Spotlight on Christmas Novels with Vickie McDonough part 1

Welcome to my secont spotlight on Christmas Novels with Vickie McDonough. As Vickie has 2 novella's out I am featuring both books this week. Part 2 will be Thursday.

I have finished the first book A Blue and Grey Christmas last night and loved it. I bought the 4 of the Christmas novellas and started with this one. Will put up my review hopefully tomorrow.

1. Firstly can you tell us a little about yourself?
Certainly. I’m a wife of thirty-four years, mother of four sons, have a great daughter-in-law, and a feisty three-year-old granddaughter. I’ve lived all of my life in Oklahoma, except for one year (1975-76) when I lived on a kibbutz in Israel with my husband and a group of other young people from our church. I’ve been writing for eight & a half years now. When I’m not writing, I love read, watching my favorite TV shows or a movie, meeting with my friends, gardening, and traveling.

2. How did you come to be an author; is it something you always wanted to be?
Actually, I never dreamed I become a writer. In school, I was a math lover and didn’t care for writing or English. I think it’s just a God thing. I believe writing novels is what He has for me for this time of my life. Almost nine years ago, I got a story idea running through my mind. It was keeping me awake at night and disrupting my life. I decided to try writing it down to see if it would go away, but it didn’t. After I completed it, another idea followed right on its heals. I finally figured God was trying to get my attention, and I jumped in with both feet, attending conferences, taking writing classes, reading books on writing and joining writings groups, both online and locally.

3. This month I’m focusing on Christmas books, and Vickie has 2 novellas out. I am going to do a 2-day interview, first focusing on A Blue and Gray Christmas. How did you go about collaborating for this collection?
I had a friend who asked me to be a part of this collection. We considered several options but decided on a collection that wasn’t linked except by the Civil War theme.

4. How did you find the topic and was it easy to write for you?
I’ve had my story, Beloved Enemy, for a long time. At first, I thought about proposing it as a long book, but I felt it would work better as a novella. When I was asked to be on this team, I already had my story idea.

5. How did you come up with the characters for your story?
I’ve had this story partially written that I honestly can’t remember how I came up with it? I just know this story has been on my heart a long time.

6. Do you have a message you hope readers take out of your story?
Yes, it’s a message of forgiveness.

7.Can you tell us a little about your story?
The premise is: An embittered Union soldier returns home to discover half his family is dead. He despises all southerners. He is quite taken though, by the young woman who has been living with his mother and helping care for her and the ranch. She is suffering from laryngitis, and he falls hard for the kind, compassionate woman before learning the truth—that she is a southerner. --