LOVE FINDS YOU IN NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA - Christa Allan - Free Book

Welcome back, Christa. Why do you write the kind of books you do?

Because when you’re the once-divorced, twice-married, recovering alcoholic Christian wife of a Jewish husband, and mother of five with a daughter with Down’s Syndrome and another in an inter-racial marriage, and the sister of a gay brother…well, there it is.

I never intended to write about issues. They found me first. And when I first discovered Christian fiction, I wanted, needed, characters with whom I could identify. Sure, I found some novels with characters that were alcoholics, or gay, or parents of special-needs children. But, generally, they weren’t the protagonists or their situations didn’t mirror life as I saw it.

What I hope readers will take away from my novels is that we never know, just by looking at people, what’s going on in their lives. So many people look bright-faced, happy, and pretty on the outside that we’re duped into believing they lead charmed lives. Like those families in the picture frames sold in stores (who ARE those people, by the way?!). But turn those pictures over, and what’s there…nothing. That’s not the life God planned for us. He wants our lives to be framed by His love. We called to compassion, and to consider that all those “pretty people” might just be waiting for someone to take them out of their frames.

Besides when you came to know the Lord, what is the happiest day in your life?

I’m hoping I haven’t lived it yet! Truly, the Lord has blessed me with more than I could ever have imagined, and I’ve been grateful to experience an abundance of happy days.

How has being published changed your life?

Yipes…that’s a loaded question! In many ways, it hasn’t in terms of my day-to-day life. I’m still teaching high school full time, still coming home to cooking and cleaning and grading…The difference is that now I have another full-time career, which is writing. So, publication is now one more ingredient added to the gumbo of my life. In some ways, it’s increased the pressure and stress because of deadlines, editing, marketing and all the assorted collateral issues related to being a writer. But it’s also opened me to a new world of writers and books and readers I wouldn’t have known otherwise.

What are you reading right now?

Since I’m in the final writing/editing stages of a manuscript, that’s the extent of my reading right now. Oh, with the exception of the stack of student papers waiting to be graded (any one reading can feel free to help with these!).

What is your current work in progress?

My manuscript, which will be submitted March 1, is one of the novels in Abingdon’s Quilts of Love Series. It’s entitled Threads of Hope: A career-driven magazine writer brazenly pursues meetings with HIV-affected families in search of the career-boosting article she's been needing, only to find something she wasn't looking for - a complete change of heart after meeting a selfless man and the HIV-positive daughter he adopted from Ethiopia.

What would be your dream vacation?

A month in Hawaii, followed by another month in Greece, and to be able to share it with all my children and grandchildren.

How do you choose your settings for each book?

I’m such a Southern girl that I just stay with what I know. So, New Orleans and Houston have been the primary settings for my novels.

If you could spend an evening with one person who is currently alive, who would it be and why?

Just one…honestly, I’d have to say my husband because between his job and mine, plus the time I spend writing, our conversations are sometimes limited to a dozen words or less…and when I’m on deadline, the poor man makes himself invisible. I’d love to spend an evening together knowing there’s nothing or no one else demanding our attention.

What are your hobbies, besides writing and reading?

I’m not sure this qualifies as a hobby, but I find pulling weeds in my garden quite therapeutic! Drinking Coke Zero and eating Blue Bell, I’m certain, do not qualify. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I enter a cheesecake-baking frenzy and buy cream cheese by the case. So, I suppose that’s a hobby, of sorts.

What is your most difficult writing obstacle, and how do you overcome it?

I’m my most difficult obstacle. My little ADD self can hop down all manners of bunny trails, and at the end, I’m exhausted from going nowhere fast. Lately, I’ve been using something I’d heard about years ago, and Mary DeMuth recently tweeted (or maybe Facebooked) about it. It’s called the Pomodoro Technique, and it’s made a tremendous difference in my ability to stay focused. Here’s the stripped down version from their website:

The basic unit of work in the Pomodoro Technique® can be split in five simple steps:

1. Choose a task to be accomplished

2. Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)

3. Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper

4. Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)

5. Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break

               

What advice would you give to a beginning author?

