Friday, June 21, 2013

Fliterary Welcomes Love Inspired Historical Author Winnie Griggs!

Welcome to Fliterary! We love making new friends.
Let’s sit together on the swings and you can introduce yourself:


Hello, and thanks so much for inviting me.  I love swings (in fact, just last night I had fun writing a scene with my heroine joyfully discovering an old tree swing in a back yard lot!).  So let’s see - something about me.  I’m a wife and mother with four grown children, the youngest two being twins.  I worked a day job in the computer programming field for 30+ years before retiring a couple of years ago.  My husband is a cattle rancher and will probably never retire from that.  I’ve loved reading and writing for as long as I can remember.  And when I’m not doing one of those two things, I enjoy exploring flea markets, traveling and working puzzles.

You have a new book out, what’s it about?
The Bride Next Door is the second book in my four book Texas Grooms series.   This series, which started with Handpicked Husband, follows four men who traveled together from Philadelphia to Turnabout, Texas to start new lives.  And they all have very good reasons for wanting to start over.
The hero of this book is Everett Fulton, a disgraced newspaper reporter.  Everett is a bit of a dandy who misses the big city life.  He’s opened a one man newspaper operation in the small town of Turnabout but considers it merely a temporary stop before he can find work on another big city paper. 

The heroine, Daisy Johnson, is a transient peddler’s daughter who’s tired of traveling and dreams of settling down and one day opening her own restaurant.  She comes into possession of an abandoned building which just happens to adjoin Everett’s newspaper office.  Daisy jumps at the chance to make her dream a reality - all she needs is a way to earn money so she can purchase a proper stove for her future restaurant. 
Then, thanks to a pesky connecting door and a local gossip, they find themselves headed for the altar.  Problem is, they have mutually exclusive dreams and it takes a lot - a lot of patience, a lot of understanding, and finally a lot of love for them to work it all out..

Where can we buy it?
The Bride Next Door is available at http://www.christianbook.com; http://www.amazon.com; http://www.barnesandnoble.com, and in traditional    bookstores as well as Walmart, Target, and similar stores.

If we invited your main character to sit with us, how would she/he react? 
Daisy would love to join us and chat for a bit.  She enjoys being around people and especially meeting new folks.

What would they say? What advice would they give?
Hmmm - she would probably encourage us to appreciate what we have - a good home and loving family.  She hasn’t had much of either in her lifetime. 

If any one person from history could sit with us, who would it be and why?
Eleanor Roosevelt - I’ve always admired her as a woman of intelligence, courage and compassion.  I think she would be a fascinating woman to just sit down and chat with.

Why did you choose to be a Christian writer and what does it mean to you?
If by Christian writer you mean someone who writes for the Christian market,  I didn’t initially choose to write in that sub-genre.  In fact, when critique partners read my early work and suggested that my voice seemed to fit there, I fought against it.  While my characters have always had a distinctly Christian world view, I didn’t feel qualified to deliberately weave a faith thread into my stories, I was too afraid I would get it wrong.
But after writing five books that were published in the secular market, those doors began to close to me, until I finally surrendered and turned my writing over to Him.  It was the best decision I ever made in the whole of my writing career.

What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
You learn by doing so write every day.  And read, both in the genre you’re writing in and in other genres. 
I learned the hard way that if you stop either of these activities for any significant amount of town, it becomes very difficult to get those creative juices flowing. 

Where can we find you on the web?
My website - http://www.winniegriggs.com
Pinterest - http://pinterest.com/wdgriggs/


Thank you so much for stopping by for a visit!

 About the interviewer: Lisa Phillips is a wife, mom of two and worship leader. She doesn't have to do the diaper thing anymore (as of last week - yay!) but still has nap times to write Inspirational Romantic Suspense. Her first book, The Ultimate Betrayal will be released summer 2014 from Harlequin's Love Inspired Suspense. 



No comments: