Welcome Angela Strong to the Mine!!

Let’s welcome Angela Strong to the Mine! It’s so awesome she could join us during such a busy holiday season!!

Let's start by asking you to tell us a bit about yourself.

I live in Idaho with my hubby and three teen/tweens. I've taught group fitness classes like yoga and kickboxing for over half my life. This Christmas I worked a seasonal job in the mall to make some extra money for gifts, but because I wasn't writing I couldn't sleep at night. It's so nice to be home and able to create once again. And last, I won a hamster ball race a couple summers ago. That may not be an important fact, but it will give you an idea of where I get ideas for the crazy situations my characters have to deal with.

Since it’s New year’s Eve, you get a special question:  Can you give us any gems of wisdom for the coming new year concerning writing, publishing, advertising, or any of the many other facets of the publishing world?

Have fun. Be passionate. Never stop learning. Try new things. Support others. Stay balanced. Give God all the glory. (This works in writing as well as life in general.) 

What made you want to be a writer? I know some people have a burning desire from an early age, and others kind of slowly realize that’s where they’ve been heading their whole lives.

My mom was a writer, so I grew up with stories about myself (and pictures of me with really bad haircuts) in magazines like Women's World. So when I wrote a story in high school, I submitted it to a magazine because that's what you do. They paid me $100, and I was hooked. Wish it was always that easy. I studied journalism at University of Oregon and sold my first novel Love Finds You in Sun Valley, Idaho ten years later.

What genre do you write under and why did you choose that particular one?

I write fun and fast-paced stories for both women and children. Right now I'm focusing on romantic suspense as well as my middle-grade Fun4Hire series. I think writing for kids makes me better at writing for adults, and writing for adults makes me better at writing for kids. I love them both. 

Can you give us the rundown on how hard it was to be published, and why?

I'll just start by saying that Walt Disney was once fired from a newspaper for not being creative. My kids remind me of this every time I get a rejection letter. Helps me put the difficulty of publishing back into perspective. 

Here are a couple of examples from my year. One of my favorite publishers took my manuscript to acquisitions after confirming that I would be willing to add another 25,000 words. They rejected it even though they liked the idea and the last book on that subject sold over 100,000 copies. Blah. Then I entered the Love Inspired Suspense Killer Voices contest. I made it to the final round. The editor requested revisions. I made them. Everyone said she'd buy it. Other LIS authors said I "nailed it." Rejected. Double blah.

So now I will be reworking both stories for another publisher that is looking for romantic suspense starting next month. I keep improving and hoping that I will find that perfect fit. Not every publisher is going to be a perfect fit, and I would honestly prefer to wait to work with one that believes in my work as much as I do.

What other books do you have in the works?

Book #3 in my Fun4Hire series, The Food Fight Professional, is due January 9 with The Pillow Fight Professional to follow shortly after. Then I have my novella False Security coming out in an anthology along with stories by three other local romantic suspense authors. (Check out Teamloveontherun.com.) Plus I've got another novel I've started because the editor at LIS said she'd like to see more of my work and they have very specific guidelines.

 What book will you be giving one of our lucky readers this week?

The Snowball Fight Professional is about a twelve-year-old boy who wants to make more money with his snowball fighting business than his cousin makes shoveling sidewalks so he can buy his grandma the better Christmas gift and hopefully get one of her husky puppies in return. It's a fun book that deals with what it means to be a family. This story is especially endearing to me because of the kid who is being raised by a single mom, which is something I know too much about. I care so much about these characters that sometimes I think about them and cry.

The world outside our small ‘writing spaces’ is huge and daunting. What kind of advice would you give to those of us who’re still trying to get published? I know there are so many do’s and don’ts.

Before I published, Bette Nordberg told me that selling your first book is like a dolphin jumping through a hoop. You end up right back in the same pool trying to sell your second book. That was the best advice I could have gotten with my career, especially since the first two publishers I sold to ended up shutting down. It hasn't gotten easier, but I've gotten more comfortable/confident with the show. And I've made some great pool buddies. So now I'll quote Dori from Finding Nemo: "Just keep swimming."

Thank you so much for being a part of our ‘Diamond Mine’ this week. I believe we’ve found a true gem in you.

Thanks. I love the idea that we are all diamonds in the rough. :)

www.angelaruthstrong.com

Kate Hodges, Biblical Storyteller Extraordinaire

I'd like to give a big welcome to Kate Hodges on the Diamond Mine today. What a treat it is to have you here with us during this holiday season. I wanted to give you a chance to tell us the story behind your drive to write. How did it happen for you?

After years of enjoying a close connection to Christ, I hit a spiritual desert in my late twenties. Somewhere along the line, I had lost my passion for Christ and was going through the motions of the Christian walk. I battled depression and self-doubt. A wall had developed between God and me. Until one day, listening to the pastor read the story of the paralytic who was let down through a roof, something struck a spark. He didn’t just read the story. He spoke of the hot day, the dusty road and the men carrying their friend. He spoke of them digging through the roof of a house and the people within spattered by dirt and bits of stone. He brought that story to life in a way I had never thought of.

Over the next few months, that story churned in my head. I was full of ‘what ifs’. Finally, on a slow day at work, I took a sheet of computer paper and started to write. For four hours. Those handwritten words, barely legible in some spots, gave me a glimpse into God’s heart. I looked into the face of Christ through the eyes of a paralytic and saw his love and compassion.

A few weeks later, the pastor told another bible story. I had heard and read these stories so often over years of going to church as well as a Christian College, that I no longer saw them. They were words on a page of little more meaning than a child’s nursery rhyme, the characters merely actors on a stage.

For the first time, I was seeing the stories told by people who once lived and breathed, loved and despaired the same way that I do. The difference is that they had actually looked into the face of Jesus. They had spoken to him, heard his words and felt his touch. There is story after story of Jesus meeting the needs of people where they were. Perhaps, he could do the same for me. Perhaps, if I found the right story and told it with the right words, I would also find his healing for me, I would find the key to get beyond the wall.

So I write, story after story, page after page. It seems that there is not one key, but many. In each story is a piece of me. In each story, Jesus meets that part of me and touches, accepts, loves me. In each story, a piece of me heals.

I’m not done yet, I don’t know that I ever will be, but each story draws me closer. I have begun publishing my stories so that others can perhaps find a bit of healing for their broken pieces. They are available on Amazon as e-shorts. I also have a collection in print The Other Side of Miracles contains five of my favorite stories including the very first one, The Forgiveness of Sins. I hope that others will see the old bible stories in a new light and through them find new depths of faith.

I am also working on a novel, Safe Within These Walls, that tells the story of Rahab and the spies during that fateful month before the fall of Jericho. God not only saved her from the destruction of the city, but she became the mother of Boaz, the great grandmother of King David and the ancestor of Jesus. If God can take someone like her, a pagan, a harlot, an outcast and turn her into a hero of bible history, then perhaps he can take a shy farmer’s daughter and use her words to touch the world.

Thanks so much for sharing with us Kate. Have a blessed holiday!

Kate Hodges is a stay home mom who lives with her husband of twenty years and their three teenage children in upstate New York. She is a book addict and always looking for new authors to feed her habit.  Check out her book The Other Side of Miracles.