Love Inspirational Romance?

Two years ago — February 2014 — Inspy Romance was born with over two dozen authors writing Christian contemporary romance. While a few of the authors ALSO write historical romance, or ALSO write romantic suspense, or ALSO write Amish, the central focus for the site is to create a community for authors and fans of romance in a contemporary setting with a spiritual foundation.

God has blessed the Inspy Romance community! While a few faces change from time to time, we have a strong core of authors. And right now, between February 15 and March 14, 2016, we are celebrating our 2nd birthday with SEVEN prize packss, each consisting of multiple books! Three of the packages contain five paperbacks each, along with an Inspy Romance mug, pen, and notebook. Which leaves four prize packs with multiple e-books! All the e-book packs are open internationally, so come on over, read a few (or a lot of!) blog posts. Every comment between Feb 15 and March 14 is an entry.

Here are the e-book prize packs.

You may recognize some familiar "faces" in those four prize packs! We have a great international contingent at Inspy Romance with Narelle Atkins, Autumn Macarthur, Marion Ueckermann, and me, along with newcomer Canadian author Carolyne Aarsen.

Why not swing by Inspy Romance before March 14? This is a great time to poke around, comment on some of the posts, and get your name into the draw for one of these terrific prizes. You may find some new favorite authors!

Valerie Comer's life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local food movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily ever afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughters.

Berry on Top, the sixth and final novel in the Farm Fresh Romance series, released February 25 on Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and iBooks.

Armchair Traveling

Those of us who hang out here at ICFW get to do a lot of armchair traveling, right? While many of us have done some international excursions, it's safe to guess none of us have been to all the countries represented by our authors and books.

I live in Canada and have been to many parts of the USA. I've also been to Bolivia, albeit many many years ago! I've traveled to a lot of other countries virtually, though.

I've been to Australia with Paula Vince and Narelle Atkins. I've been to Zambia and Finland with Marion Ueckermann. To England, France, and Scotland with Autumn Macarthur. Other places with others of you, and I love those connections!

My own fiction takes place in the USA and Canada, and to some of my readers stories set in Canada are as exotic as Africa. To me, they are "normal." Even my American-set tales are normal to me, as I live twenty minutes from my Farm Fresh Romance series' setting in northern Idaho. While I have to remember that some governmental and medical things will be handled differently there than at home, a farm is a farm and a romance is a romance.

While I was writing Plum Upside Down, the fifth Farm Fresh Romance, I discovered that I not only had a character with itchy feet, but that he actually planned to go on a missions trip… during the story. Not only that, but he thought the heroine should go, too.

Wait! That wasn't in the script! Who gave these people—and I use that term lightly because, after all, they are fictitious!—permission to have minds of their own and direct the plot?

Uh, yeah. That's the agreement God and I made a while back about this whole controlling-the-plotline thing. I was never very good at it, frankly, so when God offered to take over, He easily convinced me He could do a better job. And besides, who doesn't like to ditch a job he or she is abysmal at?

I'm getting used to stories veering off into left field while I run behind them, trying to pretend I'm in control. But Plum Upside Down presented two major issues that had me trying to pull back those reins.

1. It turns out that Chelsea Riehl had a lot in common with my younger self. Although raised in a Christian home, a graduate of a Christian school, and a believer since a young age, she struggled to FEEL God's personal and passionate love to her. Oh, man. I did not want to go here with this story, but by the time I realized what part of left field God was sending Chelsea and me to, it was too late. So, this novel took me into deep parts of myself that I hadn't planned to expose for all the world to read.

2. That aforementioned thing where Keanan Welsh decided to head off to Africa on a missions trip. This became a wedge between him and Chelsea… and between the characters and the author.

This series takes place on Green Acres Farm in northern Idaho! The characters sign on to work this piece of land in community. I did not give Keanan permission to jaunt halfway around the world, but he went anyway.

I panicked. For a bunch of reasons, Bolivia—the only country outside of North America I'd ever been to—wasn't going to work for this story.

The story needed Africa.

…and I needed help!

And God provided what was needed. When I asked Marion Ueckermann for some information and direction, she responded with an enthusiastic affirmative. She read my early draft and corrected my (many) misconceptions about South Africa. She gave me other ideas where my originals simply couldn't be morphed to fit. Plus she provided another contact, her niece, who just so happened to have trained in the very hospital in Pretoria I needed, and to have worked in the ICU there.