Read books that make you wish you’d have written them. Be teachable. Read books about the craft. Joining American Christian Fiction Writers and attending their conferences opened doors to writing and publishing that I didn’t even know existed.

Don’t be afraid to write awful stuff. The awful is far easier to rewrite or edit than a blank page.

And as for that adage about writing what you know…Well, I don’t think Stephen King personally knew a high school girl with tele-kenetic power who wreaked a bloody revenge. But he did know high school girls who were bullied and teased, who had weird mothers, and he wondered, “what if…” Stephenie Meyer had no personal experience with vampire love. Write what you know doesn’t mean you’re limited to the 21^st century and characters who look like your siblings and live in Tallahassee or Tickfaw. You know about betrayal and envy and joy and hope and fear. You know how your mother bites her lower lip when she’s thinking or your daughter twirls her hair when she’s nervous. These are the “knows” you bring to the page.

Know that only you can write the story God placed in your heart.

Tell us about the featured book.

Raised by her grandparents in 19th-century New Orleans, Charlotte knows little about her long-lost parents. Now facing an arranged marriage to a suitor she dreads, she finds herself attracted to somebody else: a young Creole man named Gabriel Girod. Meanwhile, her grandparents harbor a family secret. Will the truth set everybody free---especially Charlotte?

Please give us the first page of the book.

Chapter One

Grand-mere and Abram were due home from the French Market at any moment, and Charlotte could not convince Henri to leave her bedroom.

“You know Abram will throw you out the door, and after grandmother is finished with me, I may never leave this bedroom. Forever a prisoner of this house.” Well, forever until the day of her coming out party. Lottie knew there would be no missing that event, even if she wanted to. And most days she felt exactly that way.

Henri yawned and stared back at her.

“If your belly wasn’t so full, you wouldn’t be so content.”

He stretched and blinked a few times as if to say, “Whose fault is that?”

Of course, he was right. Lottie reached for her mattress and pulled herself up from crouching on the floor to have her one-way conversation with the calico cat that eluded capture under her four-poster bed. She started feeding Henri the day she spotted him wobbling after the milk lady’s cart. Miss Margaret delivered milk to Grand-mere, but the cat with the pleading grey eyes stayed behind. Her grandmother begrudgingly relented when Lottie promised he would never, ever cross the threshold into their house.

Still wearing her nightgown, all she could do was peek through the muslin curtains. “Only two houses away,” she whispered, as if the words might alarm Henri. She turned around just as the cinnamon-striped cat started to make his escape and, in a movement so swift she almost toppled into her armoir, she snatched him.

Even before Grand-mere made her entrance through the wrought iron gate at the rear of the house, her basket sprouting colorful vegetables, Lottie had deposited the cat on the front steps. She hurried through the library and the parlor up to her bedroom, just in time to see Agnes pick up the china saucer left under the bed.

Agnes looked over Lottie’s shoulder and then behind to the gallery where Marie LeClerc could be heard already discussing dinner with the cook. “Now, Miss Genevieve Charlotte,” Agnes lowered her voice from its usual trumpet blast and set her chestnut eyes right on Lottie’s guilty face. “You forget your cup this morning when you fount the coffee?”

Without waiting for an answer, which they both knew would be one step away from the truth, Agnes slipped the saucer into the wide front pocket of her white apron. “I’m taking care this,” she patted her pocket, “while you taking care of getting dressed for the day.”

How can readers find you on the Internet?

Website: http://www.christaallan.com (I have a contact page there, so please feel free to use it!)

Twitter

Facebook (My author page)

Linkedin

Thank you, Christa, for the very interesting interview.

Readers, here is a link to the book. By using it when you order, you help support this blog.

Love Finds You in New Orleans, Louisiana


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WALKING ON BROKEN GLASS - Christa Allan - Free Book

I love introducing debut authors to you, readers. Welcome, Christa. Tell us how much of yourself you write into your characters.

Since developing characters is so exhausting, I’m thinking I must be investing all of myself into them! Now, if we’re talking autobiographical, well, if I disclose that, there’d be no surprises in my novels, right? My characters, honestly, are much more interesting than I am.

