Story Behind the Story: K.Dawn Byrd
Thanks for hosting me on your blog! You asked about the history behind my novel. My first novel, Killing Time, is actually my second release. Somehow, my second novel, Queen of Hearts came out first. Actually, it occurred because my publisher had a spot for a historical in April (my contract for Killing Time was for publication in August.)
Killing Time came about due to my work in a jail. I’ve always been an avid reader and had planned for many years that one day I’d write a book. When I began work as a counselor in the jail, my thoughts returned to the book. I thought it would be interesting to use the jail setting. My overactive imagination took over and questions began to surface, like, “What if a strong Christian woman is wrongly accused and incarcerated? Will she turn against God? Will her faith grow stronger? Will she crack under the pressure?”
It wasn’t long before this character took shape in my mind. I’d already been jotting down notes pertaining to the jail setting such as the sounds, odors, sights. Our jail was a new facility, but it had a distinguishable unpleasant odor. I can still hear the sounds of heavy metal doors slamming when I think of the place. The air was always frigid and I wore a jacket with my jail issue uniform most of the time. Everything was concrete and metal. There were no signs on the office doors and nothing on the hallway walls. I was told this was because if an inmate escaped from the pods, they didn’t want him/her to know their way around the building. All the corridors looked the same and it took me a while to get it mapped out in my mind.
As you can see, it wasn’t character or plot that inspired my first novel. It was setting. It’s an interesting environment, but one I’d never want to experience from the other side of the thick glass walls that separated inmates from jailers.
Bio:
K. Dawn Byrd is an author of inspirational romance. Queen of Hearts, a WWII romantic suspense released in April and was Desert Breeze Publishing’s bestselling novel for the month. Killing Time, a contemporary romantic suspense released August 1, also with Desert Breeze Publishing.
K. Dawn Byrd is an avid blogger and gives away several books per week on her blog at www.kdawnbyrd.blogspot.com, most of which are signed by the authors. She’s also the moderator of the popular facebook group, Christian Fiction Gathering.
When not reading or writing, K. Dawn Byrd enjoys spending time with her husband of 14 years, walking their dogs beside a gorgeous lake near her home, and plotting the next story waiting to be told.
Blog: www.kdawnbyrd.blogspot.com
Book blurb:
Mindy McLaurin, thinks it’s the end of the world when she’s incarcerated on trumped-up embezzlement charges. While in jail, she investigates the death of an inmate who allegedly died of an overdose. Mindy suspects foul play when her cellmate dies and she learns that both women had ingested the same drug. Mindy trusts no one, including Drew Stone, the handsome counselor she can’t stop thinking about. She faces many challenges, including constant interrogation by the Major and emotional abuse from the other inmates. Upon release, someone is stalking her and framing her for the murder. Can she prove to Counselor Stone that she’s innocent of all charges before she loses him forever?
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your story! ~Nicole
Read MoreStory Behind the Story: Jessica Johnson
Jessica and I at the OCW Conference
I am currently writing a fantasy trilogy, called The Cascadian Chronicles. In it, an American college graduate travels through a portal to the mythological world of Auberon.
Miriam Aguilar was brought to her foster family as an infant by her mysterious godparents. Her fiancée calls off the wedding during a camping trip with friends, and suddenly her godfather reappears after all these years. Feeling that she no longer has a home anywhere, Miri chooses to follow her godfather to the land of her birth. But the land of her birth is a magical world seemingly stuck in the Dark Ages. She happens to be the heir to the throne of a kingdom in turmoil, Cascadia. To discover her destiny and identity, Miriam must rediscover her faith in the God who created Auberon as well as Earth.
I started this story my senior year of high school, in 1994-5. The story started with a drawing. When I was younger, I loved to draw, mainly cartoon people and paper dolls. I’d drawn a girl with long, brown hair, dressed in medieval traveling clothes, but wearing modern hiking boots. I wondered: what if this girl was living normal American life when she discovered she was a princess from a little-known island kingdom? What would happen? I really did think this up years before the Princess Diaries novels came out…
It started out very much as a romance, with a handsome goat herder and an evil duke to defeat, of course. As I began reading modern fantasy novels in college, the story and the world evolved. The island kingdom in modern-day Earth became a magical world reached by a portal. My heroine’s name underwent a few changes. The goat herder and evil duke are still there, but layers of plot and theme as well as three-dimensional characters have taken it deeper. The world of Auberon and Miri herself are now much more diverse ethnically. The last few years have changed the most, as I have studied writing more seriously.
