Everything is Fodder — even Cabbages!

Sometimes it may seem as though I am randomly surfing. Okay, I probably am randomly surfing! I scroll down my Facebook newsfeed and sometimes a video or an article catches my eye. Please tell me this happens to you as well!

I can’t even tell you when it was that an article about a girl named Katie came to my attention. It could’ve been four or five years ago. This nine-year-old girl in Memphis was part of a class project where they planted seeds, took them home, and planted them. Katie grew a cabbage that was over forty pounds! Can you just imagine!

This young girl took her cabbage to a homeless shelter in Memphis. If I’m remembering correctly, the workers made cabbage rolls out of it. This one cabbage impacted Katie’s life and gave her a passion for people in need. She began to plant gardens and grow vegetables for soup kitchens… and mobilized other children to do so, as well.

A year ago, I was looking for inspiration for my part in a multi-author series. Each of the six authors came up with premise for a mini-series with in the grander scope of the overarching Arcadia Valley Romance series. This memory of young Katie drifted into my mind and lodged. What if a girl about Katie’s age came across a pair of abandoned greenhouses? What if she somehow was able to spearhead the program and get a bunch of grownups onboard? What if the project came complete with funding?

In that moment, Maisie Felton was born. Though I pretended she had been a friend of Katie’s back in Memphis, the reality of the timeline doesn’t match. In the first installment of my series, the elderly man who formerly owned Akers Garden Center offers his property to Grace Fellowship in a living trust. His grandson Grady helps direct the real estate consultant tasked with finding a use for the derelict greenhouses. It isn’t until Maisie stops by on her bicycle and sows the idea does this story really get going. (Spoiler alert: they fall in love!)

That story, Sow in Love, released in January as part of Romance Grows in Arcadia Valley. Sprouts of Love, my first full-length novel in this series, releases today. It’s the story of Maisie’s mom, who became the director of the Grace Greenhouse project, and Ben Kujak, the manager of the soup kitchen in Arcadia Valley.

Little did I know when I first saw Katie’s story that it would be the inspiration and foundation for an entire series of romance stories!

About Sprouts of Love:

Single mom Evelyn Felton takes on a third part-time job managing a greenhouse and garden project for Grace Fellowship. Formerly homeless, she’s thrilled to offer truckloads of fresh produce to the Arcadia Valley food bank.

If only Ben Kujak weren’t running Corinna’s Cupboard single-handedly, he’d be delighted to be on the receiving end. But Evelyn and her dynamo daughter, Maisie, won’t take no for an answer, even if it means restructuring Ben’s charity.

Soon Ben finds himself wishing they’d transform his personal life, too, but can true love sprout when their pasts collide with the present?

Sprouts of Love is available for Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and iBooks and will soon be available worldwide in paperback. Click here for more information and buy links.

Tell me about a random news item or article you’ve read that offered inspiration for a story you’ve written!

Interested in reading Sprouts of Love? I'm 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 Monday, May 21, 2017, replacing @ with (at) and .com with (dot) com.

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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 foods 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 is a USA Today bestselling author and a two-time Word Award winner. She writes engaging characters, strong communities, and deep faith as she injects experience laced with humor into her green clean romances. Visit her at ValerieComer.com.

Gateway to Arcadia Valley

by Valerie Comer

Are readers nearly box setted out? My goodness. I admit to having done my share to proliferate them (back in 2015, when they were young and fresh), but the market seems saturated. There’s no denying they’ve worked very well for authors as well as for readers. Many authors have made significant income from these sets — yes, even when the royalty from a ninety-nine-cent e-book is divided between half a dozen or more authors.

I credit my first multi-author box set with putting my Farm Fresh Romance series on the map. Readers got the first one in the set, and a decent number went on to buy the other books and join my email list. Win-win, right?

Sure. Until reader have ten more box sets on their Kindles to read as soon as this one is done! Then the read-through to additional books in the series isn’t as high, as there’s no shortage of inexpensive reading material. It takes more to jog a reader out of the box set mindset so she’ll go looking for more books by this author.

Still, I’m a big believer in working together in groups. That’s why I started Inspy Romance three years ago as a place where authors and readers of Christian contemporary romance can get to know each other. With a lot of help from my admin team and our author/bloggers, we’ve got a great community going over there.

My other go-to for group projects has been the multi-author box set, but it seems the efficacy is sliding, especially for authors determined to sell their e-books on other retailers as well as Amazon. So my thought became: what is the next step?

When is a box set not a box set? When it’s the gateway to six series in a shared world where a foodie culture and romance grow hand-in-hand!

Romance Grows in Arcadia Valley is that sort of gateway. I’ve teamed up with five other authors who love real food, gardens, farm-to-table restaurants, farmers markets, homemade bread — you name it, and someone is writing it into an Arcadia Valley Romance novel.

From the outside, Romance Grows in Arcadia Valley looks like a normal box set, except most box sets don’t have a paperback version. But each of the six novellas in the collection is the prequel to a three-book series set in the same fictional community of Arcadia Valley, Idaho. In the next eighteen months, our group will release a novel (not a novella) every single month, rotating between authors, until we each have completed our interwoven series. In the meanwhile, we’ve committed to working and marketing with each other.

My contribution to the collection of prequels is “Sow in Love,” a novella leading into my Garden Grown Romance series set in Arcadia Valley.

Real estate consultant Joanna Kraus’s ideas for fulfilling a living trust are shot down by the elderly man’s grandson. In fact, it seems like sending her back to the drawing board is his primary joy. How can a vintage 1960s house and two greenhouses generate income for the church in receipt of the trust?

The more Grady Akers gets to know Joanna, the more he finds himself hoping it takes a long time to find a solution, but his charm may be no match for the armor wrapped around Joanna’s heart. Will the perfect solution for the property be perfect to grow a love that’s just been sown?

Won’t you come along for the ride? This entire series will be available on Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and iBooks, as well as paperback. You can find the links for Romance Grows in Arcadia Valley here, as well as more information about the other five novellas.

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 foods 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 is a USA Today bestselling author and a two-time Word Award winner. She has been called “a stellar storyteller” as she injects experience laced with humor into her green clean romances. Visit her at ValerieComer.com.