I’m thrilled to be eReaderGirl.com’s Author of the Week!
If you’re not familiar with eReader Girl, they keep you updated on all the free and discounted Christian ebooks. You can browse their site or sign up for their weekly emails—a great way to find out about new books on the cheap!
This week they’re hosting a Q&A about the new Lily book, A Big Year for Lily! Here’s a peek at the interview. Click here to read the rest. (And don’t forget to enter Lily’s iPad Extravaganza giveaway!)
Which one of your books was the hardest to write and stretched you the most as a writer?
Co-writing the Adventures of Lily Lapp series with Mary Ann has been a new experience for me—definitely stretched me as a writer (to be true to Mary Ann’s voice)—but the process wasn’t at all hard. In fact, just the opposite. The experience has been a pure delight!
Mary Ann was raised in an Old Order Amish home, married and started a family, but had recently left the church. It’s been a painful experience for her. She started a blog, A Joyful Chaos, as a way to capture the stories of her childhood. It caught fire! She has more than 30,000 visitors every month, and the New York Times mentioned it in an article.
As Mary Ann and I became acquainted, we talked about collaborating on a book one day. I presented the idea to my editor and . . . fast forwarding . . . the proposal was accepted. Actually, we proposed three books: Lily Lapp as a young girl, a move to a new community where Lily meets a horrible boy who torments her, and then in book 3, Lily marries him (based on Mary Ann’s life!).
Revell came back with a surprise—four books! And they wanted them pronto. So Mary Ann and I got right to work. All four books are written, and the fourth will release this fall. Lily is a wonderful heroine—amusing, endearing, mischievous, and enveloped in a happy family. More here.