In terms of the stages of publishing, I am very much still a beginner. The story has been started and restarted many times. Each time has been a vast improvement, though. I have now restarted for hopefully the last time, except for the rewrite, of course. Someday, the story of Miriam and the world of Auberon will be complete.
– Thanks for stopping by, Jessica! Visit her blog here.
Read MoreReview: Touching the Clouds
Kate Evans is an adventurous and independent young woman with a pioneering spirit. She pilots a mail-delivery plane in the forbidding Alaskan wilderness, the lone woman in a male profession. But even that seems easy compared to finding true love.
She likes a fellow pilot and would even consider marrying him–if it weren’t for Paul, a mysterious man on her mail route with a gentle spirit and a past to hide. Can Kate break through the walls Paul has put up around his heart? And will her quest for adventure be her demise?
Book 1 in the Alaskan Skies series, Touching the Clouds will draw readers in with raw emotion and suspense, all against the stunning backdrop of the Alaskan wilds.
My Review:
I’m a Bonnie Leon fan all the way (To Love Anew, Longings of the Heart) and this novel certainly didn’t disappoint. Full of local color and vivid details, Bonnie takes the reader into the cockpit of Kate’s plane.
Touching the Clouds looks at the depression from a unique angle – from a territory that had not even become a state. As Kate flies to Alaska from Washington, she sees the Hoovervilles and Shanty towns only from a distance.
Both Kate and Paul are memorable characters with believable fears and flaws. The true risks and rough lives of the bush pilots are revealed and overcome through Kate’s determination. But despite her bravery, a single event that left a lasting scar proves to be an obstacle she must work to overcome.
If this book doesn’t leave you craving to go to explore Alaska, I don’t know what will. Strap yourself in for a bit of turbulence, though. While the ending is sweet, I can tell Bonnie has got a bit more in store for “Fearless” Kate and Paul.
Highly recommended!
* This book was provided to me by Revell.
Read MoreMockingjay
Last August, I read a book that gripped me like none other. I nearly went crazy in between the time it took me to finish the book and the drive to Barnes and Noble to get the second book.
The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins is a story for all ages, but let me issue this warning: It is utterly addictive.
That is why, a year of angst later, I’m going to be at the Mockingjay Midnight Release Party with my other Hunger-Games-fanatic friends.
The first books, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, are prime examples of what good novels should be – full of endearing and tough hearted characters, tension and civil unrest and compassion and sacrifice in the face of death.
I can’t say enough about these books and you can be sure I’ll be up late reading the latest release.
And if you’re curious about the title, “Mockingjay,” then, well, you’ll have to read the books!
Read MoreStory Behind the Story: Sarah Sundin
A Memory Between Us by Sarah Sundin
What would happen if a poor girl made a shameful decision to feed her family? What would the consequences be? What would she be like when she grew up?
That series of questions was the inspiration for Lt. Ruth Doherty, an Army nurse during World War II, and the heroine of A Memory Between Us, the second book in the Wings of Glory series. Ruth’s character came to me when I was writing my first novel, A Distant Melody, which was meant to be a standalone book.
My hero in A Distant Melody was a B-17 pilot with the US Eighth Air Force based in England. While doing research, I became enamored with the Eighth and felt bad that my novel ended in mid-1943, a low point for the bomber crews over Nazi-occupied Europe. Then the ideas came together in one big whoosh—my hero had two brothers, who were also pilots. What if I wrote a book about each brother? Then I could follow the Eighth Air Force all the way to V-E Day.
In my mind I put Ruth in the same room with the middle brother, Jack Novak, a dashing and driven pilot who has never failed to meet a challenge. They bantered. They pushed each other. Sparks flew. At times when writing this story, I felt as if I were a bystander recording their dialogue. It was a lot of fun.
While researching Army nursing during World War II, I read about the first flight nurses, five hundred brave and pioneering women who conducted medical air evacuation. Having Ruth aim to become a flight nurse gave her a story goal—and the chance to get away when she needed it most.
Sarah Sundin
“What if” questions, a sense of story incompletion, and intriguing bits o’ research—that’s where A Memory Between Us came from.
Sarah Sundin
http://www.sarahsundin.com
http://www.sarahsundin.blogspot.com
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