A Little Sugar Plum Magic from Carrie Fancett Pagels!

 

Vera~You are the winner of Carrie's book, The Sugar Plum Fairy! Expect an email soon about the details. Thanks everyone!

Oooh, it's that Christmas magic time! Trees twinkling, wrapping paper crinkling, silver bells ringing and carols singing! All to give out the good tidings of Christ's birth on earth! And I can't resist bringing in another Christmas novel to celebrate this holy time of year. The Sugar Plum Ladies by our spotlight author Carrie Fancett Pagels is just the heartwarming story you readers need for your happy holiday sigh meter! Let's unwrap this interview with Carrie, because I can't stand the anticipation. Let's meet Carrie Fancett Pagels.

PT: Hi, Carrie! Welcome to my sleigh, LOL. Give us a rundown of how you started writing and the genre you write in and why.

CFP: I was a psychologist for 25 years, working with young people and kids and I loved it. I’d planned to write CF when I retired at about 70. Unfortunately, I developed severe Rheumatoid Arthritis and some other medical problems and became physically disabled, including about 5 years where I could barely walk. I’d started writing as a child, as I believe most authors do and was a born storyteller, making up stuff and changing the ends of stories I wanted more from. I had been published in nonfiction as a psychologist. However, my first Christian fiction publications, and about 20 more, have been in historical romance. I’ve recently switched over to Contemporary Women’s Fiction in CF. I do have a love of history, and enjoy romance, but at this point in my life I’m really wanting to write stories about women’s relationships and some romance thrown in there, too! I will get rights back to my historical CF stories, too, and will enjoy sprucing those up!

PT: Tell a little about your newest release, The SugarplumLadies and how you came up with the idea, the setting choice, and the names of your hero/heroine.

CFP: The Sugarplum Ladies was part of The Victorian Christmas Brides collection, which I headed up about 5 years ago for Barbour and invited a bunch of my fave CF authors to join in on. We all have our rights back now. I expanded my story by about 40%, mostly smoothing out the transitions. Wow, it really needed that! People are loving the new version! PTL!

I’d read about real-life social reformers in Detroit who, after the Civil War, headed up training and also catering agencies to help widows support themselves and their families. Eugenie Mott was inspired by the article I’d read. Barrister Percy, needed to be of British background and living somewhere that Victorian traditions were celebrated, so I put him in Windsor, Ontario, Canada—a place I enjoyed visiting as a child!

PT: Do you have any special Family Traditions for Christmas? And is your tree up yet? LOL

CFP: We enjoy going to Christmas service. The children, both grown now but one in college and still living at home when not at UVA, make a birthday cake for baby Jesus with me. Our tree goes up after Thanksgiving and we leave it up until after Epiphany (I celebrate until then just like my hero does!) We had a family, multi-generational British tradition (my great-grandparents immigrated from Maidstone, Kent, in England) of having an orange in the stocking—but for my generation I made the new twist of it being a chocolate orange! Those were available only online last year during pandemic but available now in stores again! I enjoy reading the Christmas story in the Bible, too, during this time of year, with my family.

PT: Give us a little peek of what your own Christmas celebration is like.

CFP: There’s a turkey in the oven. Our son used to refer to these holiday dinners as “The Feast” and it was his fave thing to have everyone gathered together. The china is set out. The silver is shined. The crystal is on the table (although the crystal is getting passed on to my daughter this year). The candles are lit on the dining table. After that amazing Christmas luncheon of turkey, dressing, gravy, potatoes, green bean casserole, homemade dinner rolls, some sides that my SIL likes such as turnip casserole (don’t snicker it’s good!), sparkling cider or juice, the Baby Jesus birthday cake, and more we have a cup of coffee or tea and start opening gifts in the living room.

PT: Favorite Christmas gift?

CFP: My closest girlfriends usually send me personal and special gifts that are unique and often homemade—those are my faves because my mom would make us so many wonderful things and I know the love and time that goes into every handmade item. It’s one reason I really try to make at least one jewelry item, e.g., earrings, for my friends and family members each year. One of my dear friends and critique partner, author Kathleen L. Maher, is an artist, and I love what she makes especially treasure the homemade Christmas ornaments and the other dear friend also critique partner, author Debbie Lynne Costello, makes amazing crafts but also picks out really cool things she finds. This year I did a ton of baking and candy making and sent those boxes out early to special friends and family members who asked for those treats!

PT: Tell us a little about what readers can expect from a “British Christmas.”

CFP: Crackers for one! And I don’t mean saltines! We actually did these in my family one year and they were fun (if a bit underwhelming the way I did them lol!) These are like a two-part cardboard cylinder  that has a special gift inside and they are wrapped lightly and ribbon on the ends. You pull them apart to open them! The British tradition, within the Anglican church, is to celebrate through Epiphany. When I was in England one Christmas the other thing modern day Brits did was to celebrate Boxing Day, which we don’t do in my novella! Plum pudding is a British treat and one Christmas my Great Uncle Fred made us plum pudding! I have a funny story about that but I won’t share it here!

PT: Favorite recipes/Christmas recipes?

CFP: Usually we’ll have gingerbread cake with cream cheese frosting and I also make sugar cookies and unique twists on eggnog such as coffee eggnog but this year I went a little crazy making fudge variations like my newest creation a Straits of Mackinac mint vanilla turquoise fudge!! I also made my husband’s fave, a huge sheet pan of peanut butter bars from his mom’s recipe. A new fave is also a dried cherry, white chocolate chip, oatmeal cookie. My chia seed brownies were a failure so I’m returning to regular ones! I like a pound cake made with dried Christmas fruit in it and I also like certain fruitcakes through the mail—I’m the author of The Fruitcake Challenge, which was recommended by Woman’s World Magazine last year as a Michigan Christmas read and was a Selah Award finalist and a #1 Amazon bestseller in Christian historical romance.

