Category — Writing

If you like Christian fiction featuring Amish characters, you just might want to look for first-time author Amy Clipston’s book, A Gift of Grace. I’ve read a few stories featuring Amish characters, which I’ve enjoyed, but what intrigued me about the premise of this book was the idea of two teenage girls from the “English” world who, after the death of their parents, come to live with their aunt and uncle in the Amish community. Instead of a budding romance that grows, this book is about a marriage tested to its limits. The cultural conflicts are just as strong, but this time they are coupled with the story of a family coming to terms with the death of someone they love, while at the same time two motherless teenage girls also struggle to come of age in a community that is steeped in tradition and completely foreign to their experiences in the modern world. 

For the girls’ Amish aunt, Rebecca, who wanted more than anything to have children of her own, the struggle to be a good mother to her nieces while being a good wife to her husband makes her feel “as if her world is being torn apart by two different cultures, leaving her to question her place in the Amish community, her marriage, and her faith in God.”

Interview with Amy:

How did you get involved in writing?
Writing is like breathing for me.  I was writing silly stories and sharing them with friends in elementary school.  In junior and high school, I turned to writing fan fiction.  After college, my fan fiction transformed into sweet romance novels.  Later, I felt the calling to turn to inspirational, and that was when I found my niche.

Where did you get the idea for A Gift of Grace?
I’m half-German, and my father immigrated to the United States with his parents and siblings in 1929.  He once told me the Amish speak the same dialect as our relatives, so I feel a connection to them.  I’ve always had a great respect and fascination with their faith and simple lives.  I began reading other Amish authors, and I was moved to create my own series.

What do you enjoy most about the writing process?
Brainstorming and plotting are the most fun.  I love getting to know my characters and playing around with storylines.

What is the most difficult aspect of the writing process?
I would say rewrites are the most difficult.  While the end result is always much better than the first draft, reworking the story forces the writer to sometimes start over and also reach deeper into his/her soul to find the story. [Read more →]

When a tragic drowning accident leaves fifteen-year-old Jacob in a coma, the faith of his family and community is shaken to its foundation. Told from a mother’s perspective, Parting the Waters, by Jeanne Damoff, is a poignant tale of unexpected beauty found in brokenness. Without sugar-coating the realities of pain and suffering, Parting the Waters presents the heart-warming, true story of what can happen when a community rallies around one wounded family. While Jacob’s parents struggle to preserve their faith and family, the prayers and innovative efforts of community members result in Jacob’s gradual awakening. Each dramatic milestone in Jacob’s recovery creates a new ripple, touching and changing many lives forever.

Tell me a little bit about your background and your family.
I was born and raised in Dallas, TX. Graduated from Stephen F Austin State University in Dec., 1981. Double majored in social work and sociology, minored in English, and took secondary teacher’s certification in sociology and English. Married George Damoff May 5, 1979. Jacob was born May 10, 1981; Grace followed June 30, 1983; and Luke completed our family on April 18, 1985.

What do you like to do in your spare time, do you have any hobbies?
My hobbies and work overlap. I’m a writer, speaker, choreographer, musician, and photographer, and I love all of it!

How did you get involved in writing?
I’ve been writing since childhood and always felt like I was breathing my native air in English classes. I also loved teaching creative writing as an English teacher. Though I didn’t seriously pursue widespread publication before 2003, for most of my adult life I’ve been stocking a mental character file. Whenever I’d meet a quirky, obnoxious, funny, or bizarre person, I’d take mental notes. Three of those people inspired minor characters in my first (as-yet-unpublished) novel. I highly recommend the practice to everyone, even if you don’t write. It transforms otherwise unpleasant situations into fascinating encounters.

How do you find time to write?
I really admire people who work full-time day jobs and still manage to crank out books. At this point, everything I do is freelance, so I set my own schedule. If I’m in the middle of a writing project, I can devote as much time to it as necessary.

What did you enjoy most about the writing process?
Hard to say, but I do love the dance with words—knowing what I want to say and finding the perfect way to say it. The right metaphor, a certain cadence to the language, wrapping words around the ache the beauty stirs inside me. For me, language matters as much as story.

What was the most difficult aspect of the writing process?
I actually enjoy all the parts—plotting, writing the initial draft, editing. Probably the hardest thing is getting focused to plunge in, no matter where I am in the process. I’m far-too easily distracted.

[Read more →]

Motherhood doesn’t have to mean permanent weight gain!

