ONE HOLY NIGHT - J M Hochstetler - One Free Ebook

Welcome back, Joan. Tell us about your salvation experience.

I made a public profession of faith when I was 13, during a revival meeting at Howard-Miami Mennonite Church near Kokomo, Indiana. But I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have the complete assurance that Jesus loved me, and I loved Him right back.

I was incredibly blessed to grow up under the guidance of parents, grandparents, extended family, and a church congregation who truly knew and loved the Lord and lived out that faith in such a way that I claimed it for my own at an early age. I know not everyone has that experience, and it doesn’t matter how or when you come to know Jesus as long as you come. And I don’t claim to have always been faithful. I’ve had trials and temptations and given in to sin just as all of us have. But I’ve always considered myself to be truly blessed in the family and church I grew up in. They gave me a solid foundation on which to withstand the assault of the Adversary and always find my way home.

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

First, Lori Benton and Laura Frantz, who over the past few years have become my dear, dear sisters in Christ and fellow workers for His kingdom, and whose stories and craft I truly admire. I learn so much every time I read one of their books. Then two writers I’ve never met: W. Dale Cramer and Athol Dickson, both of whose ability to tell a mesmerizing story and convey deep emotion through spare language holds me in complete awe.

Do you have a speaking ministry? If so, tell us about that.

I haven’t actively pursued a speaking ministry for several years, but I’ve spoken to a number of groups in the past on history, writing, editing, and publishing. I love the interaction and am open to scheduling engagements. A list of potential topics is posted on my personal website on the Speaking Engagements page, and I’d be happy to talk with event organizers about specific subjects their group might be interested in.

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

My first radio interview, done live, and I didn’t handle it well. I was a new author and uncertain about how to prepare for a live interview. I sent a fact sheet about my book, but the interviewer obviously hadn’t read the book or the fact sheet and didn’t know much, if anything, about the Revolution, so we started off on the wrong foot. I didn’t do a good job of responding to her first question, which was kind of out in left field, and she shuffled me off the show pretty quickly. I prayed nobody I knew had tuned in and swore I’d never do a radio interview again!

Since then I’ve learned that if the question is off topic or you can’t answer it, you need to say something like, “That’s a very interesting question,” and then change the subject and answer the question you wanted the interviewer to ask. When I was invited to do more radio interviews some years later, I got up enough courage to say yes. This time I knew how to prepare, and since the interviewers had read my novels and loved them, it was like talking to good friends. The shows were also pre-recorded, so glitches could be removed before they aired, which raised my comfort level a lot.

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 have had that experience too, and I’ll bet a lot of us authors get that kind of response. I always try to be sympathetic and encouraging, but if I really said what I thought, it would be the following.

If you really want to write a book, then sit down in front of your computer or grab a pad of paper and pen and get started today. If you keep waiting for someday, it’ll never happen. If you’re really called to write, then you won’t be able to keep from doing it. And if you don’t do it, it’s because you don’t have a true interest or calling, so don’t pretend you’re actually going to do it. Go do something else you’re really passionate about!

But I’m too polite to be that blunt!

Tell us about the featured book.

One Holy Night is set in 1967, when the Vietnam War was tearing the country apart, slicing through generations and shattering families. Because of Japanese atrocities he witnessed as a Marine in the South Pacific during WWII, Frank McRae despises Asians. Now his wife, Maggie, is fighting her own battle against cancer, and his son, Mike, is a grunt in Viet Nam. When Mike falls in love with Thi Nhuong, a young Buddhist woman, and marries her in spite of his father’s objections, Frank disowns him. Then, as Christmas approaches, Frank’s world is torn apart, and he turns bitter, closing his heart to God and to his family.

But on this bleak Christmas Eve, God has in mind a miracle. As on that holy night so long ago, a baby will be born and laid in a manger—a baby who brings forgiveness, peace, and healing to a family that has suffered heart-wrenching loss.

Please give us the first page of the book.

November 19, 1966

Mike McRae dropped his battered duffle bag on the concrete floor and glanced through the bank of windows to where the wide-bodied army transport sat waiting on the snow-dusted tarmac. Waiting to take him and his buddies halfway around the world to war.

Viet Nam.

The name hung between him and his family as they gathered in the spare, unadorned military terminal, trying to pretend that this trip was nothing out of the ordinary. But it seemed to Mike almost as if he were gone already, that he had moved beyond the point where he could reach out to touch them. Their faces, loved and familiar, blurred before his eyes as though he looked at them through a mist.

His father cleared his throat before shoving a dog-eared, plain, tan paperback book into Mike’s hands. “Thought you might be able to use this sometime,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You and Julie used to like to sing some of these old songs when you were kids. Remember?”

Mike looked down at the book he held. It was his father’s old service hymnbook that he’d gotten as a young Marine at Sunday worship aboard a ship headed out to the South Pacific during World War II. Frank McRae wasn’t much of one to attend church, and the gift surprised Mike. Maybe spiritual things meant more to his father than he had thought.

How can readers find you on the Internet?

My personal website is www.jmhochstetler.com, and the One Holy Night blog is at http://oneholynight.blogspot.com . I also have a website and a blog devoted to my American Patriot Series at www.theamericanpatriotseries.com and http://americanpatriotseries.blogspot.com .