PT: How many books do you have published?  Do you have a favorite book out of all you’ve written, and how do you keep your writing “fresh?”

CFP: I believe it is twenty-five. My Heart Belongs on Mackinac Island is my top seller and I believe The Fruitcake Challenge is right behind and these are two of my own favorites. My fave Christmas story is a short story in Guideposts Books Christmas collection called Snowed In because it is inspired by my real life parents’ and family’s stories which I fictionalized. It’s set right after my father came back from WWII, at Christmastime, and it is a fiction but it is inspired by a bunch of true things. But I also am very proud of The Substitute Bride and I love the Sonja Hoeke character who is probably the one character, in all of my books, who is most like me. As far as other non-Christmas stories, my first Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Butterfly Cottage, which won second place in the Selah Awards, is my current favorite because I had a whole bunch of friends and family members who had died during a short period of time, and I had stopped writing. Then Covid hit. This story was my first with a family cast of three generations of women and they became very near and dear to my heart and almost real! Right now I’m spending lots of time with Dragonfly Cottage, which releases in June 2023! I think almost all my books are my favorites!

Fresh? Every writer, IMHO, needs to take a break to refresh and renew. My writing ministry comes only from God. I have significant health issues. I can’t write without Him. But if I don’t remain in Him and get refreshment and renewal in the Vine, I’m lost. People burn out churning out stuff that was never from the Lord to begin with. I am working on only one book a year that is a new release, recently. I have gotten rights back to books that are getting re-released, such as The Sugarplum Ladies, but my upcoming new release, Dragonfly Cottage, in Spring 2023, is the only novel I’ll have written in the past year. That gives me time to get recharged and also to deal with life.

PT: What Bible verse is dear to your heart at this time?

CFP: I’m really into listening to Father Mike Schmitt on audio right now. The Word is a blessing every single day. I also read Joyce Meyer’s devotional every night which includes scripture. Divine Scripture is a blessing. I’ve always loved that super short verse, Jesus wept, and given these End Times we are in, that verse comforts me.

PT: Do you inject a Biblical message in your books? If so, does it “just happen” or do you plan it?

CFP: My tagline is Hearts Overcoming with God and for a long time I had a blog entitled Overcoming with God so that’s a theme in most of my stories. Yes, I always have a spiritual arc in the books. Christian fiction is “supposed” to include that. Sometimes, often in fact, Danny Gokey or another Christian musician seems to write a song “just for me” and my stories! God’s grace may be the message. God’s blessings. Having faith when there seems to be no way. I’ve been blessed with songs that match the spiritual theme of my stories. For upcoming Dragonfly Cottage, Build a Boat by Colton Dixon has my hero’s message, and the song, Just Getting Started, matches the heroine’s journey!

 

PT: Tell 5 things about Carrie Fancett Pagels that have nothing to do with writing.

CFP:

1. I was a psychologist for 25 years and grew up by a state mental hospital.

2. I am prayerfully considering getting my psychology license back again and will be taking CEUs in 2023 as my health permits.

3. We tease that I gave birth to my own grandchild because I had a son at age 44.

4. I nearly died 12 years ago, and I left my body, and God let me stay here for my son and husband.

5. My heart really does belong on Mackinac Island and my ashes will be scattered there if my family follows my wishes!

PT: What book/story line is on the horizon? Have you settled on a setting/release date?

CFP: Dogwood Plantation is a sequel to Butterfly Cottage, but is a stand-alone with some new characters. I got inspired by a sweet young lady who worked at a coffee shop on Mackinac Island and came to one of my book signings. I did the “What If” thing of asking what if she was actually camping out in one of the often-vacant mansions (called cottages!) on the West Bluff? Then I needed someone to clash with her. And I had the “What if” there was a truly annoying big brother of her former BFF who was rehabbing the cottage next door? But I had to weave this in with another character, Mrs. Parker, in her 70s, who was a difficult person in a couple of other stories but who has had her “Come to Jesus” moment (as has Rachel, the young heroine). So these two, have spiritual story arcs. Mrs. Parker has more secrets than a Virginia summer has degrees lol. Slight exaggeration. But her deceased husband had a secret that will upend everyone’s world in this book! So come to Mackinac Island with me, via this novel, in 2023! Pegg Thomas is the editor and I should have a cover soon, from Carpe Librum Book Design Group in Montreal.

PT: Thank you so much for sharing with us, Carrie. And as usual, Carrie is giving away one copy of The Sugar Plum Ladies! Please share this opportunity with everyone! We need at least 5 people to leave comments with their email or their email information on our contact form. CALLING ALL BOOK GIVAWAY READERS! Now is your chance. Leave a comment with email to enter!

Bio:

Carrie Fancett Pagels, Ph.D., is the award-winning author of over twenty-five Christian fiction books, including ECPA and Amazon bestsellers. Twenty-five years as a psychologist didn't "cure" her overactive imagination! A self-professed “history geek,” she resides with her family in the Historic Triangle of Virginia but grew up as a “Yooper.” Carrie loves to read, bake, bead, and travel – but not all at the same time! You can connect with her at www.CarrieFancettPagels.com.

 Website: www.carriefancettpagels.com

Blogs: Overcoming With God and Colonial Quills

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 Links to purchase:

 The Sugarplum Ladies

Amazon