This week I’m hosting Sandra Robbins with Mountain Peril, Roseanna White with A Stray Drop of Blood and Lynette Eason with Too Close to Home. If you want to enter the drawing for Sarah’s book, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (April 4th) evening.
Interview with Roseanna White:
1.What made you start writing?
Well, I learned how to string words together on paper in first grade, and that was pretty much it for me. I went from stories about bunnies and unicorns and princesses to more serious matters like, um . . . wait. I still have a book about a princess. Hmm, at least she doesn’t have a pet unicorn these days;-)
2.How long have you been writing? When did you sell your first book?
I finished my first (lousy) novel at 13, my second (slightly less lousy) novel at 16, and have churned out another 17 (hopefully not all lousy, LOL) in the intervening 10 years.
My first sell is a little complicated. My husband wanted to open a publishing company, so he told me to pick one of my books to launch with. A Stray Drop of Blood released originally in 2005 as a hardback. Those sold out this year, so I rewrote the book, and we re-released it as a paperback in December 2009.
3.How do you handle rejections?
I’m an optimist by nature, so I’ll generally say something like, “Well, obviously that’s not the house that God has in store for this project. That brings us one step closer to finding it!”
I’ve definitely found that rejections are easier to say that about when there’s an agent between me and the editor. She reminds me of other possibilities for that particular project or gives an opinion on what aspects of the rejection should be taken seriously and what should be shaken off.
4.Why do you write?
Um, because I can’t not? LOL. It’s kind of like breathing. I can try to stop for a while, but I find myself sneaking off to indulge in a page here or there at the first possible moment. It’s self-expression, relaxation, and sanity to me.
5.What would you be doing with your free time if you weren’t writing?
Free . . . time? I’m unfamiliar with this concept. LOL, okay. In my non-writing free time, I can be found playing with the kiddos, reading, talking walks with the family, baking, painting, and diligently ignoring the mountain of housework always waiting.
6.What are you working on right now?
A couple things. First is The Stars and the Sands, about a team of archaeologists in the ’20s, who are in Egypt on the trail of Atlantis. And in contemporary-world, a story entitled Seized about a displaced Bedouin woman and the ex-SEAL who rescues her from a Russian pirate, while a black-market arms dealer is out to get her back at any cost.
7.Do you put yourself into your books/characters?
I’m laughing at this, because I actually gave myself a cameo appearance in one of my books, when the heroine visits my alma mater. I’m the tour guide. 😉 But more metaphorically speaking, bits and pieces of me go into all my main characters, but none of them are totally “me.” They’d be way too boring if that were the case. =)
8.Tell us about the book you have out right now.
A Stray Drop of Blood is a Biblical fiction love story following the life of Abigail, a Hebrew slave in the house of a kind Roman. She’s more a daughter than a slave . . . until Jason, the son of the house, returns to Jerusalem and turns her world upside down. Overwhelmed by bitterness at the circumstances that have rewritten her life again and again, she ventures to Barabbas’s trial seeking vengeance—and collides with the power of forgiveness when she sees the teacher called Jesus. A stray drop of his blood changes her soul . . . and opens her heart to a love she thought impossible.
9.Do you have any advice for other writers?
Get connected, and don’t give up. Write the stories God puts on your heart, but also ask Him what to do with them and how (or if) they should reach the world. Most of all, don’t think you’ve failed if you keep getting “No” after “No.” Publication isn’t the only purpose for each book—some of them are just for you. But that doesn’t mean He doesn’t have a big contract waiting for you on another story!
10.How important is faith in your books?
Critically. I don’t preach, but in each of my stories, my characters face the importance of surrender to the Lord, whether it be by accepting him for the first time or in an existing walk of faith.
11.What themes do you like to write about?
Redemption, second chances, reconciling passion with purity, and finding that special someone that redefines “love” for you.
12.What is your favorite book you’ve written and why?
Oh, wow, this is a tough one. A Stray Drop of Blood is way up there, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a book I wrote in 2004 entitled Darkest Devotion. I doubt this book will ever be published, but it’s such a part of who I am. I set out wanting to write a heroine who has been molded into villainness, but who is eventually redeemed by love—love of friends who never gave up on her, love of the God she thought was disinterested at best, and love of a man she thought had judged her. Unfortunately, her story has elements that will never be CBA acceptable, but the ending is probably far too Christian for a mainstream publisher. So for now, this is just a story that has knit me and my husband together—reason enough to write it!
13.What is your writing schedule like?
Sporadic. I was always a morning writer—I’d get up at 6 and log a solid two hours in before my daughter woke up. Then my son came along and totally threw me for a loop by waking up before me each morning. My writing got squeezed into afternoon nap times, which isn’t exactly ideal for morning-person me. But I work with what I’ve got, and occasionally my mom or mother-in-law blesses my socks off by taking the kids for a day and giving me some solid writing time. Love those days!