What is the quirkiest thing you have ever done?

Just one thing? Hold on, while I go ask my family. . . I have a pen addiction, fine or extra fine points, gels. A while ago, though, I discovered, thanks to one of my students, a disposable fountain pen that’s available in colors. Makes me shiver just to think about it! I’ve been known to run around the house, unable to write because I’m frantically searching for THE pen I need.

I'd like to know where you find disposable fountain pens. When did you first discover that you were a writer?

In high school, I was always the chick everyone wanted on the other team in P.E. I couldn’t dance, sing, draw, play music or flirt. I had short hair when long hair was in, curly hair when Cher-hair was popular, and a “fluffy” body when Twiggy appeared. I had enough teen angst to market it in bottles as a new perfume. One day, after watching my friend across the street get picked up by my ex-boyfriend for a date, I put pen to paper and felt healed. That’s when I started writing. Thinking of myself as a writer is something I’ve only recently come to recognize.

The first piece I ever had published was in the college literary magazine, and I wrote it after my freshman boyfriend broke up with me, because we were getting too serious. We had too much school ahead of us to get that serious, he said. I poured out my angst in a short piece. Tell us the range of the kinds of books you enjoy reading.

Fiction from Lisa Samson, Kristen Billerbeck, Mary DeMuth, Charles Martin, Joyce Magnin. Jenny B. Jones’ young adult novels, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism, Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, Philippia Gregory’s historicals, nonfiction from Anne Lamott and Bill Bryson.

How do you keep your sanity in our run, run, run world?

I don’t keep my sanity; I prefer to donate it. As a high school teacher of 140+ kids, a mother of five, grandmother of two, and wife of one, I lost my sanity quite some time ago and just never bothered to look for it.

I love it. I might just borrow that thought. How do you choose your characters’ names?

All those people who tortured me in life have rabid animals named after them. I use baby name books, phone books, the Social Security register of popular names…steal names from friends and family. It’s almost impossible for me to develop a character without a name.

What is the accomplishment that you are most proud of?

Holding life together the two years following Hurricane Katrina. We didn’t evacuate [a long story], and managed-by God’s grace-to make it through the storm without extensive damage to our home. But my husband lost his job, so we moved to a city three hours away. We lived in a tiny rent home for over a year, without any of our own stuff except our clothes because everything else was in storage, and we had to move our furniture four times [another long story]. I taught in a new school, my husband worked in a new clinic, we remodeled a home, and lived in it less than a year. The clinic my husband had originally worked for re-opened, so we moved back home. In fact, right back into our home because it hadn’t sold during the years we’d been gone!

That is something to be proud of, making it through so many trying times. If you were an animal, which one would you be, and why?

Does Paris Hilton still have that dog? I’m thinking that has to be the way to go if you’re going to be an animal.

What is your favorite food?

I don’t eat liver or mustard greens; everything else is fair play. My absolute favorites are boiled shrimp, cheesecake, and almost any flavor of Blue Bell ice cream.

Blue Bell. I understand that. I have a son-in-law who used to work for Blue Bell, and my freezer always had some. Now my hips do, but the freezer doesn't. Tell us a little about your journey to publication.

So many times those seemingly random events in our lives are all part of God's plan. And following God's plan, at least for me, is like listening to that chick who guides me through my navigation system. Only, with God, it's just His voice, and no map for double checking. I have to trust I'm being led in the right place.

One of the first mile-markers was my husband buying me a laptop. Ever so romantically, he says, "Here, now go write something." And, being the ever- obedient wife, I did. Months later.

I started reading Kristen Billerbeck and Lisa Samson because, (are you ready for this?), I liked their book covers. A voracious reader, I'd never picked up Christian fiction; I expected it to be, well, boring and preachy and unrealistic. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Then, because I didn't know any better, I actually had the chutzpah to email Kristen with these incredibly B-A-D one page notions (think giving someone three raw eggs and telling them it's an omelet) of a book. And Kristen, God bless her unselfish soul, responded. Instead of recommending I repeatedly pound myself on the head with my laptop, she offered gentle suggestions. A writer who had absolutely no idea who I was had emailed me. Amazing.

