Interview with Janelle Mowery

This week I’m hosting Janelle Mowery with Love Finds You in Silver City, Idaho and Kathi Macias with Red Ink. If you want to enter the drawings, 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 (October 10th) evening.

Interview with Janelle Mowery:

1. What made you start writing? I had just finished reading another of Lori Wick’s many books and decided I could do it. I knew I could write a story.

2. How long have you been writing? When did you sell your first book? I sat down and began typing the words to my first novel on January 10, 2001. That book, When All My Dreams Come True, will release February 1, 2011 with Harvest House. But I signed my very first contract with Barbour Publishing early 2006, which was for a mystery, Where the Truth Lies.

3. How do you handle rejections? Ugh. I don’t even like the word…if that tells you anything. I’m usually down for one full day and can’t write a word. Sometimes I’ll pick up another author’s book and read, both to put me in a better frame of mind and also to study their writing. Then I’m ready to dig back into my own manuscript and try to do better.

4. Why do you write? This is a two-fold question really. One, I write because I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t. I have so many different story ideas popping into my head, I wouldn’t know what to do with them if I didn’t write them down. Also, I feel this is what I’m called to do. If I can touch even one life with each of my stories, then I have attained the purpose of what God set before me.

5. What would you be doing with your free time if you weren’t writing? I’d have more time to read, for one. I’d probably also spend more time outdoors. I love God’s creation.

6. What are you working on right now? I’m editing book three of my Colorado Runaways Series for Harvest House.

7. Do you put yourself into your books/characters? Absolutely. I think every author puts a bit of themselves in each story. We are each multi-faceted, so we have many aspects of ourselves to use.

8. Tell us about the book you have out right now. Love Finds You in Silver City, Idaho is set in a mining town and is about a young woman who believes herself healed both physically and emotionally from being burned, until she meets the man of her dreams and worries he won’t see past her scarred exterior. The hero, a deputy marshal, has been sent to Silver City to investigate a series of explosions in the mines and businesses. As the two work together to uncover the perpetrator, what they find will lead them to the source of true beauty.

9. Do you have any advice for other writers? Never stop reading, never stop dreaming, and never forget the journey.

10. How important is faith in your books? Extremely important. I want my writing and stories to be pleasing to the Lord. Without a faith element in each story, I’ve lost the most vital reason to write.

11. What themes do you like to write about? Trust is a big one for me. It’s something I struggled with for years. Judging others is another theme. I’ve used that in two of my stories, Love Finds You in Silver City, Idaho and The Christmas Chain, my story in the Christmas anthology, A Woodland Christmas.

12. What is your favorite book you’ve written and why? I think the first book I ever wrote will always have a warm place in my heart. I carried that story in my head for a year before I decided to sit down and put it to paper. By God’s grace, Harvest House contracted that story. It will release February 1, 2011 under the title ‘When All My Dreams Come True’. An appropriate title for both the book and my life.

13. What is your writing schedule like? I don’t have much of a ‘schedule’. I write when I can, even if I have to fit a half hour in here or there. Three to four days a week, I get an hour or two in the morning and another hour or two in the afternoon.