The Writer's Torch: Beverly Nault

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About Fresh Start Summer: Friendships, old and new, find fresh beginnings when Cherryvale's extreme makeover transforms the peaceful town to an exciting movie location. Grace Harkins, a muffin-baking, bike-riding, retired teacher can't wait to be an extra for the movie filming in Cherryvale. But when outspoken Maggie protests the "biz" invading, suspicious fires break out, strangers lurk and threatening phone calls force Grace to choose between her carefree retirement and saving a friendship in real danger.

Author Beverly Nault shares her inspiration behind her series, The Seasons of Cherryvale:
Pastors lament “mature” Christians can be the toughest to keep engaged of a Sunday morning. Pretty sure they mean me. Throw down the same old phrases, stale lessons and sermon illustrations I’ve heard all my life, and I’ll pull out the cell phone, search for a cool app, or attack those birds.


And if I hear that starfish in the ocean story one more time…sheesh!

But tell me a joke, or better yet, an interesting story…can I just say I pity the PF (pastor’s family)? Apparently they have zero expectation of privacy. Because our pastor uses his kids a lot in stories. Good stories, mind you, but a lot.

Anywho, if I sense a good story beginning, I pause the game, sit up and listen.

Because a fresh story (ha! I knew I could get my brand in there), and especially something that makes me laugh, is worth paying attention to. Many pastors are genius at this. Do they offer “Telling Good Story 101” in seminary? They should, because guess Who told the best? Yep. Jesus. Ding, ding! Thanks for playing.

Too many things holler for my attention and I know you’re the same. I mean, just this week we had season finales of both “Dancing With the Stars” and “American Idol.” Not saying I watched the premiere of “The Bachelorette,” but what was with the guy in the mask, anyway? Even if you’re not a television watcher, you’re busy homeschooling and running ministries and feeding the homeless and…you see my point. Us writer-types must give you a reason to put down that remote, shut off CNN…ahem, Fox News, and take a much-needed break. And maybe, just maybe, become a little closer to the Lord.
 
When I download, order, buy, or borrow a book at my library (do librarians intimidate you, or is it just me?), I want stories that give me a chance to know what it’s like to live in someone else’s skin for a little while. But it’s more than that.


For instance, I love a good armchair adventure. Most specifically the ones where people give up everything and tour the world on pocket-change and hospitality, living by their wits. Makes me feel as if I’m hiking or backpacking or riding that camel along with them. Or a story about someone who moves to a foreign country, learns the language, buys an old ruin (that’s what they call a fixer in Europe) and starts a new life with new neighbors and new customs. But I can’t do that. Correction. I would never do that. So I read about these brave adventurers. Or missionaries. Yeah, they do that, too. Even harder, because they’re often in personal danger. Yikes. God bless them.


How does faith inform what I write? I want to write what I’d like to read, and as a lifelong Christian, I don’t want to be re-instructed when I read for pleasure. After all, you’re probably like me. When faith becomes second-nature, it’s not as if you pause and wonder, “Gee, what is the scripture that applies to this?” like a matching test: “Connect life-dilemma in column A to Scripture in Column B” kind of thing. And I don’t believe that’s what most people want to read, either.


I intentionally populate my stories with relatable, real people facing life and handling crises through the lens of faith. Organic to who they are as believers. Even the town they live in reflects their, and our, eternal destination.


Cherryvale, the fictional setting of Fresh Start Summer, is a little closer to the ideal; shall I say, closer to heaven? I have to spend a lot of time there, so I wanted to built a community where I wanted to go. And return to often.

It’s a little prettier, a little kinder. We need a brief escape from our world with its bankruptcies and unemployment and floods, tornadoes…you get my drift.

Like I said, the people are real. They have their quirks, their warts and their challenges. Some of them are even a bit, well, flawed. Stories wouldn’t be interesting without imperfect people, even Christians.

And conflict. Because that’s how we grow in our faith. Think a mash-up of Mayberry and Wisteria Lane. (Not that I’m hooked on “Desperate Housewives” or anything.)

For just pocket change and a few hours in a comfy chair, I want you to experience the hospitality, warmth and long hugs from the people of Cherryvale. And see what it’s like in someone else’s shoes. Someone who is similar, but not exactly the same. Someone you can relate to, but perhaps who sees things differently than you do. Or you might argue with them over their choices, cheer for their triumphs, hurt for them when they’re in pain.

