Today I’m excited to tell you about a friend of mine, Allie Pleiter, and her newest book, Bluegrass Courtship. Since Allie and I live within about an hour of each other, we have the increasingly rare privilege of being face-to-face friends instead of suffering the limits of being only cyber-friends. We both belong to RWA (Romance Writers of America), ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers), and ACFW Midwest, an offshoot of the national ACFW group. Our local ACFW Midwest group gives us the opportunity to get together on a regular basis, besides those times Allie and I can carve out a dinner or coffee together.
Let me just start this by admitting I love Allie’s work! Her writing is intelligent, witty, and fresh. And of course she writes romance, which has always been my favorite kind of book. I love her humor and her heroines can be summed up as intelligent and savvy (the best kind!).
When Allie and I were talking about having her visit my blog, I asked her to share a little about her writing experiences. Here’s what she told me about creating characters:
Some characters show up with all their details intact. As writers, we love them because they’re not as much work—we mostly sit back and watch them run wild with our plots and stir up the other characters in our story. They feel like gifts from God. Even if they’re the “bad guy” in our story, their full formation reminds us of our creative capacities.
Other characters are, as novelist Diana Gabaldon puts it, “like onions.” We must peel them back, layer by layer, maybe even weeping, until we uncover the entirety of who they are. They’re always worth the work, and they often showcase unusual qualities. If we’re lucky, readers see both kinds with equal depth.
Bluegrass Courtship contained both such characters. High voltage Drew Downing invaded my brain fully formed one morning, taking over much as he takes over Middleburg Kentucky in my book. I’m not saying he didn’t wield a few surprises, but I knew who he was from the moment he appeared. Janet Bishop was more of on onion—holding back, revealing only one layer at a time, hiding her core—but she proved just as compelling and deep a soul as the in-your-face Drew she comes to love. Their qualities are what complete each other—but, as I always say, not before they make each other miserable.
Love is beautiful, but watching someone find their match is what captures our hearts. I think mostly because we rarely see it as well as those around us do–that age-old adage about being “the last to know.” As a reader, I love it when I’ve figured out they love each other before they know it themselves. It’s like being in on the very best kind of secret. And when we close the book, clutch it to our chests and sigh, “Oh, I knew it all along,” it’s wildly satisfying.
Maybe because we spend so much of life sighing, “Whoa, I never saw that coming…”
Okay, back to Maureen here:
Can you see why I’m so pleased to be able to tell you about this latest book? Allie’s writing is as engaging as her characters, and she knows how to capture the essence of a romance, as you might have already guessed.
Here’s a little blurb about the book itself:
The celebrity host of TV’s Missionnovation, Drew Downing is comfortable with his fame. He’s become accustomed to the cheering, star-struck townfolk that usually welcome him as he renovates churches countrywide. Usually. Then he and his crew set up in tiny Middleburg, Kentucky, to rebuild the church’s storm-damaged preschool. The very lovely, very no-nonsense hardware store owner Janet Bishop is suspicious of Drew’s true motives. It looks like Janet Bishop’s faith—in God, in herself, and in love—needs some serious rebuilding. And Drew Downing is just the man for the job.
From Romantic Times Bookreviews Magazine:
“Four Stars–With some delightfully humorous moments, Pleiter delivers an appealing romance as well as a story filled with interesting characters.”
BLUEGRASS COURTSHIP
LOVE INSPIRED FEB 09 RELEASE
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