Setting: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary by Jo Ann Brown

Throughout my writing career, I’ve enjoyed writing about distant times and places. That requires a lot of research, because what did I know when I first started about Regency manners

or the hills and valleys of the Middle East or the gold fields of the Yukon? Not that I’m complaining. I love doing research, finding all the ways people and their lives in other times and places are different from ours...and how they’re the same. Sometimes I found facts I hadn’t expected and which made me change my story to fit the reality. I was astonished—and more than a bit pleased—to discover during the Yukon gold rush, Canadian saloons were closed on Sunday in honor of the Sabbath. A tidbit I could share with readers to make them feel the same aha moment I’d had when I found the information.
Finding a fact that makes my story real is a reward for me after hours of research and trying not to be sidetracked by other information that doesn’t have anything to do with my story, but would be oh, so delicious to track down to its origins.
Being able to learn more about other eras of history and faraway places was what brought me to writing in the first place. I’d been working on the Mayflower Puritans and suddenly, instead of facts and figures, I found myself wondering what it must have been like for those people traveling from their homes to the New World. The words flowed for what would become my first completed short story, one that I wrote wholly for myself. But that story set the path for my writing for years to come. I’d write about, as the song says, “those faraway places with the strange sounding names.”
Then I happened upon the tidbit during research that inspired the Amish Spinster Club series. I needed to figure out where I should set the quartet of books. I knew the Amish had begun buying farms in the Whitehall, New York, area. That’s about thirty miles north of the small town where I’d grown up. Common sense suggested I put the series in my home town, but a part of me balked. Wasn’t I supposed to write about exciting places instead of an ordinary little town?

I began to think about other books I’d enjoyed and how the authors had placed their stories in their hometowns. Those towns weren’t familiar to me, so it was fun to walk the streets along with their characters.
I realized it could be the same for readers if I introduced them to the small town of Salem, New York.

All I needed to do was find a way to make the ordinary a moment of extraordinary discovery for readers. I recalled what I’d liked about growing up in that town and what I hadn’t. I thought about the stories I knew of those who’d lived there before me and after me.
With that, Harmony Creek Hollow was born in Salem, and my characters soon were settling in and walking along the streets as they did their errands and lived their lives. What startled me was how much research I still needed to do. I realized I didn’t know the mileage from Salem to many other places around the area which I’d driven many times. I hadn’t paid attention then, but I had to for my characters and the time line in my books.

So I guess it’s not true that you can’t go home again. I’ve been going home again while writing the series...and I hope the readers I’ve taken along with me have enjoyed getting to know my hometown just as I have all over again. The Amish Bachelor's Baby, the third book of The Amish Spinster Club, is available now in print and will be available on March 1 as an ebook. C'mon along and visit my hometown!

Trying to Make Up My Mind – Which is Better? by Jo Ann Brown

Usually I’m very sure of my opinions, but I’m been debating an issue with myself for the last couple of weeks.
What is better: beginnings or endings?
I love beginnings. It’s fun to step off into an adventure in both real life and when reading. Emerging into a place (or a time) I’ve never been before is always a thrill. It doesn’t matter if I’m walking through ruins of a supply depot in northern England left by the Romans over a millennia and a half ago

or taking a virtual reality ride on a banshee in the Avatar section of Disney World for the first time. The chance to experience something new is exciting, the anticipation exquisite. Anything and everything is possible in that moment before everything begins.
But I love endings, too. The feeling I get when I’ve spent a wonderful day with my family or enjoyed a great visit with friends or seen a great movie or finished a book by a favorite author that ended up being even better than I’d imagined. Or such a book by a new-to-me author!
This time of year is all about endings and beginnings. Last month, I finished work on the fourth—and final—book in my Amish Spinster Club series. Immediately after it was done, I started work on the first book in a new Amish series set in lush valleys of the Green Mountains of Vermont. It’s been tough to say good-bye to the Amish Spinster Club characters I’ve spent over a year with as I watched them make homes and lives and find love in northern New York, and now I’m having to get acquainted with a new “cast” in a new location.
Starting a new book is like standing in that long line, inching forward a person at a time, for a ride.