Can I get an Amen?

I pray my stories bring joy, hope, make you giggle, and that you’re refreshed and ready to face the world with a little more energy and perhaps a little pizzazz. That you’re inspired to deal with some old baggage—if that’s needed—in your relationships (be honest, if you’re older than Kindergarten, chances are good some repairs need to be made.) And perhaps challenged to begin a hobby, step out in ministry or re-visit a dream long ago abandoned.

I pray my stories help you walk closer to Christ, reflect His joy in all you do and say. And to find fresh beginnings in His love. That’s my prayer, and that’s why I write.


Beverly's website:
http://www.beverlynault.com/

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The Writer's Torch: Bruce Judisch

Guest Blogger, Author Bruce Judisch shares about his novel: Katia

CS Lewis once opined that we don’t need more books on theology, we need more books on science and other topics that have a Christian worldview embedded. While his comment focused explicitly on nonfiction, I think the same holds true with fiction, to an extent.

More than one writers’ forum has debated the value of storylines carrying an overt Christian theme—e.g., spiritual rags-to-riches with at least one profound conversion scene—as compared to stories with the Christian theme, or worldview, more subtly interwoven through its fabric. And, as is true with most debatable topics, each side has both strengths and weaknesses.

My first fictional series, “A Prophet’s Tale,” centered on the minor prophet Jonah. Therefore, it necessarily contained a strong overt Biblical message, as I was intent to remain true to the Scriptural account. Although set in a pre-Christian era (8th-century BC), the opportunities to reinforce, and even allude to, Judeo-Christian values were many. It was very enjoyable to write. However, in my latest novel, I took a different tack.

Katia tells the story of vivacious Madeline “Maddy” McAllister, a young American journalism exchange student who is commissioned to write the life story of Katia Mahler, a stoic survivor of post-WWII East Germany. The third major character, Katia’s long-time friend, Oskar Schultmann, facilitates the arrangement.

Raised and homeschooled in a Christian environment, Maddy is a junior at a large state university. She has adapted well—too well, perhaps—to the college and sorority scenes. And, as expected, her faith and her family relationships have eroded as her interests turned inward and her world shrank to herself and a small circle of friends.

Born in a bomb shelter in Karlshorst, Germany, in 1943, the infirm Katia Mahler has survived the deprivation of war and its aftermath, as well as the severe oppression of communist-controlled East Germany. The daughter of a clergyman and herself a staunch Christian, Katia’s faith has sustained her through trials of the worst kind.

Oskar remains in the background until his own secrets draw him into the story in ways he never expected or intended.

When Maddy moves in with Katia, generations and cultures clash, as two personalities shaped by such different worlds and eras struggle to understand each other’s present and past. Katia is formal, reserved and rigid. Maddy is none of those things. As you might expect, such literary ground is fertile for conflict and poignancy—and for much humor. It’s also fertile ground for both the characters and the reader to grow.

As Katia reveals her story, it produces a profound impact on the sheltered Maddy, who comes to recognize a world much larger than she had come to acknowledge and relearns the value of a faith she once cherished. But the lesson does not travel a one-way street. Maddy unwittingly exerts her own influence on Katia, too, who receives so much more than a memoir from the spirited young American.

Finally, Katia is set against a very real backdrop of 20th-century history. Katia’s narrative recounts events through the perspective of how they affected her family: e.g., the Holocaust, the Berlin Airlift, Soviet intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and, foremost, the construction and ultimate fall of the Berlin Wall. Through this, Maddy also learns the value of a freedom that she has always taken for granted.

Katia, then, is a story not so much of redemption, but of restoration. The Christian moral message surfaces through metaphorical nuggets in Katia’s and ultimately Oskar’s stories, as well as through their interactions with Maddy.

So, it appears I side with Mr. Lewis in my approach to Katia. And that’s pretty good company, don’t you think?

As an aside, I wrote Katia based upon a scene I witnessed in Berlin at the fall of the Wall in 1989. A photo of that inspirational moment, plus a gallery of images from Berlin before, during and after that historic event can be viewed on my Web site at www.brucejudisch.com/katia.htm. I hope you’ll take a moment to visit me there.

