Hi, guys! V. Joy Palmer here! Since we are all friends here, you guys can call me Joy. ;-) And one of my favorite things to do is talk with my friends at coffee shops then head to the bookstores. Yes, plural. After all, books and yummy drinks are the perfect combination! So consider this our virtual coffee shop. I'll wait a second for you to get your warm drink and a fuzzy blanket before we chat with today's guest. <3
Today we are going to pry into the private life of CHAT with Sara Davison, author of Forged!
Sara Davison is the author of four
romantic suspense series—The Seven Trilogy, The Night Guardians, The Rose
Tattoo Trilogy, and two sparrows for a penny, as well as the standalone, The
Watcher. A finalist for more than a dozen national writing awards, she is a
Word, Cascade, and Carol Award winner. She currently resides in Ontario with
her husband, Michael, and their three mostly grown kids. Like every good
Canadian, she loves coffee, hockey, poutine, and apologizing for no particular reason.
Get to know Sara better at www.saradavison.org
and @sarajdavison.
Visit Sara on her website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!
Interview ~
This may be the most important question I ask -- no pressure or anything, LOL!
*drum roll*
What are you drinking in our virtual coffee house? Coffee? Tea? Hot chocolate? Something else altogether?
Coffee. Always coffee. I am definitely not a morning person, so nothing happens before that first cup of hot, preferably hazelnut-flavored brew gets inhaled.
I can relate! If you could order anything in the world to eat (we can dream, can't we?), what would it be?
Greek food is my favorite, and my first choice for Greek food is chicken souvlaki, so that is definitely what I would order. Although Forged is set in Venezuela and Puerto Rico, and some of the food I researched from those countries sounded pretty amazing, so they would be on my to-try list now too.
Yum! Where is your favorite place to write, and why is that your favorite place?
I have two places I love to write. The first is in a quiet coffee shop because I enjoy the aroma of coffee hanging in the air and the ability to people watch when I need to take a break from writing. My other top choice is my friend’s cottage on the water. Three of us authors spend a week there every two or three months, writing all day and then reading to each other in front of the woodstove at night and getting feedback on our latest chapters. Some of my best work has come out of those weeks at the cottage.
Those are #AWritersDreamSpot! Do you have an odd habit that is only explained by your bookish, writer tendencies? Safe space. ;-)
I don’t know if it’s odd, but my workspace always looks like a tornado tore through it, which drives my orderly husband crazy. It makes perfect sense to me, though. I know where everything is when I want it, and having too much neatness around me absolutely inhibits my creativity.
Haha! Hey, as long as it makes sense to you, right? What inspired you to write Forged?
The Night Guardians was originally intended to be a two-book series. As I was working on Guarded, the second book, however, a new character inserted herself into the story. That led to the need for me to find someone to love poor sweet Mikayla, who had been through so much trauma in her life. Driven became the story of Mikayla and Puerto-Rican-Canadian Private Investigator Jax RodrÃguez. As that story unfolded, it came out that Jax, who specialized in finding missing persons, had himself been searching for someone—his older brother, Diego—who had disappeared without a trace twenty years earlier. Of course, I couldn’t leave what had happened to his brother unanswered, so Forged, the story of Jax’s quest to find Diego or at least uncover what had happened to him so that he and his mamá could find closure, was born. As far as I know at this point, Forged does wrap up The Night Guardians Series, although you never know what spin-offs might happen down the road or how or when the characters in the series might pop up in other books.
How fun! What led you to write in this genre?
I never made the conscious decision to write romantic suspense. All I knew was that I was drawn to writing contemporary Christian fiction, and when I sat down to write my first book, The Watcher, romantic suspense is what came out. Likely because it is my favourite genre to read. I love the balance between the edge-of-your-seat thrills, excitement, and trepidation of suspense along with the romance that heightens the sense of risk and increased potential loss for the characters, which, in turn, deepens the suspense. Nothing better than a book that keeps you up all night turning pages, desperate to find out what will happen and if the characters you love will somehow manage to survive and end up with their happily ever after.
Romantic suspense IS a lot of fun to read! What message do you hope to convey to your readers?