The internet became my information highway to writers both published and unpublished; I searched and researched, zooming by agent and publisher websites and blogs. Making pit stops as often as possible to learn about and enter writing contests, to refuel with the success of those traveling with me.

Three years, a hurricane, and an ACFW conference later, my tenth graders stroll into my classroom and find me, their teacher, staring at my computer monitor. In tears. Rachelle Gardner of WordServe Literary wanted to talk. To me.

Ten months, several passes by publishers, and another ACFW conference later, my tenth graders stroll into my classroom, and find me, their teacher, snapping my cell phone closed. In tears. Rachelle called to tell me Abingdon Press had just bought my book.

What is the problem with writing that was your greatest roadblock, and how did you overcome it?

My greatest roadblock was, and sometimes is still, me. Self-doubt, lack of butt-glue, and feeling that gnawing fear that I’ll be a “one book wonder,” can paralyze me. I have to get out of my own way. When I really have the muggley-wumps, I call my friends, my agent, or whoever answers the phone to walk me off the ledge.

I understand the "one book wonder" thing. I experienced it for ten years. But God had another plan. What advice would you give to others who are trying to get their first book published?

Pray. Trust that God has a plan, and know that it’s probably not the same one you have for Him! Follow those who have walked through the land mine before you, and listen to those who have achieved the success that you want to achieve. Pray. Be teachable. Attend writing conferences. Read agent and editor blogs. Pray. Read books that delight and engage you. Learn from them. Pray. Encourage others in their journey. Pray.

Tell us about the featured book?

Leah Thorton’s life, like her Southern Living home, has great curb appeal. But a paralyzing encounter with a can of frozen apple juice in the supermarket shatters the façade, forcing her to admit that all is not as it appears. When her best friend gets in Leah’s face about her reliance on alcohol to avoid dealing with her life, Leah must make an agonizing choice. Seek help against her husband’s wishes? Or—put herself first for once? Joy and sadness converge and unwelcome insights intrude, testing Leah’s commitment to sobriety, her marriage, her motherhood, and her faith.

Narrated by Leah, this novel starts with a funny yet tragic epiphany, setting the stage for a story dealing with difficult circumstances with dry humor. While the topics are serious, they’re approached with Leah’s sometimes sassy, often sarcastic, usually self-deprecating humor.

Sounds interesting. Please give us the first page of the book.

PROLOGUE

If I had known children break on the inside and the cracks don’t surface until years later, I would have been more careful with my words.

If I had known some parents don’t live to watch grandchildren grow, I would have taken more pictures and been more careful with my words.

If I had known couples can be fragile and want what they are unprepared to give or unwilling to take, I would have been more careful with my words.

If I had known teaching lasts a lifetime, and students don’t speak of their tragic lives, I would have been more careful with my words.

If I had known my muscles and organs and bones and skin are not lifetime guarantees that when broken, snagged, unstitched or unseemly, can not be replaced, I would have been kinder to the shell that prevents my soul from leaking out.

If I had known I would live over half my life and have to look at photographs to remember my mother adjusting my birthday party hat so that my father could take the picture that sliced the moment out of time—if I had known, if I had known—I would have been more careful with my life.

Wow! I can hardly wait to read the book now. How can the readers find you on the Internet?

My website: http://www.christaallan.com/
www.facebook.com/christa.allen
http://twitter.com/ChristaAllen

Christa, what a fun time we had with you. Thank you.

Readers, leave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of the book.


Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any pertaining local/federal/international laws.

The only notification you’ll receive is the winner post on this blog. So be sure to check back a week from Saturday to see if you won. You will have 6 weeks from the posting of the winners to claim your book.

If you’re reading this on Feedblitz, Facebook, or Amazon, please come to the blog to leave your comment. Here’s a link.

http://lenanelsondooley.blogspot.com/

Readers, here's a link where you can order the book. By using this link when you order, you will be helping support this blog.