This week I’m hosting Lynette Sowell with Cherry Blossom Capers, Ronie Kendig with Firethorn, Ada Brownell with Swallowed by Life, and Grace Fox with Moving from Fear to Freedom. If you want to enter the drawings for the books, 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 (January 22nd) evening.
Interview with Ada Brownell:
1. What made you start writing?
As youth president of my church, I sent ideas for services to a youth magazine. The Lord set a fire in me to win the lost and encourage people even before I was elected youth leader. The group grew until we packed the large basement room where we met, but then my husband was transferred to Thompson, Utah—population 98. Three bars—the grocery stores were in the bars—and no church. I wrote a couple of stories for Sunday school papers (rejected) but then one night I had something to share. I wrote an article, submitted it to The Pentecostal Evangel, which bought it and someone else reprinted it as a tract. A few months later, I wrote a piece for David C. Cook’s Leader on my mother’s teaching methods and I was paid well. I sold my accordion, bought an electric typewriter and enrolled in a Christian writing course. At the same time I was interested in news writing and became a correspondent. Later I became a career journalist. I worked 17 years, mostly at The Pueblo Chieftain in Colorado, and I’ve sold more than 250 articles and stories to Christian publications.
2. When did you sell your first book? I sold Confessions of a Pentecostal to the Assemblies of God in 1978.
3. How do you handle rejections? I think it helped me to be born poor and a freckled redhead. I experienced plenty of rejection and I accepted that negative responses from people is a part of life. Another writer advised me early to put my story or article in the mail, forget it and start another. I also learned early one editor might hate a piece, while another will love it. That’s why I keep trying.
4. Why do you write? To fulfill the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19). I became a reporter to help with finances, but especially to send our children to Christian colleges.
5. What would you be doing with your free time if you weren’t writing? If I had money, I would travel more, and perhaps volunteer.
6. What are you working on right now? Final editing on my historical romance,”The Belle of Peachville;” op-ed pieces for newspapers; and articles for Christian magazines. I also have an editor considering my teen novel, Terror Blasters.
7. Do you put yourself into your books/characters? Non-fiction—often. Fiction, my first response is never, but I guess I can’t help a bit of myself creeping in.
8. Tell us about the book you have out right now. Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal was released on Dec. 13, 2011. From the back cover:
Do you know you are more than a physical body? An award-winning medical and religion writer, Ada Brownell—through her research after the death of her daughter—shows why we have hope for eternal life, not only from a Christian point of view, but because of physical evidence.
Of her 17 years as a journalist, the author spent seven on the medical beat at The Pueblo Chieftain in Colorado, reporting on discoveries about the human genome, neurology, mental illness, cancer, disease prevention, treatments, medications, and more. She also is a religion writer.
9. Do you have any advice for other writers? Read, study, plan, and sit down and do it. I wrote The Belle of Peachville during American Christian Fiction Writers’ January 2011 Novel Track. I had 7,000 words when I began and by the first week of February I completed 80,000 words and the end. However, I’ve spent months editing.
10. How important is faith in your books? I write to encourage and inspire. With fiction faith must be or become a part of the characters. You don’t preach, you’re telling a story.I show how lack of faith or having belief helps or changes you. In The Belle of Peachville my leading man’s favorite song is “The Ninety and Nine.” A thread of God’s great love for even one person goes throughout the story.
11. What is your writing schedule like? I write nearly every day, but I’m also sort of a clean-aholic and we exercise. When I stop writing I don’t complete a thought, but break in the middle, sometimes in a sentence. When I come back, it’s easy to start where I left off.
12. Where can readers connect with you and your writing? The link to Swallowed by LIFE is http://amzn.com/1466200936
My blog: http://www.inkfromanearthenvessel.blogspot.com
My website: http://www.adabrownell.com