For those who might be in the San Antonio area the weekend after Thanksgiving, I’ll be signing books and will have a complete display of Berlin Wall paraphernalia at The Twig bookstore in the Pearl Brewery complex on Saturday, November 27th, from 9:00-11:00am. Oh, and there will be apple strudel—of course!

The Writer's Torch: Lynnette Bonner

I grew up loving to read, but when it came to writing, I honestly wasn’t that dedicated. I often hear writers say something along the lines of, “I wrote my first story when I was only 8, and I never quit writing after that.” When I hear something like that I think, “Wow, that’s dedication.” I wasn’t like that. Sure I wrote my share of stories growing up, but it was an on again, off again relationship.
I always loved fiction and would read for hours in high school. But I didn’t start writing until about 1993 after my first son was born. Even then, I didn’t seriously pursue the craft until probably 1999. I completed Rocky Mountain Oasis around 2000 and shopped it to several (okay, about a million) publishing houses and agents. If they were in Sally Stuart’s Christian Writer’s Market Guide and said they were looking for historical fiction, they probably got a proposal from me. Then the rejection letters started trickling in. Publishing houses said, “Unfortunately, we find we must decline the opportunity to publish this project.” Agents said, “With great regret, I must pass on this opportunity….” And I began to realize the mountain I was attempting to climb.

Then in late 2001 a small e-book publisher said they wanted to publish the book! I was thrilled. The contract was good and didn’t require me to sign my first born away, so I signed with dollar signs dancing in my head – after all, the internet was booming! Surely my wonderful story would take off and I would soon be known world-wide, right? Well, ahem, I made about 90 cents before the company went out of business a couple months later, and those were sales to my neighbor down the street and my brother, I think.

When the e-book publisher went belly-up, I was back to square one. By that time, I was homeschooling my two oldest kids and had a toddler to boot. Writing got put on the back burner. 2003 ushered in the birth of our daughter and in 2004 we moved from Idaho to Washington. I was still homeschooling and not writing. But through all those years I just kept praying about Rocky Mountain Oasis. I told the Lord the book was in His hands (I’m pretty sure He already knew this.) And that if He had given it to me just to help me through those tough, stressful years, I would try to be content with that. But I kept asking Him to direct my steps where the book was concerned. I specifically remember praying that if the Lord wanted this book to be published He would need to “drop a publisher in my lap” because I didn’t have time to shop it around again.

My mom is also a writer and she called me up one day in early 2007 to tell me about a new publisher on the scene, OakTara. One of her critique partners, Linda Reinhardt, had just gotten a contract with them. I checked them out and they had super simple submission guidelines, so I zipped up my file and fired it off to them. (Problem – their guidelines didn’t call for zipped files.) By December I still hadn’t heard from them – and I thought, “Well, I’ll try sending it to them with the files unzipped. Duh! So at midnight on December 23rd, 2007 I fired off another cover letter with my now almost 8 year old baby attached. They were the only publisher I’d submitted to in 6 years.

Since OakTara’s guidelines at the time said to expect to hear from them within 8 weeks of submission, I pretty much gave up when I hadn’t heard anything by April. Then on June 9th, 2008 I got the email that stopped my heart for a couple beats before it started pounding again like a herd of wild children. (Ooops, horses! I meant horses.) Words cannot describe the thrill of reading, “Rocky Mountain Oasis is precisely the type of novel OakTara is interested in -- quality fiction, from a fresh perspective – and we’d like to offer you the opportunity to join OakTara’s growing stable of authors.” I didn’t come off that high for several days.

As I look back, I can totally see how the Lord brought my right to the publisher that He had planned for me. There is no doubt in my mind. I’m so glad that I just trusted Him and kept putting my journey back into His hands. (Yes, I tried to pull it back a couple times, I’m sure.)

So for other up-and-coming authors out there, let me just encourage you to keep putting your writing journey into the hands of the one who can best shape it. You will never be sorry.

The Writer's Torch: Elizabeth Wiens

My name is Elizabeth Wiens, and I’ve been married to my wonderful husband, Gary, for twenty-three years. Together we have four daughters, so I’m sure my husband is looking forward to the day when he can welcome a few young gentlemen into the family. Most of our married life, we have been involved in full-time ministry, raising our own support as home missionaries. For sixteen years we served in children’s ministry with Child Evangelism Fellowship, and the last two years we’ve been working with GoodSeed Canada. We have been blessed to be able to involve our daughters in ministry from the time they were little, serving together as a family.

