Today on The Diamond Mine, we welcome back author Peggy Trotter, one of the founding members of this blog! I feel so blessed to have met Peggy years ago through our ACFW critique group. Peggy has an awesome talent for creating moods and characters that really grab your attention. Her latest novel, out today, is The Secret Storm.
Here's a short description:
Within the cozy coastal
town…secrets abound. Stormi Zobroski’s life is finally on track. Her immoral
life decisions, stemming from a dysfunctional childhood, are nothing but a bad
memory. New town, new life. Or so she thinks. When a new friend, Ake Pearson,
is belittled, Stormi conjures up the perfect plan. Yet, how could a little
face-saving kiss cause so much harm? Now, she will do anything to fix it.
Ake Pearson is a simple
man. Faith, family, and fishing. Even if everybody calls him “Dummy,” he’s
content with his lot. Only when Stormi thunders into his life does he realize
what he is missing. Family disapproval and misunderstandings threaten to tear
Stormi from him. But when a long kept secret surfaces, Ake may lose his very
life.
Well Peggy, this sounds like a great read! Can you tell the readers something about your new
release and what inspired you to write it?
I wrote it for people
who have left the rails. Their life is off-kilter and out of God’s will.
They’re making bad choices because they have lost their way. Or perhaps they’ve
grown up in a dysfunctional family that veered them from the path God intended.
They are angry and bitter and try to carve their own way through life. Proverbs
14:12 says, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death.”
I always want to show
people that no one is beyond God’s ability to restore them. No secret sin is
too big.
That's so true, and a message that people really need to hear.
So, without further ado, here's an excerpt from The Secret Storm:
Ake took a deep breath. “They think I want you as my
girlfriend.”
A laugh burst from Stormi, but his lowered head
frightened the mirth away. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing about that, really,
just it sounds like high school.”
Ake gave a small smile. “Yeah.”
The sadness written on his face sobered her. “Really,
Ake. I wasn’t laughing at the thought of us being boyfriend and girlfriend.”
He nodded. “It’s okay. I only had one date my Senior
Prom. Hoge found a girl to go with me, but she said it wasn’t like that either.
She did it as a favor. I understand.”
Fury and sorrow fought a battle in Stormi, and she
shoved her mittened hands into her pockets. The men returned from the grill
with hot drinks, pounding Ake on the shoulder again and laughing. It took a
large amount of control not to knock those two down the stairs. When the two
men made it to the dock, one of them handed a Styrofoam cup to Ake’s brother.
More scowls.
What complete blockheads. As if Ake didn’t deserve a
normal blissful life of marriage and a family. A perfect plan began to
formulate in her mind. “You know. We could pretend.”
“Huh?”
“We could give them a real show. Shut them up for
good.”
Ake’s eyes crinkled. “I don’t follow you.”
Stormi scooted closer and shot Ake a grin. “We could
pretend we were together. A couple. Then they wouldn’t tease you.”
He shook his head with a start of a smile. “I’m not
much into pretending.”
“It wouldn’t be complicated.” Brilliance lightened her
demeanor. She arched closer and tilted her head coquettishly, the flirt that
never failed to provoke a man’s attention. “You wouldn’t have to say anything
about us. You could just shrug it off. Or just smile. What’s between a man and
a woman is private, after all.”
His dark eyes, open and trusting, glued to hers. “I
don’t know how that would work.”
“I do. We could kiss.”
Well, that surely makes me want to see how all this turns out! So Peggy, what sort of a writer are you?
Do you schedule your
writing time or do you write in “bursts” of inspiration?
Both. But mostly bursts of inspiration. I am not a scheduled kind of person. I need to be. I try to be,
but I am just a live-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of person, LOL. I finish
things by each deadline. There is good and bad things about that. I suppose it
means I’m a creative person. But it also means that mostly the squeaky wheel
things get done, prioritized by time. I’ll skip meals, stay up until two in the
morning when inspiration is whispering in my ear and not even notice the time.
Or my stomach. J
It's amazing isn't it? You can lose yourself in the writing process and time just melts away!
Did you always know you
would be a writer?
No. It seemed too
far-fetched. Sure, I dreamed of it even as a very young child. I remember writing
my cousin when I was about twelve telling her I wanted to be a writer. Then the
writing bug bit me pretty hard when I was fourteen and totally obsessed with
horse novels. Until I realized, after three pages of pounding out my “novel” on
a manual typewriter, writing was hard!
But writing has never
left me. It’s been quite handy in other job situations. I’d write a poem here
for an event, a play here for a preschool, a silly story for a niece and
nephew. I scribble a chapter here and there as my kids grew. But writing was
always this nagging thing in the back of my mind that never went away.
I think that's true for many writers. And I'm so glad you stuck with it so I can read your stories!
What do you like best
about writing and what do you like least?
Oh, best by far is when
inspiration has you by the horns and I am pounding out words as fast as I can.
When my characters are thick in tension, love, and overcoming the worst
possible situations. That is like the sweetest candy. The worst is marketing.
Trying to get your novel out there in front of the people who need it. I
suppose that matches my personality as well, LOL. Writing is creating while
marketing is planning.
Boy, do I hear you on that one. Marketing is not a strength of mine, either! But I guess we have to keep learning about it so we can get our stories in front of more people.
What are you working on
now?
Well, I just finished
my fourth book which comes out tomorrow. The
Secret Storm is the second in the series of Unchained Souls. I am working
of the third of that series called, The
Secret Mirage, with the hopes of a fourth after that. I am also working on
taking my Historical and possibly turning it into a series. That is, if my
publisher goes for that, LOL, therefore I have two others that I am working on right
now in the historical category. So I’ll be back in the writing cave. Yay!
You said it! The writing cave is such a great place to be! Peggy, thanks so much for this interview. And readers, don't forget to leave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of Peggy's book!
Now, here's a bio of Peggy, followed by her social links:
Peggy Trotter, a semi-retired
teacher, is on a continual quest to find one of her many pairs of glasses. But
once those readers are parked on her nose, she‘s immersed in a story scene of
some sort, always pushing toward that miracle happy ending. On a dusty shelf
lies a couple of writing honors like the prestigious ACFW Genesis Award,
Novella category, even though she writes full-length historical, contemporary
and suspense Christian Fiction.
She has two amazing
grown children, two terrific children-in-laws, and two unbelievably fantabulous
grandchildren, who deserve way more than the average amount of adjectives and
adverbs. Her Batman of 34 years, whose cape is much worn from rescuing his
wife from one scrap or another, is the delight of her life. She’s a smoldering
pot of determined discombobulation who, by the grace of God, occasionally pulls
it together to appear in public as a normal confident woman while privately
craving a few hermit hours to woo the printed word.
Links:
