Don’t forget if you want a copy of her book to email me this week at Mdaley50@aol.com to have me include you in the drawing.
1. What made you start writing? I’d have to say it was my love of reading.
2. How long have you been writing? When did you sell your first book? I’m not sure when I started writing. I know when I wrote my first full length novel. I was 12. My first book, SCRAPS OF LOVE, sold in the fall of 2003.
3. How do you handle rejections? Most of the time I don’t let them bother me, but every so often after a rejection letter I take a few days off. Then I gather up my bootstraps and force myself to get back into the writing process.
4. Why do you write? I write to glorify God. I want every word I write to honor to Him.
5. What would you be doing with your free time if you weren’t writing? That’s an easy one… reading or some sort of craft. Those are the things I just don’t have enough time right now to do.
6. What are you working on right now? A couple of things, a contemporary Mennonite story, a historical romance, and devotions for a dear friend.
7. Do you put yourself into your books/characters? Yes, I do. Most of the time I don’t mean to but a little of me slips in every time.
8. Tell us about the book you have out right now. To Trust An Outlaw comes out mid-September through Heartsong Presents book club. It is a historical set in New Mexico, 1900. My heroine is mistaken for a banker’s daughter and is held for ransom. The hero is her only hope of rescue or escape but he’s also one of the outlaw gang that is holding her captive. As the title hints, it is a story of trust.
9. Do you have any advice for other writers? Pray over your work. Ask God to be with you as you write. It helps me to stay focused and know that what I’m working on He approves of. And of course, read! Read! Read!
10. How important is faith in your books? I can’t write without it. My characters can’t live without faith.
11. What themes do you like to write about? I find my theme is usually trust. Trust in God, trust in mankind, and trust in the characters self.
12. What is your favorite book you’ve written and why? That’s like asking a mother to pick out her favorite child. Right now my newest baby, TO TRUST AN OUTLAW, is getting most of my attention. It’s my first historical.
13. I know you write both contemporary and historical romances. How do you go back and forth from the past to the present? The trick to going back and forth between contemporary and historical is to read what you have already written before you start on the latest book.
Does it take you a while to get into the time period? Not really. After I’ve read the last few pages I’d written before, my mind just slides into place. I honestly believe this is because I invite God to be with me when I start writing.
14. What is your writing schedule like? I write in the mornings from 8-10:30 and sometimes I write in the evenings from 7-10pm.
15. I love your writing cottage. Tell us a little about how it came to be. When my son was 11 years old, my dad came down and he and my husband built my son a fort on stilts. I wanted a place of my own to write, inside the house was very crowded. I came home from a trip to Oklahoma to find my darling hubby had closed in the bottom half of my son’s fort. My first outside office was built. I wrote there for five years. Then my son grew bored of the fort and hubby decided I needed a nicer place to write. So he built what you see now as my cottage. That was the same year that I wrote SCRAPS OF LOVE as a proposal. The cottage was finished in 2003 and SCRAPS OF LOVE was bought the same year. God is good!
