HEART OF GOLD - Robin Lee Hatcher - Free Book

Welcome, Robin Lee. It's always a pleasure to have you on my blog, and I love your books. Tell us about your salvation experience.

I was raised in a mainline Christian church, but I was in my twenties before someone shared with me that being a Christian was more than a religious practice and church was more than a wholesome place to be on a Sunday morning. I don't recall ever hearing at my church that I could know Jesus, that He wanted to be my personal Lord and Savior, that He would come and live in my heart if I only asked Him to. I don't remember anyone telling me as I was growing up that I needed to be born again. I didn't know I was lost until I was found. Thank God for the young couple who entered my life and quietly began to share the person of Jesus Christ with me. Thank God for saving my mother and then allowing her to pray me into the Kingdom.

I suppose it isn't surprising, given my love for books, that God chose the printed word to reveal Himself to me. It began when I was given a copy of the Living Bible. Over the following months, as I read the New Testament, I also read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, Woman to Woman by Eugenia Price, and Prison to Praise by Merlin R. Carothers. Finally, on Valentine's Day 1976 at approximately 6:00 a.m., I gave my heart to Jesus.

You’re planning a writing retreat where you can only have four other authors. Who would they be and why?

I cannot answer this question. I know too many authors who I would want to be there. Too many friends I wouldn’t want left out of a dream list.

I have been meeting annually with the same group of writers for almost ten years now. There are ten of us, and when anyone misses (there have been a few rare occasions), there is a hole in our group. One person absent is like something has been ripped from our midst. We brainstorm at these retreats. We write and work hard. But our time together is so much more, and it fills us up and sends us home for another year. We are truly sisters in Christ and we pray together and cry together and laugh together. Why do I want them there? Because they are a part of my heart and breath and life. Because I have trusted them with my deepest pains and greatest joys, and they have done the same with me. In this group are some well-known, best-selling writers and there are some not-as-well-known, mid-list writers. But when we are together, we are all the same: followers of Jesus seeking to do His will.

We all need a group of friends like that, no matter the number. Do you have a speaking ministry? If so, tell us about that.

I enjoy speaking to both women’s and writers’ groups, although I don’t do as much of it now as I used to.

My women's retreats run from Friday evening to Sunday morning (although Sunday is optional) and include five sessions (one on Friday and four on Saturday). Over the course of the weekend, I share my personal testimony as well as inspirational stories from my life, my books, and my heart. Participants discuss questions in small groups and learn applications for their own lives. We laugh together, perhaps share a few tears, and most of all, we come away with our faith strengthened.

For writers, I do a limited number of one hour workshops designed for novelists. However, after 30 years of writing fiction, the writing of over 60 novels, and five years spent on the RWA board of directors, including two years as the organization’s president, my favorite sessions are Q&A. I love to answer the questions that writers have rather than being kept to a narrow topic.

If any of your blog readers are interested in me speaking to their group, they can find more information on my web site: http://www.robinleehatcher.com/speaker.html

What is the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you and how did you handle it?

Goodness gracious. I’m sure there are a host of embarrassing things to choose from, but I sure am drawing a blank. How about if I share the most embarrassing thing that ever made it into print in one of my books? That’s easy for me to remember. This was during my general market career before I started writing Christian fiction and before e-mail was as common as it is today.

I was writing a three book historical romance series, each book set in the same town but each one having a different hero and heroine. When the second book was released, it wasn’t long before I received a letter (the first of several) pointing out an error on a certain page. When I read the letter, I said, “No, that cannot be,” and rushed to open one of my author copies to check it out. But it was true.

In the book, the heroine went to bed with her husband, the hero of book #2 at the end of one chapter, but when she woke up the next morning (new chapter), I had used the name of the hero of book #1 in the place of her husband’s name. Totally wrong man in her bed!

How on earth had I and my editor and the copy editor all missed this mistake? I about died. But, hoping to make lemonade out of those lemons, I created a contest out of it and gave a prize to one of the readers who wrote to me about the error.

I’ve had that happen, calling a hero by the name of the hero in the previous book in a series. It really confused my readers, too. People are always telling me that they’d like to write a book someday. I’m sure they do to you, too. What would you tell someone who came up to you and said that?

I tell them to start writing, to write something every day. I encourage them to read widely and to study the craft, but I add that a book doesn’t get written unless you sit down and work on it every day.

Very good advice. Tell us about the featured book.

HEART OF GOLD

A Women of Faith Book Club selection

Thomas Nelson, February 2012

The truest treasure is found deep in the heart.

Life in Grand Coeur, Idaho, is so different! Back in her beloved Virginia, Shannon Adair loved nursing injured soldiers back to health. But in this rough-and-tumble place where her father has been called to lead the church, she’s not sure where she fits in. Then a critically ill woman arrives, and Shannon knows her place at last: to care for this dear woman and ease her pain.

Matthew Dubois is a stagecoach driver through and through. But his widowed sister is dying and he’s about to inherit his young nephew. So he takes a job at the Wells Fargo express office in Grand Coeur until he can find the one thing he needs to get back on the stage: a wife!

What neither of them knows is that someone is at work behind the scenes. Someone who cares for them both, and knows exactly what these two need: each other!

Please give us the first page of the book.

Prologue

January 1864

Covington House, Virginia

“Am I doing the right thing, Adelyn? Is this truly God’s will for us?”

Delaney Adair didn’t believe his dearly departed wife could hear his words or read his thoughts in heaven. Nothing in Scripture led him to believe she could. But it always seemed to clear his head when he “talked” with her this way, the same way they had talked over everything—matters large and matters small—throughout their marriage. Especially matters pertaining to their daughter.

“Shannon has grown even more beautiful than you remember her. She has a good heart. She likes to help others. But she is also quick to judge, even more so since the war began. I fear her pride will be her downfall. Perhaps I’ve spoiled her.” He shook his head. “No, I know I’ve spoiled her.”

Would his daughter forgive him for taking her away from Covington House, away from her friends and neighbors?

We’ll have a new life in Grand Coeur. Shannon will make new friends. And there won’t be so many reminders of a past that is gone for good. For her . . . or for me.

How can readers find you on the Internet?

Web Site: http://www.robinleehatcher.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/robinleehatcher

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/robinleehatcher

Write Thinking blog: http://blog.robinleehatcher.com

Thank you for this peek into your life and new book release, Robin.


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Heart of Gold - paperback
Heart of Gold - Kindle


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