Isn't it awesome when God does that? Sometimes He provides far and away more than I dreamed. As the story crosses over the Christmas season, I'd added a scene in the first draft where a group of carolers came to the hospital and sang for the patients and visitors. This could easily happen in any Canadian hospital.

Marion and Melanie said it was completely foreign to South Africa, but Melanie gave me a different idea. Apparently the nurses themselves often sing at shift change. Old hymns and Negro spirituals are common. Melanie agreed that the nurses might sing Christmas songs in those styles, so I was able to shift the scene in that direction instead.

Here's a video of nurses singing that I used as my inspiration. I had them sing Rise Up Shepherd and Follow in the story.

If you're interested in a novel that travels from stuck-in-a-rut Christianity to sold-out while traveling from Idaho to South Africa, pick up a copy of Plum Upside Down!

Interested in reading Plum Upside Down? I am offering one reader a copy (e-book only, worldwide). If you'd like to put your name in the hat, please add your email address with your comment before Saturday, August 22, replacing @ with (at) and .com with (dot) com.

"Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any pertaining local/federal/international laws."

Valerie Comer's life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local food movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily ever afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughters.

She Hates Him. He Loves Her Not.

"Stayed up past midnight to finish it... read all 4 books in 3 days... really enjoyed them... How fast can you finish the next one?"

Readers around the world are singing the theme song from the old Green Acres sit-com. Okay, you might have to remember North American TV in the late 1960s to get the reference.

Listen to the theme song here.

The Farm Fresh Romance series features the adventures—romantic and otherwise—of three young women who buy Green Acres Farm together with the purpose of growing their own food and proving to the world they can live sustainably.

Each of the three original heroines needed her own personality, background, career, and reasons for moving to the farm. This meant that each hero needed to be equally unique.

It can be a temptation for an author to keep recreating his or her favorite combination of characters, but it's more fun to stretch a little. When I expanded the series to six books, I needed three new couples.

Dandelions for Dinner features Allison, a woman who has every reason to distrust and even hate men. She's attracted to Green Acres because of the friendship of the three women who started it all, and is certain that sooner or later all those marriages will fall apart because, in her experience, all men are users and players.

What kind of hero is going to win the heart of a woman like Allison? She's hard. She's paranoid. You could argue that a sweet Christian man could love her and wear her by displaying the love of Jesus over a period of time. I didn't think that was going to cut it for Allison.

Instead, I brought Brent into her life, a contractor to build her house on the farm. Brent has a past of his own he'd rather not remember. A man convinced he'll never marry because he can't inflict his history on a good woman… and he's done with the other kind.

Still, I needed a catalyst. Without some intervention, Allison and Brent were going to keep fighting (oh, I had fun with those fights!) until her house was complete and he'd moved on to his next build. And so I gave her custody of her young nephew when the child's mother was arrested for drug trafficking. It's not beyond Allison's comprehension that a boy will grow up to be a man. And all men are nasty. So even she wonders why she steps in to protect this vulnerable child.

She hates him. He loves her not.

Men are weeds. Allison Hart doesn't need them in her carefully tended life, though her friends at Green Acres seem happy with their guys. Why can't Allison open her heart to anyone but her young nephew? Then again, he'll be a man one day, too. If only the irritating contractor in charge of building her home and farm school wasn't the boy's favorite person.

Fireworks with Brent Callahan's newest client shift from antagonism to the rocky possibility of a relationship. When he comes face to face with a history he'd much rather forget, he realizes hiding his failures isn't the best option for finding forgiveness, let alone love.

Can a little boy help weed out the past before it chokes their future together?

Today is release day for Pinky Promise, my springtime Riverbend Romance novella. Only 99 cents on Amazon, or free to borrow if you have Kindle Unlimited.

I had a lot of fun with this story, and I hope you enjoy it.

Valerie Comer's life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local food movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily ever afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughters.

Valerie writes Farm Lit where food meets faith, injecting experience laced with humor into her stories. Her debut novel, Raspberries and Vinegar: A Farm Fresh Romance, was awarded Best Contemporary Romance published in 2013 by The Word Guild.

Readers Love Series!

If the above statement is true, why do so many publishers cancel series before they're completed? I'm sure you've seen promising series get cut off at the knees, and you've always wondered what happened next. Maybe you've been the author of such a series, with readers asking for more and your publisher telling you it's not viable.

