A Star is Born
Tomorrow is release day for Mayhem and Moonlight, so here is one last fun fact!
The first book I wrote (that actually got published) was Providence. I’ve shared ad nauseum that it was the last book in the Apple Hill Series because I had to rewrite it so many times. It was a cathartic exercise in overcoming my grief at losing my brother to suicide and finding comfort in the sovereignty of God.
Main character Melissa Bainbridge had three children in that book. Although Melissa was entirely fictional, those three kids were inspired by my niece and nephews—three of the five children my brother left fatherless when he took his own life.
When I wrote the second book, Illusions, I based the two teenage children of main characters Corey and Paul Schaffer on my own two children. In fact, the car accident, coma, and resulted TBI that 17-year-old Taylor experienced was straight from my personal journals of my daughter Nikki’s accident. Everything else about that book is a complete work of fiction.
And then there was the Apple Hill novella Saving Faith, with four-year-old Addie, based on a little girl I taught in Sunday school at the time I wrote it.
Are you seeing a pattern here? Human adults don’t inspire my characters, but children and dogs most certainly do. The same is true for Mayhem and Moonlight.
I told you about Annie and Peter in yesterday’s post. Peter had three young boys when Annie met him, and he was a single father. His first wife had died of cancer not long before, and he wasn’t looking for a replacement wife. He just wanted to focus on raising his boys and overcoming his grief. Then along came Annie.
I don’t know Peter’s boys, and I’m not even sure what their ages were—aside from the youngest, Noah. He was five. Annie shared with me how he especially took to Annie and wanted to call her Mom as soon as she and Peter married. Being sensitive to the situation, Annie agreed—but Mom was an acronym for My Other Mother, so they would never forget Peter’s first wife.
Annie admitted that she struggled hugely in that marriage for all the reasons I wrote about in yesterday’s post. She nearly burned the house down, couldn’t keep a home or cook a meal to save her life, and felt like she was more of a burden than a partner to Peter. So, she decided he’d be better off without her.
It was five-year-old Noah who caught Annie packing up her car and reminded her of her promise to be his new mom. And if she was going to run away, so was he. This picture of the little boy stayed with me while I was creating Mayhem and Moonlight. Noah, Peter’s son became Matty, Luca Giordano’s youngest boy. It was the boys in this story that truly tugged at my heart as I was writing it. The romance isn’t only between Lillian and Luca; there is a level of love and connection between Lillian and those three little boys—just as there was with Annie and Peter’s children. Just one last fun fact to think about as you read this book.
You can still get the ebook version of Mayhem and Moonlight for the preorder price of $2.99. Be sure to claim your preorder gift by filling out the form from my publisher’s website. Just have your Amazon order number handy. If you prefer the paperback version, it will be available on April 16th and already includes the preorder gift