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved to read. I love the way talented authors have the ability to draw a reader into their fictional world and make their characters come to life. I start to feel that the characters are my friends, as I live their adventure. Story is a powerful tool. It not only entertains, but has the ability to affect the reader with its underlying message. Jesus often used stories to teach. I love stories that challenge me to think more deeply about my life and attitudes. Books that challenge me to live a more godly life are a blessing. They convict and encourage me long after the last page is turned and the book is returned to the shelf.

Years ago, as a young mother, I began writing stories with my twin sister. We developed a love for creating characters and transforming our experiences into stories. Many hours were spent huddled over a notebook, which we passed back and forth trying to capture just the right words to express our thoughts. That was the beginning, and I’ve loved working to convey a message through the written word ever since.

As my girls reached school age, my family embarked on a new adventure, one that we have come to feel passionate about—the adventure of homeschooling. We have now been homeschooling for fourteen years, and I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. It was not always an easy journey, and the decision to train up our children at home challenged my husband and me in many ways. Having gone through the public system ourselves, we had to rethink our whole approach to education and God’s plan for our family. Gary and I came to realize the vast difference between a secular education, and one that is founded on Scripture and presents a biblical worldview. The more we studied Scripture and tried to apply its principles to our family, the more we realized how much we had bought into the world’s thinking. It has been quite the journey, one I felt compelled to share with others.

And so my writing began again, and Bringing Them Home started to take shape. However, I did not merely want to write an entertaining story. For the story to have purpose, it must challenge others as I have been challenged. Woven through the lives of my fictional characters, I wanted to include a definite message for Christian parents. I strongly believe that God has given parents the responsibility to raise their children for Him, and it needs to be intentional. As such, it is my desire to encourage parents who read my story to prayerfully consider how their children are being educated and to realize that no education is neutral. A child's education, and the environment in which they are educated, will play a large role in shaping their worldview—whether biblical or unbiblical. It is also my desire to help others understand what homeschooling is about, and to encourage homeschooling families in the spiritual mentorship of their children. That was the message I felt compelled to share.

Now the fun part—the development of my characters, the Knight family. Cassy and David Knight have four children who started out in the public school system. Through a series of events and much prayer, they decide to bring them home, though Cassy feels very uncertain about taking on this new role of teacher for her children. Especially for her 8-year-old son, Jeremy, who hates school. Bringing Them Home follows the Knight family through the many adjustments encountered in their first year of homeschooling and all the surprises along the way.

As a writer, I get very involved in my characters’ lives. I think that is natural, as writers spend so much time getting to know their characters as they try to develop each one’s personality. Each member of the Knight family became dear to me as I struggled through their experiences alongside them. Sometimes they developed a mind of their own and they surprised me with what popped out of their mouths. That’s the fun part—when my characters unexpectedly make me laugh or cry. I can especially relate to the Knight family, because their journey reflects so much of my own.

When I finished Bringing Them Home, I knew my story could not end there. That was just the beginning of the Knight’s journey into homeschooling, I had to tell the end. That is why I have gone on to write a sequel, which follows the Knight family in homeschooling through the teen years and courtship. As For Me and My House reflects our current journey, one which has led us counter to our culture as we seek to honor God as a family.

As far as my writing “career”, I don’t know where it will take me. That is in God’s hands. I don’t feel a need to become a best-selling author, or to write a pile of books in my lifetime. When I feel God moving me to write something He has given me a vision for, I write, and it’s up to Him to do with it as He will. I seek only to honor God with my life, and to encourage others to do the same.

Visit Elizabeth and learn more about Bringing Them Home at her website:

www.elizabethwiens.com

The Writer's Torch: Alison Winfree Pickrell

This marks the beginning of a new thread that I'm excited to share. It's called The Writer's Torch, and the purpose of this thread is to showcase Christian authors by allowing them to share with you their stories of how God called them to be a writer. Here, they will share their testimonies of using the gift of writing that God has given them--the written word is their torch and they are striving to be a light in the world. I hope their stories bless and inspire you, as they have me.

