Shameless Marketing

 

This is a very exciting week for me. I’m celebrating the release of Springtime of the Spirit, and part of that celebration includes a free Kindle download of my previous book in the series, Whisper on the Wind. It’s available for a limited time, compliments of my publisher (Tyndale) and can be read not only on the Kindle but other e-readers as well. While my three Great War books are definitely connected by the European setting of the First World War, they’re all independent reads so they can be enjoyed in any order.

I’ve also been visiting several blogs, doing some online interviews, a couple of podcast interviews, and I’ll be doing a local book signing in March (March 26^th to be exact, at the Johnsen and Taylor Bookstore in Wheaton, IL). So I’m busy doing “authorly” things, even as my days are filled with forging ahead with my next project.

In light of talking about my new release to others, I was thinking about how the two main characters in Springtime of the Spirit came to be. I always say that many heroes and heroines, particularly in romances, are interchangeable. That may sound like a knock against romantic stories but I honestly don’t mean it that way. In fact, it’s meant as just the opposite. We all come to a romantic tale with certain pre-conceived expectations. The heroine and hero will be . . . well, heroic. They may or may not be perfectly beautiful but they will have something extremely attractive about them—at least so believes their counterpart, and so do the rest of us who identify with that counterpart through the duration of the story. Each hero and heroine must have something we can all identify with and then fall in love with, at least in the make-believe world the book creates in our mind.

Obviously there are some character differences along the way, hopefully unique traits or goals or obstacles as well as a reflection of their era or setting and the plot in which each of these characters are placed. For my heroine, I needed someone who would be sensitive enough to feel guilty over the profits her family reaped while selling war goods, ideal enough to think she can make a difference, bold enough to do something about it—even fearlessly—but with a spiritual hole that only God could fill. A hole she tries stuffing with her ideals and her faith in politics and politicians but one that ultimately won’t go away. She’s unique from my other heroines because she’s more idealistic, more willing to run head on and face whatever needs facing.

For my hero, I needed someone more sensitive than some traditional heroes. This proved possible considering he’d spent the last four years on a battlefield. Rather than having had his war experience make him hard, his spiritual connection to a loving God never broke. In my earliest thoughts about him I saw him a bit too sensitive—and even a little slow when it came to politics that are ultra-important to my heroine. But I had to give up some of that, because all heroes need to garner respect from their heroine. When I thought of Annaliese, my heroine, I wondered how she could respect someone who was done fighting. She was just beginning to fight—for the future of Germany. Obviously someone who didn’t believe everything she believed would be wrong for her, and so there was plenty of conflict to play with between the two of them.

Except for one very important aspect: spiritually my hero and heroine are a perfect fit. Not at first, of course, but as the journey goes along they realize they’re better together than apart. And for inspirational fiction, that’s the best thing of all to recognize.

I hope you don’t mind this week’s indulgence in a visit with my characters, but while I’m doing my best at marketing, they’ve been on my mind almost as much as they were while I was writing the book in the first place.

Oh, and by the way, one of my recent interviewers asked what actors I would choose to play my characters. The answer was easy. My cover model reminded me of Jessica Simpson, so she would be a wonderful portrayal of Annaliese. And cast as my hero, Christophe, would be a barely-shaved Aaron Eckhart. Just thought you might want to know…

Here are a couple of the blog links I’ll be visiting this week:

Link to The Writer’s Window with Kaye Dacus

or

Link to Lena Nelson Dooley’s Blogspot

 

Thanks for letting me indulge, and as always, happy reading!