I’m also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/joan.hochstetler?ref=tn_tnmn and https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-American-Patriot-Series-by-J-M-Hochstetler/158849110800898?fref=ts

Thank you for inviting me to join you, Lena!

And thank you, Joan, for sharing this Christmas book with us. I love to read Christmas stories in October, November, and December.

Readers, here are links to the book. By using one when you order, you help support this blog.

One Holy Night - Christianbook.com
One Holy Night - Amazon.com
One Holy Night - Kindle

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Author J. M. Hochstetler - ONE HOLY NIGHT - Free Book

Our featured author today is J. M. Hockstetler and her book One Holy Night.

Welcome, Joan. Tell us how much of yourself you write into your characters.

Obviously every writer, consciously or unconsciously, puts a considerable amount of his or her own personality, knowledge, and experiences into the characters they create. It would be impossible not to. For me, that’s really much more of an unconscious process than a conscious one, though. One of the most precious things anyone ever said to me along those lines was my husband, Jay. After he read Daughter of Liberty, he told me, “It’s very good, but … you know, I don’t really see much of you in it.”

At that point I teared up. To think that I really had been able to step back and allow the Holy Spirit to flow God’s vision and God’s words through my fingers and to keep ME out of the story as much as it’s humanly possible for any author to do lifted me up more than I can say. No one could give me a greater compliment than that. The work the Lord has given me is all about Him, not me.

What is the quirkiest thing you have ever done?

Well, that would be founding my own small press! I do have twelve years of experience as a professional editor and many more years of experience as a writer, so I have a fair amount of acquaintance with the publishing industry. But honestly, that doesn’t qualify me to run a business with all that entails—especially a publishing house, which is a pretty complex beast. However, where I lack, God is supplying more than abundantly. I don’t have a single doubt that I’m not able to do this, but door after door keeps on opening, and as long as that happens, I’ll keep on moving forward in faith, both as a publisher and as an author. With God, NOTHING is impossible, as I keep discovering every day.

When did you first discover that you were a writer?

Back in 1977 I had a dream that was very intriguing and just kept haunting me. I found myself wondering who these people were and why they were doing what they were doing.

Although I was a voracious reader, up till that point it had never occurred to me to try my hand at writing fiction. But in thinking about that dream, I realized that if I was going to make any sense of it, I was going to have to figure out who the characters were and what their story was, and the only logical way to do that was to write it down. At the time I had no intentions of ever submitting anything I wrote for publication, but along the way as more stories came to me, I realized that a story isn’t complete without readers.

Tell us the range of the kinds of books you enjoy reading.

For fiction, I love the classics like Shakespeare, Dickens, Austin, Bronte. I’m a big fan of the swashbuckling novels of Rafael Sabatini. I especially love historical novels that are well researched and historically accurate and that delve in depth into the historical setting.

I like women’s fiction too, whether contemporary or historical—essentially character and issue-driven stories—and well-written mysteries. I really don’t read typical romance novels at all. If the story is tightly focused on the relationship of the hero and heroine and whether they get together in the end, I get bored. Just can’t make it through them. And I can’t stand bodice rippers. I look for complex characters, plots, and themes that challenge me and expand my horizons.

As far as non-fiction is concerned, I’m very interested in history, biographies, theology, archaeology, and current events. I also love to read books about language.

What other books have you written, whether published or not?

I’ve published the first two books of my American Patriot Series. Daughter of Liberty starts at the very beginning of the American Revolution and ends right after the Battle of Bunker Hill. Book 2, Native Son, picks up the story at that point and takes the characters from Boston to New York and into Ohio Territory among the Indians. Book 3, Wind of the Spirit, which releases in January 2009, will continue that thread and bring the story up to the Battle of Trenton. I’m planning at least 4 more books in the series to bring my characters and their love story through to the end of the Revolution. At the rate it’s going, though, I’m probably going to add more volumes than that. My aim is to write a truly comprehensive historical fiction series about our first Greatest Generation that sacrificed so much to bequeath to following generations the legacy of freedom we enjoy in this country.

I’m also working with my cousin Bob Hostetler, a multi-published CBA author, to write the story of our Amish ancestors who came to this country from Europe in 1738 seeking religious freedom. They got caught up in the French and Indian War when their frontier home was attacked by a band of Indians. Three members of the family were massacred and 3 were carried away into captivity, returning years later. We’ve titled it Northkill for the name of the creek along which the attack happened. It’s a compelling story, but progress has been slow so far. But I plan to turn my full attention to it as soon as I finish Wind of the Spirit this spring.

Very early on in my writing career I wrote a suspense thriller set during the Cuban missile crisis that I’d like to do something with instead of allowing it to just take up space on my hard drive. I have a medieval European epic tragedy that I’ve been working on for years and need to get back to and complete. In various stages I have a WWII era love story set in the Amish-Mennonite community near Kokomo, Indiana, where I grew up, and a contemporary romantic comedy set in the music industry in Nashville, Tennessee, near where I live now. A while back I also started a story based on Randy Travis’s hit “Three Wooden Crosses.” And I have notes on several other story ideas. I’m determined to find the time to get all of these written someday!

