Interview with Lauraine Snelling & GIVEAWAY | The Engrafted Word

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Award-winning and best selling author Lauraine Snelling began living her dream to be a writer with her first published book for young adult readers, Tragedy on the Toutle, in 1982. She has since continued writing more horse books for young girls, adding historical and contemporary fiction and nonfiction for adults and young readers to her repertoire. All told, she has over eighty books published.

Shown in her contemporary romances and women’s fiction, a hallmark of Lauraine’s style is writing about real issues of forgiveness, loss, domestic violence, and cancer within a compelling story. Her work has been translated into Norwegian, Danish, and German, and she has won the Silver Angel Award for An Untamed Land and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart for Song of Laughter.

As a sought after speaker, Lauraine encourages others to find their gifts and live their lives with humor and joy. Her readers clamor for more books more often, and Lauraine would like to comply … if only her paintbrushes and easel didn’t call quite so loudly.

Lauraine and her husband, Wayne, have two grown sons, and live in the Tehachapi Mountains with a watchdog Basset named Winston. They love to travel, most especially in their forty-foot motor coach, which they affectionately deem “a work in progress”.

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Savanna:  Welcome to The Engrafted Word, Lauraine. Congratulations on today’s release of A Harvest of Hope. Love the cover, by the way! Many readers enjoy picking out their favorite quotes from your books. Do you have a favorite quote from this novel?

Interview with Lauraine Snelling & GIVEAWAY | The Engrafted WordLauraine:  Thank you. Holding a new book for the first time is always a time for celebration.  I don’t have a favorite quote, but this came in this morning from a reader.

“I already found some quotes from you that are worth revisiting and I am only in the first two chapters or so.  The one where you say “just because I don’t feel like smiling doesn’t mean I have to put that on others” or something like that.  The other one, “so many dreams in the box with the dreamer“.

Thrilled me as you can guess. I have the best readers in all the world.

Savanna:  Oh, I bet! 😉 I’m sure looking forward to reading it!

With this next installment in your Song of Blessing series, what has become the overall theme that you’re excited to share with your readers?

Interview with Lauraine Snelling & GIVEAWAY | The Engrafted WordLauraine:  Forgiveness is always an over arching theme in my books because we have such trouble with that issue, especially forgiving ourselves. In Harvest of Hope, since trust is an issue that God has me working on in my relationship with him… guess what? Writers so often do this, we have our characters working on the same issue we are.

Savanna:  With over 80 books to your name, is there a particular hero and heroine you’ve written that still hold a special place in your heart? If so, can you tell us why?

Lauraine:   Oh my, what a loaded question. Who do I write about the most? Ingeborg. I tell people I want to be like Ingeborg when I grow up. More than one person has responded with. “You are Ingeborg.” Hmm, now that bears thinking on. For one thing, she bakes better bread than I do and drinks far more coffee. But inside? Possibly.

And a hero? Haakan, of course. But there are others I would like to get to know better, whatever book they appeared in wasn’t enough time. The one that comes to my mind is Garret, the veterinarian in Heaven Sent Rain. What a creative man with a big heart. Trygve is another.

Young Manny will be another one. I wonder if down the road there might be a book where he can be the hero. Talk about an over-comer.

Savanna:  Your website mentions you also do lots of speaking engagements. What has been one of your favorite workshops you’ve presented and why?

Interview with Lauraine Snelling & GIVEAWAY | The Engrafted WordLauraine:  Creating Great Characters has to be my favorite workshop to give for writers. I took that workshop from my standard, Writing Great Fiction. I LOVE creating memorable characters.

As for speaking, the talk I love to give the most is The Stories behind the Stories. Book ideas come in so many different and unusual ways—entertaining stories and fun to tell. Like the time I heard a weak and halting voice that felt like it was right there in the car with me, “Ben, I love you, I am going home. Goodbye.” I cried and cried. Or walking the land that would become Bjorklund land and feeling like I had been there before. That’s because I had visualized it for An Untamed Land. I could go on and on. If you haven’t guessed, I am a story teller.

Savanna:  I loved reading that you enjoy gardening. I do too! 😉 What is your favorite thing to grow?

Lauraine:  Flowers, glorious color, heady fragrances, riots of shape and beauty. I love my roses, as my FaceBook followers know so well since I post so many pictures of them on FB. I tried to tell my roses that we will most likely get a hard frost yet, but they insist on budding. Sigh.

Savanna:  Getting to meet you this past September at the ACFW conference and give you a hug was a highlight for me. Can you share with us a special memory from your very first conference?

Interview with Lauraine Snelling & GIVEAWAY | The Engrafted WordLauraine:  I have taught at many conferences through the years, I love to teach and encourage other writers, but that one was special. Talking with individuals was the highlight for me. In front of the elevator, at the tables, in the halls, in the gathering place where so many of congregated on the same floor as the main meeting room.

Savanna:  Thanks so much for sharing with us today, Lauraine! It’s been great having you! Is there anything else you’d like to add? Any upcoming projects you can share with us?

Lauraine:  I just sent in the first draft of Streams of Mercy which follows Harvest of Hope and will be due out next fall is at the top of my list right now. There will be one more book in the Song of Blessing series.

I will be doing a two state tour, ND and MN in early July, you can find all the info on my web site. My next Contemporary Someday Home, will be out in early July which is the focus of that tour. Someday Home features three women stepping into a new season of their lives and joining resources to share a house, in Detroit Lakes in fact.

Even sooner than that, I get to visit ten libraries in Northern Minnesota, April 20-25. Again, you can find the schedule on my website, www.laurainesnelling.com

The easiest ways to contact me are through Email or Facebook. I so enjoy meeting my readers. Thanks for inviting me on your blog. Happy spring, oh and my daffodils are blooming. Blessings all.

GIVEAWAY!!

Lauraine has graciously offered to give away a copy of A Harvest of Hope. Enter below and it could be YOU! 😉

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for entering! Contest is open only in the U.S. and ends March 10, 2015.  The winner will be notified by email. Happy Reading, everybody! 😉