And, indeed, the publisher may be right. They have established marketing methods for bookstores, specific print runs to commit to, and more bright, new, shiny books to publish that might do better than your third one.

Enter the indie author, who, instead of targeting the tried-and-true paperback markets, will primarily sell ebooks online… and still make a living.

Yes, many an indie author creates paperback files, too, often uploading those to Amazon's Createspace dashboard, where books will be printed as ordered. And, while some sell paperbacks like gangbusters online, many of us sell virtually every single paperback by hand in our local areas. We may still think it's worth having them available.

But back to the topic. What does being indie have to do with series? Several things.

1. Indies are writing for the future, not the present. That may seem backwards when it's in traditional publishing that a book may take two years to get to market after it's written and approved, while an indie may write, edit, and publish a book in just a few months.

Still, each indie is only concerned with one career: his or her own. We know it takes time to build any business. We don't juggle the needs of multiple authors and an office building full of staff. It's just us and any editors, cover designers, etc, we may contract for specific duties as we can afford them.

Every time we release a new book in the series, it draws attention to the previous titles. Sales tend to go up on all of them. Nothing ever goes out-of-print these days—to the distress of many authors with bomb-proof traditional contracts. This is a bonus for indies. A new reader who discovers us in book two, or three, or four can click over to Amazon or another online bookseller and, with a few more clicks, purchase and download all previous books in a minute or two.

2. Indies can price ebooks to sell through a series. We have the luxury of offering a low barrier to entering our story worlds by pricing the first book lower than the others, or even free. An impulse buy/download will often result in sales of the other books in the series. Not always, of course, but many indies have experimented with this tactic with success.

3. Indies can adapt a series or lengthen it to suit the readership. Planned a series about three sisters, and the stories are selling like gangbusters? Add three cousins and expand the series to six books. Want to add a novella, a short story collection, and/or a Christmas tale to the mix? Go for it. We can listen to our readers and turn on a dime.

4. Indies can "value-add" to a series. I've had the opportunity to both contract an audiobook of my first book, Raspberries and Vinegar, and to submit it to a digital box set called Love Brings Us Home that also contains books by six other contemporary romance authors. This box set has been doing really well. Psst, if you haven't picked up your copy yet, hop to it! It won't be available much longer.

I've done some of this with my Farm Fresh Romance series since regaining the rights to them last summer. I republished the first two, Raspberries and Vinegar and Wild Mint Tea, in July and released the third, Sweetened with Honey, in November, four full months earlier than had been planned by my publisher.

I thought and prayed and noodled over the original idea then decided to expand the series to six books by adding more friends to the mix. I've just completed the first draft of Dandelions for Dinner and have every expectation of releasing it in early March, while continuing to write the fifth and sixth books. This will not only give more books for existing fans to purchase, but increase the number of entry points whereby new fans may discover them.

With the upcoming release of Dandelions for Dinner and the dissolution of the box set, I plan to place the first book at "permanently free" to draw more readers into the series.

I love hearing from readers who are invested in my Farm Fresh Romance series.

Here's what one reader had to say:

"I literally had moments where I missed this group of characters now that I've read all the books in this series so far… love the stories - each character is distinct from the others, which sometimes isn't true in series. These are not remakes of the former books. I love the entire atmosphere on this farm."

What do you think of series, both as a reader and as a writer?

Interview With Valerie Comer

Valerie and I first met on-line, when she offered to interview me for my books, which I thought was wonderful, and then invited me to join this prestigious group of bloggers.  And now I am honoured to interview her for her new book, the second in the series, 'Wild Mint Tea'.

The second tale in the Farm Fresh Romance series, WILD MINT TEA, finds chef Claire Halford, one of the three girls who created Green Acres Farm, one year later, juggling a job she hates and trying to get the farm off the ground.  When they agree to trial-host a wedding, the bride-to-be's brother is none other than Noel Kenzie. The same man who turned down Claire for a job in his reforestation camp as head cook.  With swooning glances, misunderstood arguments, delicious cooking, a change of heart and a forest fire, Claire and Noel are one couple you can't help hope get together in the end. You can purchase Valerie's new book everywhere. Including here.




Ok, first question. What did you have for breakfast?

A bowl of oatmeal with milk and honey.

What's the temperature like out there?

Freezing! We've had -15C with brisk east winds for several days—those are our worst and can cause frozen pipes. Not this time, whew.