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

Sanity? What’s sanity? LOL! Anyone who’s in this business has to be crazy.

Seriously, I try to keep my ears tuned to the Holy Spirit so I can determine what is the most important thing for me to do right at this moment rather than what is the most urgent thing. And that may be spending time with my family or it may be attending to a particular matter concerning my publishing business or my writing projects. Whatever it is, I try to focus on that while not stressing about all the other tasks that are nagging for my attention. Of course, how successful I am at doing that is questionable at times. But ultimately, what’s truly important for me to do will get done in the Lord’s time. The test is always: Am I about the Father’s business—or MY business?

How do you choose your characters’ names?

Most often my characters arrive with a first name, and often with a surname too. Other times I have to resort to the phone book or to other lists of names. With my historicals, I’ll check through my resources for names that were common at the time.

There have been times when a character came to me with a name attached, but I ended up not using it. The pastor, Dan Christensen, in One Holy Night is an example. Actually his name is Tim, not Dan, and I still have to be careful not to call him that. He was Tim for the longest time until I suddenly became aware that the main character in Jan Karon’s books is a pastor named Tim. I hadn’t thought about it because I don’t read her books. I guess her stories are just too “cozy” for me. But when I became aware of the issue, I wrestled with it for some time before reluctantly deciding to change my character’s name. I didn’t want anyone to think I was copying her character, which I certainly wasn’t doing.

What is the accomplishment that you are most proud of?

Being a mother and grandmother. Children are your legacy to the world, and I’ve been truly blessed to have 3 beautiful, intelligent, and loving daughters and 4 delightful grandchildren.

If you were an animal, which one would you be, and why?

Probably a cocker spaniel. Dogs are faithful and affectionate, and cocker spaniels are active, engaging, and beautiful.

What is your favorite food?

Oh, goodness! There are too many to mention. If I had to settle on one, I guess it would be a mild, grilled fish like salmon or tilapia. Add fresh grilled vegetables, and I’m a happy girl.

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

I’ve never had what you would call writer’s block, though I do wrestle at times with how to write a particular scene and sometimes with what scene to write to deepen a character or plot point. But the greatest roadblock I’ve encountered as a writer has been getting my stories into the hands of readers. It took me over 20 years to get my first book contract … and then the editor who acquired me left the publishing house and the new editor dropped my series even before the second book came out. That was pretty discouraging because time and again every answer to prayer pointed me toward continuing to write and toward getting the stories the Lord gave me out to readers.

In the fall of 2006, I finally reached a point of frustration where I once again said to myself, as many times before in a joking manner, “Maybe I just ought to start my own publishing house.” Instantly I received the challenge back: “Well … why don’t you?” It really slapped me upside the head. Talk about the light switching on! I knew at once that was the Lord’s direct leading, and this time I wasted no time moving forward in faith.

Lesson learned: When no door opens to you even though you know absolutely that the Lord would have you to move forward, find a way to make your own door.

What advice would you give to an author just starting out?

Never give up. If you truly believe that the Lord is calling you to write, obey His leading and write the stories He has for you to write, not what the market may tell you to write. Learn to write well. Read good books—and a few bad ones so you can tell the difference. Network with other authors and seek input from those who are more experienced and knowledgeable than you are. If possible, find someone to mentor you.

But most important, lay your writing at the Lord’s feet and submit your ambitions and desires to His perfect plan and purpose. If God isn’t in control of your life and work, anything you accomplish will turn out to be ashes. And give Him the glory no matter where He leads you.

What would you like to tell us about the featured book?

I feel as if all my books are given to me by the Holy Spirit as a gift to God’s people, but I feel even more so about this story. It’s a modern-day nativity story—a retelling of the birth of Jesus in contemporary times. I hope and pray it will minister to many hurting hearts and bring peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation to readers who are dealing with broken families, major illnesses, or who have wandered away from the Lord.

How can readers find you on the Internet?

My author site is www.jmhochstetler.com. My publisher Web site is www.sheafhouse.com, and I’m blogging the process of founding a publishing house at http://publishingdream.blogspot.com. I also put up a blog for my latest release, One Holy Night at http://oneholynight.blogspot.com. You’ll find my downloadable press kit at http://jmhochstetler.googlepages.com/home, and I’m posting a variety of downloadable articles at http://jmhochstetlerarticles.googlepages.com/home. As I have time, I’m posting reviews of all my books at http://jmhochstetlerreviews.googlepages.com. There are links to the googlepages from my author Web site, so you can access them from there as well.

I’m also on Shelfari at www.shelfari.com/JoanMarie and on Shoutlife at www.shoutlife.com/profile_view.cfm?uid=13610 . And I’m a regular contributor to the Favorite PASTimes historical fiction blog at http://favoritepastimes.blogspot.com. Plus I have an Amazon blog that you’ll find on my book pages on Amazon.

Lena, it’s been a joy to talk with you. Thank you for inviting me!

And thank you, Joan, for spending this time with us.

Readers, you have a lot of web pages to check out, but not before you leave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of this book.