There’s the breathless possibility of something amazing that’s about to begin. I’m not sure where it’ll end up other than my hero and heroine must have their happy ever after ending. Will this be the book that “writes itself” or the one where I have to labor over every word? What surprises are waiting for me in spite of outlining the book in a synopsis? No matter how much time I spend with characters before I put fingers to keyboard, they always hold back something about themselves or their story that they won’t reveal until I’m in the midst of writing the book. Looking forward to those discoveries is part of the excitement that fires me up at the beginning of a project. I love it!
However, I admit that I also love being able to type the words “The End” when I reach the last page of a manuscript. Not that I’m actually done with the manuscript because it’s time then for a red pen and revising. I go through a LOT of red ink during this part of the process. However, I really enjoy revising because I can look at my characters with a different eye than when I’m going through their story with them the first time. No matter how much work awaits, there’s the satisfaction that weeks of work have led to something being completed...and that’s a wonderful feeling!
So now you can see my quandary. What is better: beginnings or endings? Post your opinions...and I’m going to guess nobody is going to say middles, though now that I think about it, being in the middle of something can be great fun, too, can’t it?

Where do you get those ideas for your books? by Jo Ann Brown

When people find out I’m a writer, and I’m celebrating the 30th anniversary of my first book this year and I’ve published over 100 books with a variety of pseudonyms since that initial book, the first question they ask is: “Where do you get your ideas?” Maybe they’ve seen the small bank I saw this spring in a bookstore window in England and thought that I just keep them in a box on my desk.

I hope the question about where I find my ideas isn’t quickly followed (not even giving me a chance to answer) with “I’ve got a great idea for a book, but I don’t have the time to write it. Do you want it? You write the book, and we’ll split the profits.” I’ve learned to smile sincerely and say that I’m grateful for their offer, but I’ve already got more ideas than I’ll have time to write. The response is either a knowing nod or disbelief.
And you know what? Both responses are correct.
I’ve always got ideas for future books whirling about in my head. Most writers do. The amazing thing is the future ideas always feel much more enticing than the current one in the work-in-progress, especially if I’m in the midst of the middle muddles section of the writing process. That part when all those story threads that looked so straightforward when I began the project now seem like a ball of yarn that’s been on the losing end of a kitten’s attention. Many of those ideas will eventually find their way into another book, but some just drift away and are best forgotten. Some writers keep an idea notebook, but I don’t. If an idea doesn’t have the power to stay and grow – it can’t remain just an idea; it has to become a more in-depth concept—then it never was, in my opinion, more than a whim. You know how I define a whim? Just something that seems like fun in passing, but doesn’t have enough depth to become anything real.
But, every once in a while, an idea comes to me as a gift from someone else. Usually it’s from a family member (especially my husband who’s my first reader and catches all the words I leave in or leave out in my rush to tell the story). My children grew up listening to a discussion of plot points around the supper table as my part of “How was your day today?” sharing that we did each night.
The second book of my Amish Spinster Club series is one of those books where the central idea for the book (and the title) was given to me during a dinner discussion with my husband. We still do the “How was your day today?” sharing even though the kids are grown and out on their own. I was excited about the heroine I had planned for the book—an Amish nanny in an Englisch home—

but I was still pondering the rest of the details. We actually were talking about the most recent releases from Love Inspired, and I mentioned how two were Amish romances and three were western settings and the last was a small town setting in the Midwest. With a laugh, my husband told me I should try to combine them all into one book. The Midwest book wouldn’t work because the series is set in northern New York. Therefore, he said my next book should be called The Amish Cowboy. He laughed, thinking it was a joke...but I thought, “Hmm....”
I’m sure every writer (or artist of any type) understands what that “Hmm....” means. It’s the sound of the wheels of the brain kicking into motion. Ideas soon were ricocheting through my head, and the story for book which eventually became The Amish Christmas Cowboy quickly gelled in my head.
It’s not the first time my family has given me ideas for books, and I hope it won’t be the last, because no matter how many ideas I have on my own...good ideas for books are always welcome here. I guess I need to look for a small box that says that. Hmm....

Lessons to Be Learned and Thanks to Be Given by Jo Ann Brown

When inspiration struck while doing some research for another story, the Amish Spinster Club books were born. Deciding on the location was simple. I would set it in my hometown, not far from where an actual Amish settlement has recently set down roots. I decided to let the last book in my Amish Hearts series serve as a transition by moving one of the Stoltzfus siblings to a farm along a creek not far from Salem, New York.