First off, I would like to introduce Alison Pickrell, the author of four books, including her latest release, The Last Cordate. Alison writes, "I believe that God put a desire to write in my heart from a very early age. I grew up in Winston-Salem in the beautiful state of North Carolina. My parents didn’t buy us kids a lot of expensive toys but they did make sure we always had a supply of paper, pencils, crayons and markers. My brothers, sister and I would make books, stories, plays and illustrations which we would share with our mother and anyone else we could get to read them. This instilled in me a love for words, stories and, of course, reading books. That love burned in front of me like a light I couldn’t take my eyes off of.

I loved the fantasies by C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, E. Nesbit and others. At age sixteen, I wrote a fantasy of my own. I made a list of publishers without doing any research and had my father wrap the manuscript in brown paper, tie it with string and send it off to New York City. Thus, began the first of what would be three bulging volumes of rejection slips! This early experience with the publishing world only whetted my appetite and desire to get published.

I grew up, got a teaching degree in special education, and moved to Statesville. I married a wonderful man, Brian Pickrell, and inherited his three sons (twins, age 5 and a 6 year old). Being a teacher and a stepmom should have filled all the empty gaps in my life. But there was still this burning desire not just to get published, but to make a difference in the world through my writing. I couldn’t forget it. It was like God was tapping gently on my shoulder reminding me of that early desire. I joined a writers group in Statesville and wrote five novels from 1984 to 1988 that I believed God had given me."

Her books reveal the call on her heart for those in need. Her titles include: As Eagles, a novel about an older woman and an abandon child who desperately need eachother, and The Den of Lions, a novel about an asthmatic librarian who rescues a severely handicapped man from the circus. Alison says, “There is a little bit of hero in each one of us.”


"In 1988, I decided to give up writing for Lent (usually I give up desserts) which meant during that period of time I couldn’t do anything that had to do with writing. All during Lent an idea for a book kept coming to me and I had to push it away and refuse to think about it until Easter Sunday when I bought a composition notebook and wrote across the cover: My Religious Epic Pilgrimage Novel. I began taking notes and the book that resulted, The Last Cordate, flowed so easily and was such fun to write I believe the Holy Spirit told it to me.

Each of these books was about things I strongly believed in and I thought they could be a light for readers in a dark world. I even had an agent who believed in me and my writing, but by the end of the eighties, when she hadn’t been able to sell a single one of them, we parted ways.

I began to question God. Had I heard Him correctly or was this just a selfish little desire on my part? I decided to move forward by faith and began sending out the manuscripts on my own."

With larger publishing houses closed to first-time authors, Alison sent her five manuscripts to smaller houses, but her rejection collection grew and grew.

"At last I reached the realization that God was saying ‘No’ to this little desire of my heart. I believed he was telling me to focus on my REAL life, that of being a wife, a stepmother, a special ed teacher and in later years a jail minister. I needed to leave the pretend world of pretend stories behind. This was one desire I just couldn’t have. I put my manuscripts in the attic, left the writers group, dropped my writers’ magazines and tried to focus on The Real World. I succeeded to a certain extent but the desire was still there.

So, in 2004 I said to God, ‘God, I heard You. I know what You said, but I just want to see if I can still do it.’ I hadn’t written a book since 1988. So, I wrote Unto the Least of These, a mystery where the detective is a Christian and the only eye-witness to the crime is a little boy who has cerebral palsy and can neither walk nor speak. This child is based around two boys I met in my teaching days. I always wanted to make one of those boys a hero and Jody is the hero of my book."

After submitting her work to The Writer's Edge, Alison shares what happened next.

"The little summary of my book appeared in the Feb. 2006 issue of the report. It was New Year’s night—January 1, 2007 and I couldn’t sleep. I checked my email and there was one from Capstone Fiction saying, “We were intrigued by your summary on Writers Edge…” What? It had been almost a solid year! Capstone would have had to wade through months and months of reports to find my tiny one inch summary. I couldn’t believe it.

God hadn’t been saying No. He’d been saying, Wait. The publisher He had in mind wasn’t even in existence until 2006. The best part is that Capstone (which later became OakTara) wanted to see everything I’d ever written, so I started sending them those old manuscripts I wrote in the eighties.

Isn’t God good? I am reminded of the line from the 23rd Psalm, “Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” I feel like goodness and mercy went back into my past and brought all those stories forward to my present. I just hope that my books will be part of that blazing light that God has sent out into the world to enrich, encourage and bring joy into the lives of readers!
Alison's Website