Losing the baby fat is one of the hardest things for mothers even years after they give birth, but in The Baby Fat Diet, moms will be relieved to learn that small changes can make a big difference. Restrictive dieting and cutting out favorite foods to the extreme isn’t necessary. The book offers simple, easy-to-live-by health and nutrition tips that help women change the behaviors that make losing weight so difficult.

So what makes this book different from all the other books out there? For one, both authors are nutritional professionals as well as being moms. Among many accomplishments, Monica Bearden has four children, her youngest born in December 2008, and she is a registered dietician. Shara Aaron is the equally accomplished mom of two. She has a master’s in nutrition communication, she’s a registered dietician, and she’s a professor of nutrition at a community college.

So let’s get to know these two women better. . . .

So how did you both get involved in writing?

Monica: I began writing my own patient handouts when I was first starting out as a clinical dietitian and fell in love with creating useful, educational material.

Shara: I enjoyed my writing classes during graduate school and started pitching ideas to magazines and newspapers. After years of freelance writing articles I had the opportunity to write a book.

How do you find time to write?

Monica: I make time, just like I do for everything else: kids, husband, exercise, family, friends, hobbies, etc.

Shara: We do so much writing in our nutrition communications business, it was just a natural expansion of what we do. When writing is your passion, you make time for it.

What do you enjoy most about the writing process?

Monica: I look forward and enjoy relating to my audience. I write for health professionals, the media, consumers, patients, sales teams, etc. I love getting into my reader’s mindset in order to make the piece as relevant and as useful to my audience as possible.

Shara: Developing the ideas into language that’s fun and interesting to read.

I’ve always wondered about people who write books as partners. Can you tell me what that process was like? What was enjoyable–what was difficult?

Monica: Shara and I work really well together. We complement each other tremendously as she and I approach writing and working very differently. Despite both of us being dietitians, we actually have very different backgrounds. This helps us look at our work from different angles and create what we believe to be the most creative solution for whatever project we are working on at the time.

Shara: It was great to have antoher person to bounce ideas off of. We work well together and really complement each other. I enjoyed seeing the different ideas and anecdotes Monica came up with that related to her own life.

Where did you get the idea for the book–what compelled you to write it?

Monica: I have always maintained a private practice and teach a prenatal nutrition class at the Y – throughout my career, most of the women that I help to lose weight, started having weight problems post-pregnancy. It was the same for my friends and family. Throughout the years, we have learned what works and what does not work in terms of moms losing weight. So, we wanted to make the information that we had learned more available. And, since most post-pregnancy weight loss books are exercise-based, Shara and I felt that a nutrition and lifestyle book to help mom’s lose weight was missing from the shelves.

Shara: Monica and I both are moms of young children and recognize the challenges moms face in finding time to focus on themselves, including eating well and exercising. We wanted to write a book that took our experiences and those of women we know and have worked with as dietitians over the years to make a simple, realistic book to help them take off the baby weight. Most importantly it had to be fun to read in short chapters so moms could pick it up, read a few pages and put it down – not to be another chore on her to do list.

What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

Monica: That to lose weight, one must eat and make good decisions. This book will help them learn how to do both.

Shara: That it’s worth focusing on yourself and your health – to be the best mom you can be you need to take care of yourself by eating well and being active. Small changes make a world of difference so it’s not a huge overhaul but tweaks that can really lead to taking off the baby fat.

The Baby Fat Diet Website

The Baby Fat Diet Blog

The Baby Fat Diet on Amazon.com

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I’m back to writing and books for this blog post, and I don’t know about you, but there have definitely been times in my life when I would have loved a second chance to make a first impression.

In a sense that’s what happens in Trish Perry’s Beach Dreams, when Tiffany LeBoeuf meets the charming Brit Jeremy Beckett for the second time. Tiffany, once a bit of a selfish diva who wielded her cutting sense of humor at the expense of others, has changed, but her attraction to Jeremy hasn’t, even though he still remembers the old Tiffany. After the death of her mother and the loss of her job, Tiffany seeks rest for her body and soul at a cozy beach house in San Diego. A scheduling mix-up causes a double booking, and Tiffany ends up sharing the house with a woman named Eve. And who is Eve’s boyfriend? Jeremy, of course. He arrives to surprise Eve and settles in at the beach house next door. What happens after that surprises them all.

I’m always curious about a writer’s childhood, because I think that influences the stories we choose to tell–or maybe the stories that choose us. So tll me a little bit about your background and your family.

I’m the middle child; middle girl. I was raised as one of five kids by my British mum and my WWII Air Force vet dad. I lived in Newfoundland (Canada), California, Colorado, and finally Virginia, which I’ve called home for the greater part of my life. I love it here. Most of my family still resides in Virginia, which is a bonus.

