While writing Tackling the Fields, I sent two of the characters who were musically inclined to Nashville, Tennessee. The city is also known by many as Music City, and these two young characters, Audrey and Bryan, were on the verge of being considered by an agent. The Southern City in Tennessee is about six hours […]
Emily Conrad’s To Bring You Back and Four Regional Romances to Transport You Around the Country
Welcome Emily Conrad to Inspy Romance to talk with us about her new inspirational romance: To Bring You Back! I’m excited about this release! Who doesn’t love a Christian musician?! And I love to hear about regional romances! Thank you for having me! I’m excited to be here! I wanted to share about: Four Regional Romances […]
Character Hometowns: Boone, North Carolina
I’ve been writing about how I choose settings for my novels, and I’ve also been sharing about how I come up with my characters’ hometowns for their back stories. For this post, I’m writing about my character Dylan Conner’s background in Boone, North Carolina. Dylan is the hero of my novel Going Up South. (You […]
Meet Shelia Stovall! #Giveaway
I’m excited to introduce y’all to Shelia Stovall, the debut author of Every Window Filled With Light! Welcome, Shelia! I enjoyed reading your first published novel! Congrats! Tell us about yourself and how you started writing! Thank you for inviting me to be your guest. As a child, I fell in love with Laura Ingalls […]
Unkissable (and other unconventional titles)
The cover is unarguably the single biggest draw to a reader in deciding whether or not to choose a book. A close second, though, is often the title. Just the other day, I read a comment online from a woman who couldn’t bring herself to read a friend’s book simply because the single-word title was […]
Character Hometowns: Jasper Alabama #giveaway
Characters all need a hometown plus a life history, and it can become challenging to give them each a unique place to come from. An author needs to have some basic knowledge of that setting, so I mostly write about places I know. In Tackling the Fields, I went back to my mother’s roots to […]
When Characters Travel: Central America #giveaway
When Characters Travel: Central America When I started writing Leaving Oxford, a character in the story wanted to start a medical clinic in Honduras. Then, in Going Up South, a group of characters travel there for a mission trip. Tackling the Fields begins immediately afterward. I interviewed so many people about their trips to the […]
When Characters Travel-Real Life Novel Settings: LA & Malibu #Giveaway
Hello Inspy Readers! I’m continuing my posts about real-life novel settings, this time focusing on Los Angeles and Malibu, California. While my first two novels in the Southern Heart Series are mostly set in Oxford, Mississippi, the characters do end up traveling to California. These West Coast cities are very far from where I live, […]
Why I love kissing books + #Giveaway
Narelle here. In a recent StoryChats @InspyRomance episode #7 with Jaycee Weaver we talked about kisses in CCR (contemporary Christian romance) books. Our conversation started me thinking about why I love kissing books and why I like kissing to be included in romance novels. In a romance story, the main characters are falling in love […]
Real Life Novel Settings: Oxford, Mississippi #Giveaway
Hello Inspy Readers! I’d thought I’d spend a few of my post talking about my real-life novel settings, starting with my first novel Leaving Oxford. Oxford, Mississippi, is a small college town in Northern Mississippi hills about three hours from where I live. I spent time going to school there way back in the 80s. […]