Now, how did you come up with the idea of Wild Mint Tea? Did you know it would happen while you were writing Raspberries and Vinegar?

If you're talking about the titles of the books, both were written and underwent a title change when they were contracted last spring, so neither the concept of raspberry vinegar nor mint tea was present in the first drafts. If you're talking about what would happen to Claire, yes, I had a good idea as she was a strong secondary character in Raspberries and Vinegar. Just as I have most of the story in mind for the third book in the series.

How long did it take you to write 'Wild Mint Tea'?

I wrote Wild Mint Tea (working title Check Mate) in about 3 months several years ago when it looked likely that the series would be picked up by one of the larger publishing houses. They passed (three times over the course of a year!), but I was glad I had the first draft done when the contract from CNP came my way last spring.

Where there any parts, while writing, that you got stuck on? Where you just hit a roadblock and didn't know what would happen next?

It's been several years, but I remember the writing of this book as sheer bliss, the only time that's happened to me. I don't remember getting stuck. For once.

Who is your favourite character out of the two books?

That's like asking which is my fave granddaughter (frown). But I really do love Noel Kenzie, the hero of Wild Mint Tea, a lot. He's got moxie. Can a guy have moxie? If so, he's got it.

Oh yeah. A man can have moxie. So, which character is you?

The "me" character isn't in this novel. She was in the first one as the mother of the hero and will play a smaller role in the third one as an interested party.

I know you say that you are not in this book, but...I think you are. In the main character, Claire...what are your similarities and differences?
Hmm, I never thought of Claire being like me. We both like food, but she's a trained chef and I've never desired to be. I'm a homebody, but she is way more than I am. I like to keep things organized, but she is ten times more OCD than I am. Personality wise, though, you might be right. Huh. Never thought of it before...

How did you come up with Noel? He is a dreamboat!

First, Claire. Because I had three young women in the series, they needed quite different personalities or it wouldn't be any fun. Claire drew the short straw for being more level-headed and melancholic than the other two. Then I needed a hero who was her polar opposite! Which is how I came up with Noel. Of course, I didn't want him to be irresponsible, so I made sure his career goals were very different from hers.

How do you decide what your characters will look like? Do you use people you know? Do you think of movie stars? If Noel and Claire were to be compared to movie stars (as in characters in movies so we can imagine), who would you pick?
I actually watch fewer than five movies a year, so I don't pick from movie stars. I go to jupiter.com and browse. If you'd like to see the models I picked for Claire and Noel, they're on my Farm Fresh Romance Pinterest board. I'd be interested to know which movie stars these models remind you of! http://www.pinterest.com/valeriecomer/farm-fresh-romance/

 

A super hard question now. Pick a song to go with your novel.

Ha. Not so hard. Two songs. One is the old hymn "This World is Not My Home" for reasons you'll have to read the book to understand, and the other is the bright happy tune in my book trailer. I dare you to watch this and not grin for all 40 seconds!

Why Farm-Romance?

Why not farm fresh romance? They say to write what you know. I'm all about farming and good fresh locally-grown food. And who can't use a little more romance in their lives?

I completely agree. So. What's next?

I'm turning in my novella for Snowflake Tiara shortly. I'm partnering with the amazing Angela Breidenbach for that pair of stories that releases in September. Then I get to turn my full attention to Sweetened with Honey, the third Farm Fresh Romance novel.

If you had only one book to bring on a holiday, which would it be? Can't be the Bible or anything written before 1940. No Jane Austen. Everyone always picks Austen.

Whew. At the risk of all the Austen-lovers hating on me, I'm perfectly fine having her books out of the picture. But I'd probably spend so long standing by my bookshelf, picking up one book, then choosing another, then putting them both back in favor of a third that the ship would sail without me before I'd decided. So I guess I'll just pack my Kindle, because that solves everything.

Valerie's new book will be published this month! You can find more information on her wonderful new novel, and others at her blog, here.  She is having a paperback giveaway on Goodreads, but only to US addresses (boo!). But ONE LUCKY reader here can win a digital version (winner's choice of mobi or epub file) by commenting below before Monday, March 10.

"Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any pertaining local/federal/international laws."


Photo of Valerie goes here, but for some reason it's not working anymore.


Photo of me goes here, but that's not working either. At least we have a picture of her new novel and the gorgeous artwork done by Valerie's very own daughter!

Jenn Kelly is an author and she is figuring it out. You can find her at www.jennkelly.com