While each of my books has a theme or themes of its own, the underlying truth threaded throughout every one of my stories is that we are never alone. Whatever we are going through—and my poor characters go through plenty—God is with us and has promised to never leave us or forsake us. This idea plays out especially strongly in Forged, as Jax goes from one life-threatening experience to another, and Mikayla has to let him go and trust that God will protect him and bring him safely home to her.
Great message! Can you tell us a little about your next project(s)?
I am currently working on book two of a different series, two sparrows for a penny. This series has a human trafficking element and tells the stories of three foster sisters who ran away together one night and were all abducted by a trafficker who had been watching them, waiting for his opportunity. Book one, Every Star in the Sky, came out in March 2022, and book two, Every Flower of the Field, will release in February 2023. Every Bird that Falls comes out in 2024. The over-arching theme of this series is that, even in the darkest, most heinous situations imaginable, God is with these girls. He sees them, He knows their names (even though they use other ones during their captivity), and He watches over and protects them. A number of Christian authors have written novels featuring victims of human trafficking recently. I believe this is more than a trend; it is God, laying these precious women (and some men) on our hearts and compelling us to tell a fictional story that represents what real-life, modern-day slaves are experiencing every moment around the world, more right now than at any other point in human history. My hope and prayer for this series is that it will raise awareness of the prevalence of this unspeakable evil and inspire readers to pray for all those caught up in trafficking or to become even more involved through a reputable organization working for their freedom.
Safe is the most dangerous feeling of all.
For as long as she can remember, Rose
Galway has been a captive, controlled by one man or another. To her, though,
God is the one holding the keys, refusing to set her free despite the desperate
pleas she has sent heavenward.
Detective Laken Jones has known hardship too,
including the daily trauma of racism. Still, nothing he has gone through
compares to what Rose has endured. He wants nothing more than for her to experience
hope and healing and maybe even happiness in her life.
But first he has to find her.
Laken is willing to risk everything to set Rose free. And to help her find her way to God. Even if that means letting go of her—and the future he envisions for the two of them—forever.
Yes, yes, and yes! Do you have a favorite Bible verse or story that inspires you on a soul level?
So many, but the two that speak to me most deeply are Psalm 103:10-14, “he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” My other favourite passage is Revelation 21:3-4 - "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself with be with them and be their God. 'He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Both these passages fill me with hope, the first because it reminds me that, as hard as life is and as faithless as we are, God is patient and merciful towards us, and the second because of the promise that one day all things will be restored, and we will dwell in the presence of God forever.
Amen! What are you currently reading? Inquiring minds -- mine! -- want to know. ;-)
I am reading James Rubart’s, The Man He Never Was. I enjoy James’ writing because it is so original and unique and gripping. When I finish that, I am planning to jump into my first Lisa Phillips’s suspense – Cold Dead Night, which I’m really looking forward to as I’ve heard such great things about her books.
Great reads!
Thank you for answering all of my prying questions, Sara!
Giveaway ~
Sara has generously offered a paperback copy of Forged!
The
one missing person he can’t find
is the one who matters the most.
Private Investigator Jax Rodriguez has
been searching for his brother, Diego, for twenty years. When he stumbles upon
another lead, he makes an agonizing decision—he will follow this last trail
until it grows cold, and then he will marry the woman he loves and abandon his
quest once and for all.
Artist Mikayla Grant is terrified of
losing another person close to her, but she has to let Jax go after his
brother. Given the secrecy surrounding Diego’s disappearance, clearly Jax is
heading into danger. When all contact with him is abruptly cut off, can Mikayla
trust that God’s promise to never leave nor forsake Jax will be enough to bring
him safely home? Or does she need to take matters into her own hands?
As Jax attempts to survive the dangerous
streets of Caracas, Venezuela, and then face the myriad of unknown threats in the
El Yunque Rainforest in Puerto Rico, he is not the only one hunting down his
brother.
A ruthless drug lord bent on revenge is using all his resources to discover the truth about what happened to Diego. If Jax can’t stay one step ahead of his pursuer, then he, like his brother, could disappear and never be heard from again.
