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.

What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
I hope that readers will feel a sense of hope after reading the book.  Sometimes we may be convinced God has forgotten us or that what we’re experiencing isn’t part of His plan. However, things may not go the way we’d hoped, but God is always in control.

What do you say to someone who wants to become a published author?
Surround yourself with other writers.  Join a group, such as recommend American Christian Fiction Writers and Romance Writers of America, attend local chapter meetings, and sign up for on-line discussion loops.  You’ll learn more than you can imagine from other writers, both published and unpublished.  Also, it may sound cliché, but don’t give up.  Rejection is heart breaking, but you’ll become a stronger writer every time you send out a query.

Amy’s Website
Amy’s Blog
Amy’s Facebook Page

Other Blog Tour Participants for A Gift of Grace

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.

You decided to self-publish. What led you to that decision and what has the process been like?
I started writing Parting the Waters in 2003, and even then I knew that self-publication might be the best avenue for this book. But I wanted to put it through the paces—to submit to agents and editors and get professional feedback. I’m so glad I did that! I know it’s a much better book than it would have been otherwise, and in the process I met my agent and lots of writers and editors who’ve become dear friends. We did receive serious interest from publishers, but ultimately believed God was leading us to self-publish—mostly because we expect to use this book in ministry and give away a lot of copies, and we didn’t want a publisher to take it out of print if it wasn’t selling enough.

Parting the Waters is very close to your heart and your experience, because it is a true story. Tell us about that.
Several years after Jacob’s accident in 1996, I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me to write what I was seeing God do. I didn’t want to, and for the next few years I kept giving God excuses for why I didn’t have time. Without going into detail, let’s just say He essentially removed my excuses, and I went home and wrote the first draft in two weeks.

What are the major themes of the book?
Beauty from brokenness. God’s goodness and sovereign purposes in suffering. The body of Christ. The power of community when it works as it should.

What insight did you gain from the process of writing about such a difficult personal experience?
Reliving our experience on the page was excruciating at times, but also very cathartic. I believe it’s good for all Christians to look back on our most difficult times and see how God carried and led us when we felt like we were wandering over jagged shards in a fog. Probably the biggest insight I gained was a deeper assurance that God is in control and I can trust His loving purposes, even when it hurts to breathe.

How and what is Jacob doing now?
Jacob is a precious, happy 27 year old who lives abundantly in spite of his brain injury. Though he wasn’t expected to ever awaken from coma, he walks, talks, laughs, and loves intensely. He spends his weekdays with his long-time aide, Rusty Mauldin, working with his cattle and in his garden, then comes home on the weekends. Jacob worships the Lord with the passion of a lover who is not hindered by self-consciousness. Watching him is like glimpsing eternity.

What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
I hope they will realize more deeply that God loves them and is working out His plans in their lives with perfect faithfulness. Sure we suffer consequences when we make stupid choices, but many of the trials and sorrows we experience have nothing to do with punishment or a lack of faith. They are part of God’s goodness—conforming us to the image of His Son. I hope readers will meet God on the pages of our story and walk away changed by grace.

Parting the Waters on Amazon
Jeanne’s Website
Jeanne’s Blog
Visit other sites on Jeanne Damoff’s blog tour

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

Follow the Baby Fat Diet Blog Tour

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

List of all participating bloggers

I met Mike Dellosso through Writer . . . Interrupted, a social networking community of Christian writers whose mission is to offer support to fellow “parents, spouses, caregivers, and employees whose writing is interrupted by daily tasks.” Mike is certainly experiencing an interruption in his life right now, having been diagnosed with cancer two months before the release of his debut novel,The Hunted, a supernatural suspense set for release June 3. He’s had surgery, and now he’s going through a regimen of chemo. A few people at Writer . . . Interrupted banded together to help Mike promote his first book since Mike’s energy needs to be focused on getting better! So, we’ll get started, but stay tuned at the end of the interview for details on other blog tour hosts who will be talking to Mike, and learn how you can sign up for Mike’s newsletter and a chance to win an autographed cover flat of The Hunted.

Mike, I really want to thank you for this interview. Tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

I’ve been a physical therapist assistant for 10 years, and I’ve been married to my lovely and supportive wife, Jen, for 10 years. We’ve been blessed with three daughters ages 5, 6, and 8. All fun-loving, sweet-spirited, and of course always well-behaved (ahem).

Yes, I have a daughter, soon to be 21, but I do know she was always sweet spirited and well behaved. I’m sure a full-time job and a family life with three young ones has kept you on your toes juggling your writing time. But family is a positive and wonderful ”interruption.” Cancer is not. Tell me about when you were diagnosed and how it has affected your writing.

Yeah, cancer. Kind of a big thing. I was diagnosed on March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day. Here I was getting ready to launch into trying my hand at promoting my new book and in the middle of negotiating a contract for a second book when the doctor dropped the bomb: You have colon cancer.

Funny thing is, I don’t remember ordering colon cancer. Not part of my plans at all.

As for how it’s affected my writing, immediately, it’s halted my writing. With the exception of daily journaling on my blog, I haven’t written a lick since being diagnosed. I love to write, it’s my passion, but this cancer thing trumps it. I took this diagnosis as a nudge from God that I need to set writing aside for a little while and just concentrate on the most important things: my relationship with Him and my relationship with my family. Sometimes it takes something like cancer to refocus you, to get you to evaluate your life and do a little re-prioritizing.

In the long run, I think the experience of traveling through this valley will only enhance my writing, give it more depth, more texture, more emotion and passion. I know firsthand what it’s like to traverse that Valley of the Shadow of Death, to question Why me?, to be scared of dying, not for dying’s sake but for my family’s sake, to live with a monster inside me that wants to kill me (hey, that gives me a great story idea), to be poked, prodded, scoped, and stuck, to live a life that revolves around the next test result or the next doctor’s appointment. I’ve been there now and I can incorporate those experiences into my stories, into the life of my characters. It’ll be interesting to see how my writing changes once I get back to it.

So did you always want to write, or did you stumble into it? How did you first decide to become a writer? 

My call to write was in no way gradual. It happened all at once and might as well have been God speaking directly to me. It began with a motorcycle accident that left my brother-in-law in a deep coma and a prognosis of death or, at best, persistent vegetative state. My wife, Jen, and I went to visit my sister and Darrell in the hospital and came away wrestling with emotions I couldn’t easily explain: anger, frustration, sorrow, confusion, you name it. When we got home I did the first thing that came to mind, I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and started writing.

Now, it’s important to know at this point that I’ve always struggled with stuttering. Lots of thoughts and ideas swirled in my head but I rarely voiced them because talking was just so laborious. I often kept my emotions under lock and key because it was easier than trying to express myself in words. Well, when that pen hit paper I knew I was on to something, I felt a freedom I had not felt before. I could say what was on my mind and in my heart and say it with perfect fluency. I had found my voice! That was almost ten years ago and I haven’t stopped writing since. Oh, and by the way, Darrell pulled through and is doing just fine now.

Wow–my call to write wasn’t nearly as profound. My Dad is a writer, and honestly I didn’t want to be a writer, so I was more of a stumbler. However, I can certainly relate to the freedom writing provides because of my own difficulty in expressing my thoughts vocally. But more important than that–how wonderful that Darrell not only pulled through, but that he’s doing fine! That is a healing miracle, and I pray the same thing for you.

So tell me a little bit about The Hunted. Writers are always asked where they get their ideas, so that seems like a good place to start.

The idea for The Hunted came from the internet. I was surfing one day just looking for ideas or something to spark my imagination and get the wheel churning when I came across this story of a small town in Indiana that reported lion sightings back in the 1920’s. Several of the townsfolk said they saw an African lion in the fields surrounding the town. A couple cows were mauled and eaten. Then the sightings just stopped. No one knows where the lion came from or where it went. I thought it was a pretty neat idea and ran with it. Story born. Happy birthday!

One thing I know I struggle with as a writer is theme. What would you say the theme is for The Hunted?

Themes are something else, aren’t they? An author can write a story expecting to convey one message and then, when the book’s done, look back and find he’s actually conveyed several messages and none are the one he intended. And then someone can read the book and get something out of it totally different from what the author thought he conveyed.

So, here’s what I think the themes are, what I wanted the themes to be when I wrote the book (whether anyone actually finds these themes is another story entirely, and I’m okay with that, really I am, as long as they get something meaningful out of it). One theme is the idea of not putting God in a box, of letting Him be God, letting Him work in your life and do some miraculous things. I think too often we put a leash on God and tell Him what He’s allowed and not allowed to do. That’s not our place. God can do anything He wants to do. He’s the one in charge, remember?

Okay, enough of that. The second theme is the danger of a vengeful heart. Vengeance is a powerful thing; I think that’s why God said He’d take care of it. In the hands of mere mortals, it’s a deadly poison, able to consume a man and turn him into a monster. Revenge is not something we should try to harness. We have no business playing with that fire. In The Hunted we see the end result of a vengeful heart unbound.

Lastly, there’s the theme of forgiveness and acceptance and redemption. Beautiful things we experience from the heart our Heavenly Father and pass on to others.

Sounds like I’m going to have to buy this book! So what is it that draws you to write supernatural suspense?

Because I’m weird. No, not really . . . well, maybe. Plenty of people think I am weird after reading my stories. It was a natural gravitation for me. I grew up loving The Twilight Zone and The X-files and any kind of monster movie. I’ve always been intrigued by legends like Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster. The unexplained has always fascinated me. I honestly can’t see myself writing anything else.

Sounds like we have a lot in common there. Last question before I tell the readers how to find you and your books for themselves. Of all the characters in The Hunted, which one did you identify with most?

Boy, that’s a tough question. I think each of my characters have a bit of me in them; I’m a composite of each of their personalities. Yes, that means there’s even a little of me in the psychopath bent on revenge—and that really scares my wife. I think the character with whom I identify the most, though, is Joe Saunders, the protagonist. Joe is complex and real in that he struggles on a daily basis with his faith and how God works. He’s got God in a box and has set neat little boundaries and guidelines for what God can and can’t do and how He can and can’t work. And if I’m not careful I can fall into that same trap. When I put God in a box I miss out on witnessing those strange and mysterious ways He works. During his journey, Joe has to learn to let God loose and trust Him to take care of things in His way, not ours. That’s a lesson I need to review every day. Now, that’s not to say I identify with Joe in every way. He’s much braver than me. There’s no way you’d get me to go hunting a man-eater in a fog-blinded woods. I’m too much of a fraidy-cat.

Well, you may think you’re a “fraidy-cat,” but I’d say you’re doing a great job of battling your own “man-eater.” But then that’s were Philippians 4:13 comes in, doesn’t it? My prayers will be with you during your recovery. Thanks so much for the interview, Mike!

If you want to read the first chapter of The Hunted and sign up for Mike’s newsletter, you can do both at Mike’s website. Also, if you’re among the first twenty people to sign up for his newsletter, you will receive an autographed cover flat of The Hunted. But even if you don’t win that, for signing up you will receive his short story, The Last Hunt, written exclusively for his newsletter subscribers.

The Hunted by Mike Delosso is available at Amazon.com or Christianbook.com.

And last but not least, other blogs will be hosting Mike’s tour, and you can find a master list of all those blogs here.

Current copyright law is strongly in favor of the creator of intellectual property, whether it’s a piece of creative writing (even if it’s unpublished), or a piece of artwork. Today a person’s artistic creation is protected from the time of its creation in tangible form, even without the added benefit of official copyright registration. But creative rights of ownership are in danger if a new bill passes. The Senate and the House have different versions. The Senate bill, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy on behalf of himself and Orrin Hatch, is the Shawn Bentley Orphan Acts of 2008 (S. 2913) and the House bill, introduced by Congressman Howard Berman, is The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (H.R. 5889)

These bills are reinventions of the original Orphan Works Act of 2006, which was defeated because of intense opposition from illustrators, fine artists, textile designers, photographers and other artists. All bills were initially created to allow non-profit and education institutions (museums, libraries, universities, etc.) to publish or use images without the danger of being sued-including paying damages and legal fees-if the artwork had been “orphaned,” meaning the creator or the owner of the copyright couldn’t be located. I don’t think anyone would disagree too much with this original intent, especially in the case of someone who wants to have a family heirloom photo professionally retouched or restored by a service bureau but has no idea who the photographer was and can’t obtain written permission to have this done.

