Welcome Love Inspired Historical Author Shannon Farrington

Ah, June!  My favorite month of the year!  Orange daylilies color the roadsides and lighting bugs dance beneath long, slow sunsets.  This year however, I greet June with mixed emotions.  My latest Love Inspired Historical release, Handpicked Family, is sadly my last, as our line in closing.

I began writing for LIH in 2011 when Editor Elizabeth Mazer read through my haphazard civil war era manuscript.  She saw potential in the story of a naive southern sympathizer who breaks her engagement to her childhood sweetheart when he decides to remain loyal to the Union.  Elizabeth patiently worked with me on the plot, showing me how to build stronger conflict between my characters and helping me polish the story until Her Rebel Heart was ready for publication.  It was a very enjoyable and rewarding process!  I was blessed to be paired with a skilled editor who became a great mentor and friend!   Elizabeth and I went on to collaborate on four other civil war stories and one western chronicling the Lewis and Clark expedition. 

I have greatly appreciated the platform Love Inspired Historical provided me to share my passion for American history and my faith in Christ.  It has been a joy to be able to create stories where characters face the tough descions, privation and loss that history thrust upon our ancestors, and then be able to bring those characters to a place where love and faith conquer all in the end. 

Such is life. Sometimes we can’t always see God’s hand at work right away in our lives but when we look back we can see His fingerprints everywhere.  I am sad to be leaving Love Inspired, sad to be parting from Elizabeth and my fellow historical authors.  I believe however, as history always shows, that God has a new adventure in mind.  I plan to continuing writing historical novels.  Who my next publisher will be I cannot yet say, but I am confident that the lessons I learned and the friendships I forged while writing for LIH will stay with me for the rest of my life.

About Handpicked Family: 

 After the Civil War, newspaper editor Peter Carpenter insists he’ll never marry or raise children in such a troubling world. His commitment to bachelorhood only intensifies as he and his lovely assistant, Trudy Martin, search the ravaged Shenandoah Valley for his missing widowed sister-in-law and her baby.

Ever the optimist, Trudy refuses to embrace Peter’s bleak outlook. Unfortunately, that doesn’t diminish her deep feelings for him—feelings she knows he’ll never reciprocate. But when Peter and Trudy become responsible for two war orphans, will Peter still keep his heart closed to his newfound family…or can he find hope in fatherhood?