Author Terri Reed

  

                       Terri Reed, Author                                         Available by preorder.

Hi everyone, Gay N. Lewis here. I’m excited to introduce to you Terri Reed today. Terri Reed writes heart-warming romance and heart-pounding suspense. Her books have appeared on The New York Times Bestseller list, Publisher's Weekly Bestseller List, Nielsen's Bookscan top fifty, Amazon Bestseller List and have been featured in USA Today.

Terri met her husband in college. After college, they moved around the country before settling in Oregon to raise a family. Her two children are both adults now, but she has a beautiful Australian shepherd to keep her company while she’s writing.

Terri has been writing for over thirty years. During that time, she raised a family, provided daycare in her home, taught aerobics at a gym, and worked weekends at Nordstroms. She says when her kids reached high school, she was able to concentrate solely on writing. Now writing is her job and passion.

Gay: How many books do you have in print?

Terri: I have 60 books in print with Love Inspired, and three more coming next year.

Gay: That’s amazing! I can’t imagine coming up with all those stories so quickly. Tell us about your book that became a movie.

Teir:  I have five other books I’ve written for various other publishers other than Love Inspired. Most notably, A Family Under the Christmas Tree. It was published by Howard Books and adapted into the Hallmark movie titled, Picture a Perfect Christmas.

Gay: Congratulations on the Hallmark movie! We all wish one of our books would make it to the screen, and you did it!  How did you find your publisher, Harlequin?  And how long have you been with them?

Terri:  I discovered the publisher through my grandmother. She was a huge romance reader. When I decided I wanted to be an author, I looked at Harlequin and was so excited when they opened their Christian fiction lines. I started submitting to them in the mid-90s and finally sold my first full-length book to them in 2003.

Gay: You write a lot of suspense and romance. Where do you get ideas? How do you come up with so many twists and turns?

Terri:  Like many writers, I have an active imagination. I can spin most anything, a nugget of an idea, into a story. Sometimes those nuggets come from the news, or snippets of overheard conversations, and from playing the ‘what if’ game; this prompt leads to many of the twists and turns in my stories. And while the romance comes out developing characters who will have strong reactions to the ‘what if’.

Gay:  You also write about dogs. Tell us briefly about your K-9 Series.

Terri: Yes! I write many stories where dogs are central characters. Dogs are so intelligent, trainable, fun, and loving. I love my Australian shepherd; she’s so clever and attentive. We do agility training, mostly to keep us active and bonded. Though to be honest, she’s my shadow all day long.

Gay: How many Christmas novels have you written, including your upcoming book, Texas Christmas Cover-Up?

Terri:  I love to write Christmas stories. I have written at least a dozen. My upcoming book is set on South Padre Island, Texas, so it was a bit different writing a book in such an interesting setting. In my research, I discovered that the island offers a variety of fun Christmasy activities. They have a sandcastle Santa’s village, put Christmas trees on the beach, have a Christmas parade and light show. I tried to touch on all of these in the story amid the danger and romance.

Gay: I live in Texas and did not know South Padre Island does that. Maybe I’ll check it out. It sounds fun. Christmas will be here in a few weeks. What’s your happiest Christmas memory?

Terri: My happiest Christmas memory is being with my grandparents during the holiday. They were very generous and loving, and I always felt safe and cared for when we went to their house.

Gay: Tell us about your latest book.

Terri: Texas Christmas Cover-Up is the companion story to Trained to Protect, which came out last February and made the New York Times Bestseller list. In Texas Christmas Cover-Up, the hero, Police Chief Jeremy Hamilton, is reunited with his ex-high school sweetheart, Kara Evans. Kara is an FBI profiler and widowed mom who returns to the island to sell her childhood home. But soon it’s apparent that Kara and her young daughter are in danger, and it has something to do with Kara’s father’s unsolved murder. Jeremy will do everything he can to protect them while he and Kara work together to solve the mystery.

Gay: What do you want your readers to take away from this latest book?

Terri: This is a book of second chances, which we all are offered through Jesus.

Gay: I can hardly wait to read this book! It is available now on preorder, and I have ordered it. It will be delivered on October 28. Here’s a bit more about it.

When widowed FBI agent Kara Evans returns to sell her late mother’s home, eager to shed reminders of her tragic past, she’s assaulted by a masked attacker. With the house ransacked and a daughter to protect, Kara must turn to her former love, police chief Jeremy Hamilton, to track down her assailant. But when the trail of clues leads to unanswered questions about her father’s cold case murder, it’s clear that someone is determined to keep Kara from uncovering the truth. As a string of new murders unfolds, can they expose this deadly plot before Kara is silenced forever?

Gay: Thanks, Terri for visiting with us. I hope everyone will read your books. I’ve read many, and I’ve never been disappointed. 

You can visit Terri online at www.terrireed.com, sign up for her newsletter for exclusive content, or email her at terrireedauthor@terrireed.com

Interview with author Jean Pike!!

Today we welcome author Jean Pike to The Diamond Mine to promote her new book, Super-Heroes!

Hi Jean!!

Tell us a little about your book, please.

Thank you for having me today, Nancy. I'd love to!

It all started with a prayer...

After a lifetime of of being controlled by her parents, and most recently by her ex-fiancée, Abby Callahan has had enough. She moves out of her parents' home and into a rented motel room a few towns away, where she takes night classes at the community college, finally free to pursue her dream of becoming a music therapist.

