This week I’m hosting Missy Tippens with A Family for Faith, Angela Breidenbach with Gems of Wisdom and Stephen Bly with Throw the Devil off the Train. 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 (April 3rd) evening.
Interview with Angela Breidenbach:
1. What made you start writing?
Writing has always been a place of self-expression for me. I journal out my feelings even when I’m not writing professionally.
2.How long have you been writing? Professionally, I’ve been writing for about ten years or so. Personally, I started as a very little girl doodling in my journal.
When did you sell your first book? My first traditional book sale contracted on my 46th birthday! Gems of Wisdom: For A Treasure-filled Life releases just a month before my 47th birthday. I love my forties!
3. How do you handle rejections? My best answer is a short excerpt from chapter 8. It’s why rejection doesn’t faze me.
I learned to take charge of my dreams by selling chocolate bars so I could go to New Orleans with my jazz choir. My comfort zone expanded exponentially. I have a sense of confidence that stayed with me from the age of sixteen. I’ve become bold in the pursuit of my dreams—from selling chocolate.
Since then, I have learned that when I act on determination, I move closer to my dreams. An occasional door in my face or “no” isn’t going to derail me. I do a little bit every day by breaking things down into smaller steps and smaller goals, helping me achieve the overall target. I didn’t sell all the candy at once. Each new home or customer held potential. Sure, a few weren’t home or said they couldn’t afford a one-dollar chocolate bar. But I kept going because I was going to succeed. I even learned how to get referrals from people who couldn’t afford to buy! I kept a chart and sold one box at a time. I marked off the boxes on the chart as I edged closer to my goal.
Sure, I heard a lot of negative answers. The 1,042 candy bars sold in the yes category far outweighed them. I learned to minimize the weight of the little pains for a greater good. I learned about perseverance. Confidence is earned in the face of problems or fears. Confidence is earned, not bestowed at birth. It’s persevering through or up or under or over—never stopping— confidence is not built the easy way. It’s finding a way to the top of a mountain in spite of obstacles.
4. Why do you write?
I can’t not write. My brain starts going with ideas and I think it would drive me crazy if I couldn’t write them down. I think God planned me this way.
5. What would you be doing with your free time if you weren’t writing? I love to travel and get to know people and places. But in my daily free time, I usually spend it talking with friends or reading.
6. What are you working on right now?
I have 2 books in the works. The first is a foodie romance with two competing chefs. The second is a non-fiction 365 day devotional. I love both of these and the more I work on them, the more I realize pairing them gives me humorous relief and spiritual depth while I switch between them.
7. Do you put yourself into your books/characters?
Absolutely. I’m finding I put more of my vulnerability in them than I’d ever expected. But I pick a certain trait that I either want to change about myself or I’ve grown into. That way I have real knowledge and the character has authenticity. I have a harder time writing about characters if I don’t know what they’ve been through.
8. Tell us about the book you have out right now.
Book description:
In Gems of Wisdom: For A Treasure-Filled Life you’ll embark on a treasure hunt for God’s unique gems of wisdom. Be empowered, learn to influence through your own life lessons, and preserve important relationships. Gems of Wisdom invites the reader on a treasure hunt to find important life concepts represented by the beautiful stones God created. Excellent for Bible study and book clubs with bonus companion guide included.
Here’s the info:
Title: Gems of Wisdom: For A Treasure-filled Life
Publisher: Journey Press, A Sheaf House Imprint
Binding: Paperback
Retail price: $13.99
ISBN-10: 1936438046
ISBN-13: 978-1936438044
Release date: May 1, 2011
9. Do you have any advice for other writers?
Be always learning, determined, and search deeply for the special message that God wove into your DNA. That’s what goes in your writing. He’s given you a special set of circumstances to provide exactly the right voice and message to reach out into the world around you.
10. How important is faith in your books?
Crucial. I think it’s interesting though that faith in my books doesn’t mean quoting scripture all the time. I base a chapter or a book on a verse but then the flow of the work is more about how to live that out in real life and what that looks like or how my fictional characters are living it out. You may not actually see the verse but the concept is there playing out in the scene.
11. What themes do you like to write about?
Whether I’m writing fiction, non-fiction, or even cookbooks the themes that run through my work are wisdom and that God uses broken vessels.
12. What is your favorite book you’ve written and why?
Gems of Wisdom: For A Treasure-filled Life. I think this book has taken me to very deep, vulnerable places and opened up my willingness to really put myself, and the message God prepared for me, into my writing. I hope to help other people’s lives be filled with the treasures of God’s wisdom from what they’ve experienced by sharing this book with them. It’s really scary to be this transparent with the world. I feel like it challenged everything in me and who I am to have Gems published and public. But now it’s done, I’m excited to see what God does with the message.
13. What is your writing schedule like?
I tend to get into my office about 9 a.m. But I alternate between writing, marketing, and business calls. Sometimes I get into the “zone” and lose complete track of time. But I break for dinner and some small breaks during the day. I often come back to my writing after 9pm and go until I’m tired. But that doggone zone might take hold and I have been known to go until 1 or 2 a.m. ☺ I tend to get the most creative late at night so I often handle the business part during the daytime hours.