My late sister lived a rough lifetime of medical problems, which had a distinct bearing on our family lifestyle and our sensibilities toward the hardships of others. Her eventual death may have been a blessed relief for her, but it was a huge loss for us. The loss is what brought me to the Lord.

Both of my children are believers, which brings me such peace. I have a 29-year-old daughter, who is one of the coolest, smartest, most intuitive women I know. She’s blessed me with a remarkable grandson, now five. And my 16-year-old son is brilliant and funny, and he tells me daily that I’m weird (but I can hear the “I love you” in there when he says it).

So when you were a child, did you want to be a writer when you grew up, or did that dream come later?

I think I probably wanted to be an actor when I was a child. I memorized dialogue, imagined scenes, and studied actresses I admired. But I never went out for Drama in school. I was horribly shy and couldn’t imagine auditioning for anything. Still, I was well served by my obsession with dialogue and the visual exercises of creating scenes in my mind. Sometimes I still come up with my scenes and dialogue by simply visualizing them on screen or acting them out with imaginary characters. I try to keep these antics private, of course. I’d be in big trouble on one of those Big Brother type of reality shows.

I dabbled with writing on and off when I was a kid, but I didn’t feel the great calling I hear other novelists describe. I didn’t get the itch until I went back to school as an adult. I planned to become a psychological counselor, but my English professors kept giving me wonderful feedback on the writing exercises I did for them, and I realized I liked opening up that right hemisphere and pouring out the ideas. By the time I got my B.A., I decided to skip the doctorate program and focus on writing and getting published.

What would you say is the most difficult part of the writing process for you?

Being disciplined enough, especially at the beginning of a project, to just sit here at the computer and do it. I’m always amazed, once I’ve put something up there, how easy it is to make it better. If you have something to work with, you’re halfway there. So I’m trying to be better about the beginning of a project-not to over think it before I start.

What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most?

I love writing dialogue. What a control freak’s dream, to have control over what everyone says, including the antagonist. If only life were that easy, LOL! But truly, sometimes a scene simply shapes itself right before my eyes when the characters are engaged in dialogue. I don’t know quite what will be expressed sometimes, and I love it when it flows even faster than I seem to be able to think it.

Here’s the age-old question. Do you plan things out ahead of time, or do you write where the story takes you? Do your characters surprise you?

I was just talking with my editor about that the other day, the fact that the initial summary I write might change a bit as events unfold around my protagonist. I think that’s happened with every book I’ve written. I typically write a summary, which tells me generally where the story will go, and then I write a sentence or two per chapter idea, and then I start hammering away on Chapter One. As I write actual chapters, the events between “Once upon a time” and “The End” evolve in more significant ways than I expected in the first place. It’s an exciting process!

Everyone who’s written or considered writing a book wants to know how others get published. Tell me about your road to publication.

I didn’t know what kind of writing I wanted to pursue when I first started to write seriously. So I read Writer’s Digest and The Writer magazines and joined the Writer’s Digest Book Club. I bought a ridiculous number of books about writing and poured over them. I took creative writing courses while I worked on my Psych degree-the workshopping alone was excellent training for skin thickening. I joined a local writing organization and hung out with other writers. I started submitting poetry and personal essays to small publications. I experienced plenty of rejection and kept trying. I wrote several short stories and eventually realized I wanted to write a novel. So I read several books about novel writing. And I read a lot of novels! While I worked on my first novel, I continued to submit to smaller pieces, and I started publishing. I joined a small critique group.

The above actions took me years, and I still hadn’t submitted a novel for publication (or rejection). This is a long road, but it’s best to just put one foot in front of the other and not worry about the length of the journey.

I entered writing contests, and one of them led to my finding representation by my fantastic agent, Tamela Hancock Murray. Mind you, this was representation for my second novel. Once Tamela started representing me, it was a matter of months before she got me a two-book contract. The contract did not include my first manuscript-that baby still sits at home and may never see publication. But it was all part of the journey. 

I certainly understand those books that sit at home never to see the light of day. LOL I found out Beach Dreams is actually part of a series begun by author Sally John, who wrote The Beach House and Castles in the Sand. Was it difficult to write a book in a series, following someone else?

It was a new challenge, but Harvest House was clear with me that I had significant leeway in my approach. We didn’t want the book to disappoint Sally John’s readers by being wildly different from her style, but we also wanted to maintain a style my readers had come to expect. I think we accomplished a happy medium.

Thanks so much, Trish!

Trish’s Website and Blog

Beach Dreams on Amazon

Read an excerpt

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