BECOMING
AMISH
When
I set out to write my first Amish romance, I wanted it to be out of the
ordinary…one that would stand out in the crowd of Amish romance novels.
What
I got was a re-write of my own history with a lot of imaginative twists!
Being
my first Amish romance novel, I wanted to do what all the “experts” advised and
write what I know…I came from a big family, and had spent a lot of time on my
uncle’s farm as a young child, and I lived in Goshen, Indiana for several years
and interacted with the Amish and observed their way of life, so I already had
half the battle played out in my head.
Next
came the romance portion…I always wondered what it would be like to be Amish, but
never figured you could just walk into their group and say “Hi, I’m here. I want
to join and become Amish”. It just doesn’t work that way. That’s where Jane, my
main character, came into play. She had to be at just the right age to meet,
and fall in love with “the Amish boy next door”.
Knowing
that the chances of becoming Amish by marriage was a close impossibility as
well, I decided to set the backdrop in the 1970’s, in a time of flower-power,
hippies, and love, when that was the backdrop of America…so my end result is a
story of a teenage hippie-chick falling in love with the teenage Amish boy next
door.
The
entire series started out as my own story, and how my life would have been if I’d
married an Amish man, had a large family, and lived a great life doing so….but my
life just wasn’t like that…so I threw in a bit of reality from my own life and
mixed it with Jane’s to bring my readers the story of Little Wild Flower.
Book
Four in this series deals with the reality that I lived through as a child of
an alcoholic mother, but offers a happy ending filled with forgiveness and
strong family bonds in the book (unfortunately not the true ending for me as a
child), but I know that readers like a conclusion, where my conclusion and
healing didn’t come until years later than it did for Jane, the imaginary me.
In
the end, this series goes the direction I imagine my life would have gone if I’d
married into an Amish family and experienced the strong bonds of love, faith,
and loyalty that the Amish people represent as a whole.
My
biggest hope for this series is that my readers enjoy reading them as much as I
loved writing them.
5 comments:
Hi,
I found you on Book Blogs and have now become a follower.
I'd love it if you could also check out my blog!
Thanks,
Megan @ Storybook Love Affair
www.storybookloveaffair.blogspot.com
Hi Samantha,
Thanks for stopping by my blog - I left a comment under yours to let you know how to get the 'you may also like' feature. I wasn't sure if it would alert you so I've left a comment here also.
Megan @ Storybook Love Affair
www.storybookloveaffair.blogspot.com
Hi Sam,
I'm not sure what countdown badge you're referring to... is it something you've seen on my site or somewhere else?
Also, I'm available for book reviews if needed. I cover lots of genres and am happy to read just about anything!
Let me know if you're interested.
Thanks,
Megan @ Storybook Love Affair
www.storybookloveaffair.blogspot.com
I love the way you describe how you got to do your 1st book
Is the book only in a Kindle download version as i don't have one & the UK Amazon only come up with that
Hugs Janice
Janice,
Hopefully you will get this message, if not, I will try to send you one through one of your blogs. You can get those books on US Amazon in paperback, or you can download the kindle application for your computer (kindle for PC--it's free),and then you can read kindle books on your computer...you don't have to have a kindle!
Right click on the following link to download it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=dig_arl_box?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771
Hope that helps.
Samantha :-))
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