kathycollardmiller
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Kathy-Collard-Miller/e/B001KMI10S?
At nine years old, Cindy Hill watched her 16 year old sister place her baby for adoption. She had no idea the effect it would have on her life. She has been married to her high school sweetheart for 43 years and together they have six children, two of whom are adopted. They also have 11 grandchildren with twins due in January. Hill worked as a substitute teacher for 12 years and is currently and Educational Assistant at a charter school. Hill enjoys writing poetry and has published short stories and non-fictions articles on an adoption website. Her hobbies include shopping yard sales for bargains to decorate her home. She and her husband are recent empty nesters and live in rural Idaho with their small herd of Texas Longhorns. In the fall of 2022, Cindy traveled with her husband to the New England states where she was inspired to write her first novel The Girls of Everly Hall.
Jeanette Andersen lives in Idaho where she loves to hike, sew, crafts, shoot photography and, of course, write..
She writes Suspense, Romance Novellas, Mysteries, and more