The problem is that even the two latest bills have language that will provide serious loopholes for copyright infringers and “for profit” companies, including those that deal in stock images. Right now, one publishing company in China has stolen works of art from 93 artists to publish in a book called Colorful Illustration 93 . These artists were not paid for their work, and because of the covert identity of the publishing company, the artists whose works have been stolen have little recourse. Many artists fear similar situations could occur here in the United States. As the law stands now, a copyright infringer, if caught and successfully prosecuted, can be forced to pay statutory damages of up to $150,000. But under these bills, if a copyright infringer can prove a good faith, reasonably diligent search, apparently the most he would owe the artist is fair compensation-all very vague wording left to the interpretation of judges and lawyers. These bills seem to have no “teeth” when it comes to the punishment of infringers (who are thieves) and little support for the artist who must prove ownership of the created work in a court of law.

I’m faxing my representatives today with a letter voicing my opposition to these bills as they are currently worded. If you want to do the same, you can find your elected representatives at the following link: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

For more information from those opposing this legislation please visit: http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html   or www.IllustratorsPartnership.org

Is perfectionism the bane of your creative existence? I’m a perfectionist, and though I think it’s great to take pride in my work, and I love detail like nobody’s business, I also know that my perfectionistic tendencies can stifle my creativity and slow down my productivity, whether I’m writing, drawing, painting, or making jewelry. I’ve also discovered that my perfectionism even keeps me from blogging on a more regular basis for fear that what I have to say will be boring or irrelevant. Well, so what. It’s my blog, right? LOL I’m getting better, starting with this post.

Anyway, if perfectionism is your bane, you might find it helpful to read an article by Jenny Williamson titled “Is Perfectionism Killing Your Career?” She’s right. Perfection is like the Tooth Fairy–neither one exists. 

Today I have an interview with my longtime friend and fellow writer, Janine Donoho, whose first book is out and published under the pseudonym Jessie Jayne Smith. Janine and I met in New Orleans back in 1991 when she was the co-coordinator of the RWA National Conference, and I was an attendee who had my conference fee covered by doing calligraphy name tents for all the speakers. We’ve been great friends ever since as we’ve shared the ups and downs of the writing life and have tried to keep each other sane in the process.

Welcome! Great picture, by the way. Très chic! Why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and about your first published book, Wildfire.

(“Sunset in the Okanagan Highlands” Photo by Janine Donoho)

I live in the Okanogan Highlands of Washington state, which feels a lot like coming home to my original stomping grounds of high desert Nevada. In both places, wild fires proved to be forces of nature every bit as devastating as tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and the like. Thus, the realities of wild fire have resided within me since my early childhood. Since I’ve always written, the richness of wild fire metaphors have grown with me.

WILDFIRE was the last of my three contemporary women’s fiction novels. I finished it in the early 1990s, had some marketing success with it, then set it aside when I began writing contemporary and high fantasy stories. When I again revisited the story in 2000, it tied for first place in Stella Cameron’s Pacific Northwest Writers’ Contest.

WILDFIRE explores the fictional community of Potshot, Nevada, in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains and due for a devastating hundred-year fire. Pitted against each other are Thea MacTavish, a single mother of a teenaged son, and Bramden Youngwolf Hayes, a scientist using his grant to fireproof the town. Tensions flare when arson fires threaten Potshot and wild fires ignite both internal and external landscapes.

You’ve had some of your short stories published, but this is your first novel contract. Tell us about the day when you found out Wildfire was going to be published by CMP Publishing.

In the summer of 2007, CMP Publishing picked up WILDFIRE. I wish I could tell you the day this occurred, but it came in phases with the publisher first letting me know how much she enjoyed the proposal, then I sent the full manuscript and later learned that each person in the editorial cycle felt the same. Any writers who have journeyed into the Black Hole of submitting work will understand what I’m describing. The oh-my-goodness, this-is-really-happening moment arrived when I actually viewed the completed cover with ISBN and all the trimmings. Helium had nothing on me!