From now on, she will live her life her way, answering to no one except God. She is done letting her parents make her decisions. And she is done with men. Until she meets Rory St. George.

Growing up on the wrong side of town,  Rory has worked hard to claw his way out of poverty. He has a good job as assistant manager at the local feed store, a good church, and a few close friends. He thinks that's all a man can ask for in life. Until he meets Abby.

Their fragile relationship is tested from the start with missteps and misunderstandings, but their genuine attraction to each other and their faith in God hold them together. Until disaster strikes. Can their newfound love survive being tried by fire? And can the power of love turn ordinary people into superheroes? 

This sounds wonderful, Jean! How did you get your idea for this story?

Reading the daily news can be both depressing and uplifting. The ideas for many of my stories stem from things I've read about that have either filled me with wonder or filled me with sadness.

The world is full of stories of ordinary people performing superhero acts--- A volunteer firefighter who risks his life to rescue a family from a burning house. A man, fishing on the bank of a river, dives into deep waters to save a drowning child. Heroism is also found in a hundred small, everyday sacrifices made in the name of love.

A new romance can be so much fun!  Picnics and hikes and bouquets of flowers' just because! But when things get hard and life turns messy, few have what it takes to keep the flame burning. To stay in it for the long haul, even when it costs something precious. The truth is, one never knows if they have what it takes to be a superhero until they have no other choice.

Superheroes is a story about everyday heroes who love in the most extraordinary ways.

Wow! How could I not be interested in a story like that?

Do you have any underlying themes that you want your readers to come away with?

The underlying theme in Superheroes is that God is sovereign over His creation. God is still God, even in hard times. 

There is a verse in Job that I've always loved: But He knows the way that I take: when He hath tried me. I shall come forth as gold. (Job 23:10 KJV)

Bad things happen in life, but God can use them to refine our faith and make us more like Him. This story seeks to showcase His great love for us, and hopefully, point the way  to the greatest Superhero of all time, our Lord Jesus.

Well said, and I found your words very touching. I'm sure your story is, too.

I'm curious-- Do your characters ever surprise you?

Oh, all the time! I'll usually do a rough character sketch before I start any in-depth writing, a few sentences about who each of the characters are and what they want from life. Many times the characters turn out to be something quite different from what I first imagined. I like to think that's a combination of God's direction and my crazy, overactive imagination, lol.

In Superheroes, Olly was originally going to be Rory's youngest brother, heading down a wrong path that Rory would have to try and correct. But something as small as a typo changed my mind. Instead of writing the word coffee, I accidentally wrote coccee. Which is exactly how my special needs nephew, Michael, pronounces the word. I have always wanted to include a special needs character in one of my stories, but I struggled with how to do so with grace and dignity. As I started to look more closely at Olly's character, he and Michael began to merge together, and I knew the time had come to honor this lovely, complex young man. Hence my dedication: For Michael, a superhero indeed.

Tell us how you incorporated Olly with Michael.

First, as I said, Olly's character is based on my nephew. Michael is a young man with special needs who loves pink shirts, orange shirts and coloring books. It may not always seem as though he is paying attention, but he is! He notices the birds that come to his mother's feeders, and all the pretty colors of the flowers in their garden.

He notices who is in church each week, and who is not. On Sundays, after lunch, he makes a card for each person on the prayer list, using construction paper and pictures colored and cut from his coloring books. His favorites are the superheroes, whom he makes up his own names for, names that make sense to him.

Michael has a stubborn streak as wide as the Ohio river, but oh, he has a heart filled with love and compassion that often astounds me.  He uses what he's been given to lift others up. I gave those same traits to Olly. 

 

Michael sounds like quite a work of art, as well as being an artist himself.

Do you have a favorite character in any of your other books?

I enjoy creating all of my characters, but some stand out for me because their parts are just so much fun to write! But with all of the time and effort spent developing my main characters, it is often the secondary characters that seem to grab my readers' hearts. In The Little Things, it was a grumpy senior bulldog named Gus. In King of Hearts, it was forgetful, lovable Aunt Clara.  As the reviews for Superheroes began to come in, it was clear that in this story, it was Olly that readers loved the most.

I can see why!

So, what are you working on now?

I was four chapters in to a new Redford's Crossing Romance when a coworker made a statement that brought all work on that story to a screeching halt. We were talking about relationships, and how, as a widow, she feels she is "done." 

And then she said, "But my mother thought she was done, too. She just sat in her porch rocker day after day, waiting to die. And then a man pulled in the driveway and asked if he could pick from her blackberry bushes. They've been together forty years."

Wait, what?

An opening sentence immediately popped into my mind: Norah Sutton was sitting in her porch rocker, waiting to die, when the red pickup truck pulled into the driveway...

And Blackberry Summer began to take shape. :)

Sometimes, that's all it takes for inspiration to hit: a typo, a passing comment, and the whole direction of your story  takes a different path.

Thank you so much for this interview, Jean. I have completely enjoyed hearing your answers.

And readers, here are some links for Jean, and her books:

https://www.amazon.com/Superheroes-M-Jean-Pike-ebook/dp/BOCYPSLQ5D/

https://pelicanbookgroup.com/ec/index.php?main page=product info&cPath=3746&products id=1711

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/superheroes-m-jean-pike/1147169381?ean=9781522305064

https://books.apple.com/us/book/superheroes/id6744548266

Jean's blog:

https:// jeanpike.wordpress.com/