The name on the cover of your book is Jessie Jayne Smith. What is the reason you chose to use a pseudonym for this book, and does this name have any particular significance to you?

I weighed the use of a pseudonym, because the entire range of a writer’s stories comprise her full work. However, I want my readers to know what they’re buying-in this case, a literary contemporary women’s fiction novel. Since my contemporary fantasy has first dibs on ‘Janine M. Donoho’ and my high fantasy will be published under ‘J. M. Donoho’, I wanted to distinguish between very different styles of writing. How often have you picked up a book by a favored author only to find out it is not what you wanted to read after all? Say a Barbara Hambly, who writes both fantasy and historical fiction. For me, that can prove a big disappointment. However, many other authors successfully use pseudonyms and I decided to do so. Jessie Jayne Smith comes to me honestly and gives a respectful nod to my dad, Jesse Bushyhead Smith, a one-legged Korean War vet from Oklahoma who knew something about plain-speaking and making the best of what life deals you.

Looking back on your life, can you recall the moment you decided you wanted to write? Were there any incidents or books that helped form this decision/choice?

I’m one of those geeks who has always written stories. This includes angst-ridden poetry in my teens; then my college prep high school, where I was a scholarship student, produced one of my plays. Since then, I’ve been a writer of engineering text and tests along with a biologist columnist in a daily. I’ve learned that short story and essays give nearly instant gratification, but many of my stories come to me as potential novels, which is where I put most of my writing time. Besides, writing helps channel those voices in my head in socially acceptable ways that have nothing to do with drug therapy.

The bookmobile saved my life. Yes, I was the weedy little girl teetering from foot-to-foot as the box-on-wheels barreled down our primitive roads in a cloud of alkaline dust. ‘Voracious reader’ doesn’t even begin to describe my reading habits. Most novels I gulp down as fast and as carelessly as a non-nutritional snack. Horse stories, myths, fables and legends started me on the journey, but I read across lines. Then I stumbled across books that deserve a slower descent and more leisurely pace: Alice Hoffman, Guy Gavriel Kay, Anne Quindlen and Patricia McKillip have proven perennial favorites. However, the watershed books of my youth fall to two writers. Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series hooked my pre-adolescent mind on fantasy and the joys of world building, while Sergeanne Golon’s Angelique series fired up my youthful hormonal system and took me around the world for love. Yes, I’ve read uncounted numbers of beautifully written, lofty novels considered classics, but these were the ones that carried me into their worlds and helped me to see possibilities for my own stories.

Wildfire is definitely not the first book you’ve written, so based on your experience as a longtime writer, how do you think what you’ve done in your life, as far as careers and jobs are concerned, has fed into the writer you’ve become?

My science majors in college taught me how to play the game of what if in a disciplined way. My early career as a technical writer forced me to weigh each word for clarity and connotation vs. denotation. When I wrote scientific papers, I learned that lyricism has its place in nonfiction, too. As a columnist, I learned to play with my bent humor and still get the point across. Yes, even those death spirals when life goes off center have fed into my writing, for how else do you compare the great joys in life but to the times of cold ashes? You come out the other side with more empathy along with a hardheaded view on pulling up the proverbial bootstraps. I’ve written through both murky and bright. The variations show in my work and deepen the final product.

How do the stories you want to tell come to you and how do they evolve? Do they emerge from personal experiences, from the things you read or see on a daily basis, from research, or from characters who just come to you? If it’s all of the above, which would you say is the strongest influence?

As the strongest influence, dreams often inform story. More recently, that process has become known as lucid dreaming. I also gravitate toward the quirky as I read a multitude of science mags and news sources. For instance, a throwaway paragraph in the hometown paper about Harley Davison riders gathering teddy bears for needy children went into my copious files…and the sense I gained from that story surfaced as an incident in my contemporary fantasy novel, Calling Down the Wind. Rambling walks in primitive areas with my hounds clear my mind and allow my subconscious free rein, too. Of course, I enjoy the research aspect-remember, I’m a geek. From the beginning, it never occurred to me to use direct corollaries between real time life and friends in my stories. Where’s the fun in that? Rather I prefer building entire worlds, including the anthropological digging into the crux, then sifting for the story’s core-that ‘one true thing’ for me. 

What have you found are the distinctive themes that you seem to explore most often in your stories, and what do you think the genesis of those themes are?

I’ve played with a multitude of themes, but the one I return to explore has been what it is to be the outcast, the scapegoat, the outsider, the unknown. Hasn’t everyone experienced this? Then, I’ve done the what-ifs to come up with how this character or that group of characters assemble their own tribe, while another set sinks into the pond scum, never to surface again.

Every story has a part of me in it-how could it not? How much the ensuing themes come from growing up in rural communities with a mother who married and divorced multiple times-who can say? I have close blood relatives who deal-or don’t deal effectively-with addiction, too. My occasionally rampant habit you ask? Comfort foods that include copious quantities of ice cream and dark chocolate. Since I’ve primarily worked in male dominated fields, the girl/boy dichotomy never worked for me either. Or perhaps my theme choices issue from being a big-brained, blonde female with bodacious mammaries…in those male-dominated fields. LOL

Do you think finding that theme or those themes has led to the development of your unique voice as a writer?

It may seem strange, but I often don’t see the theme clearly until I’m well into my novel or even finished. Most interesting to me is that my subconscious totally gets it and hums along without conscious thought. Then, when I go back and edit, one of the edits I do is to clarify theme in order to strengthen the storyline. I don’t like to get too on the nose, but metaphors and similes can be fun.

Since your interests are so wide-ranging in that you also write short stories, high fantasy novels, and magical realism, a la Alice Hoffman, which of these subgenres would you say you most gravitate toward as a storyteller and why?

Ever since my introduction into physics, I’ve been enthralled with chaos theory and the vastness of assorted universes. We humans try to see everything, then distill the hugeness into components that work for our finite brains. Thus, when I write contemporary and high fantasy, I get to explore the vastness we glimpse out of the corners of our eyes-like fractals. You know the pattern is there, but perhaps it’s too big to grasp in entirety. With my high fantasy, my passion for anthropology ignites in world building. Taboos become paramount, including the cultural and biological basis for them. Fiction has to have structure, after all.

In contemporary fantasy, when I write about a grieving mother who finds a child on the shore after a storm, then takes the child into her heart and home, that child becomes a lost Selkie whose father will do anything to recover his daughter. We all know how tough the transition can be from child to young adult, but why not mix into the hormonal brew a storm of genetic otherness, that also springs into being during the hormonal surges. What about those homeless Rastafarians? They look a lot like what we call ‘angels’.

When you are in the midst of writing a story, what is a typical writing day like, and how has this schedule or practice changed over time?

Before my husband retired, I wrote early in the morning until mid-afternoon, losing myself in the process. Now, it’s more of a start-and-stop attempt to get into that zone. Yes, I’ve snatched a few hairs from my head and burnt my sweet guy’s ears with writerly wrath-I’m not bragging, only confessing. However, I’m beginning the first draft of another novel and hope that within the week I’ll be in the zone again. I’ve found physically closing the door helps immensely, even when I have to open it for the scratching greyhound puppy, love-starved cat (her words, not mine) or two curious whippet hounds. That and a pot of tea with my daily square of extremely dark chocolate keep me on track. Rigorous daily exercise keeps the blood flowing and allows me to enjoy my chocolate habit, too.

Do you have any parting advice to writers who may be struggling with the negative emotions that go along with rejection?

Use the responses as part of the learning curve, then eat moderate amounts of dark chocolate and keep writing. When you receive a positive-negative response, follow-up immediately. I have three fat files of ‘thanks, but no thanks’-one for novels, one for short stories and one for essays. When I’m feeling maudlin, I take them out and realize how positive many of the earliest ones were. Not the ‘dear sir or madam’ ones, of course. Those should be consigned to the black hole from which they came.

Thanks so much for letting me ask you so many questions, Janine. I’ve certainly enjoyed your responses. Even though we’ve been friends for years, I even feel like I’ve learned a few things I didn’t know, and that has been great fun. Last but not least, remind us where we can buy Wildfire.

WILDFIRE, by Jessie Jayne Smith, is available from Amazon.com, through local libraries, if you request it, and via bookstores local to eastern central Washington state.