But now it was time to start creating the characters for the new series, especially the four members of the Harmony Creek Spinsters’ Club. These young women, who were past the usual marrying age, didn’t want to hang out with teens any longer, but wanted to have get-togethers and frolics and outings. I knew the heroes they deserved would come along as the stories developed.
But who were my heroines? I chose Miriam Hartz as the heroine of the first book because she was already intriguing to me. She’d come to the new settlement with her brother whose idea it was to create it in the first place. What sort of person was she?
In this case, the answer came quickly. Miriam was someone who brought out the best in others by being there for them, supporting her friends and community, stepping up when there was a task to be done, inspiring others to doing better than they’d thought they could. She had a heart-deep reason not to want to be around children, so of course, her brother asks her to be the temporary teacher for the settlement. To me it seemed obvious, because I see teachers as those who support and inspire.

I had some extraordinary teachers. We were a small school, covering five townships/villages, with 650 kids in K-12. We knew each other and everyone’s siblings and parents, and our teachers were part of that extended family. Some teachers had been there long enough to teach our parents. One of those was Miss Barkley, my third grade teacher. We were her 65th class (yep, you read that right – she’d been teaching for sixty-five years), and she believed in inspiring students by making learning fun. As a result of her skills, we were through our year’s syllabus before Thanksgiving. The rest of the year, we kept learning and were far ahead of where we were supposed to be in math and language arts by the end of the school year. She inspired me with a love for words and books and daring to do things I couldn’t have imagined until I met her.
On the other hand, Mrs. Musser, my freshman and sophomore English teacher, was fresh out of college, and she believed in inspiring students by challenging them. I’d been coasting along in school on my creative writing...doing enough to get by while I worked on my own stories at home. My first homework assignment came back with a C+ instead the usual A. I was shocked and heartbroken...and I realized I was going to have to learn more if I wanted to be an author as I dreamed. So, after wiping away the tears (the only time I ever cried over a grade), I promised myself right then and there, I was going to prove to her that I was a good writer. That was our last assignment for freshman year, but I was ready the year. The first creative writing project meant thinking about exactly which words I wanted to use to convey the mood of what I was trying to create in those three pages. It was returned to me with a grade of B+ and a note that said (and I remember it all these years later): What happened to you over the summer? I was walking on air, so happy that I’d dared to show her what I really wanted to do rather than hiding my dream in my heart. Years later, when I was a newly published author, I did a presentation for her freshman class...and told that story to the delight of every student there. I hope I inspired at least one as she’d inspired me. Though she didn’t remember the circumstances.
For almost thirty years, I’ve been teaching creative writing. Every time I get in front of a class, I think of those two teachers and how inspiration was their most important teaching tool.
That’s why I chose for Miriam to be a teacher, not just in the classroom, but in her life. I hope all of you have such teachers in your lives, too. They’re a true gift we’re blessed to have light our way. Thanks to each and every one of you.
Check out Miriam's story in The Amish Suitor, the first book in the Amish Spinster Club quartet. It's available in print today May 22, 2018. The ebook will be for sale on June 1, 2018.

Research as inspiration for the Amish author by Jo Ann Brown

I’ve always loved research. Probably that’s one of the reasons why I started out writing historicals. I want to surround myself with piles of books and read my way through all of them to learn the details of lives in a different time or place. Out of all that reading, both the “just the facts” and the anecdotal examples, I always find inspiration.

When I was asked to write my first Amish book, I realized how much I didn’t know, even though I’d lived for years not far from several Amish communities in southeastern Pennsylvania. My acquaintance with my Amish neighbors was during conversations at farm stands while I decided on whether to buy one shoofly pie or two...or maybe another package of the delicious molasses cookies as well. I’d also attended yard sales in the spring at plain homes and had a great time talking with neighbors about the weather and raising kids.
But writing plain characters required more than what little I’d learned through those polite conversations. So I dove into research as I always do – starting with the simplest books I could find, including children’s books. I found an excellent series of books from The People’s Place dealing with topics like schools and clothing and weddings. As I learned the basics, I went on to more complex research with more in-depth books published by plain authors and by college professors.
During the months—actually years, now that I look back at it—that I was writing the Amish Hearts miniseries for Love Inspired, I continued to block out time for research reading. I subscribed to The Budget, the weekly written for and by Amish and Mennonite readers, as well as finding other plain publications like The Blackboard Bulletin (a monthly aimed at plain schoolteachers) and Family Life (a monthly for families to share and read aloud).

By the way, if you missed Debby Giusti’s excellent blog post on The Budget earlier this month, go back and read it! I also found sources (see those aforementioned yard sales) for authentic Amish clothing for men, women and children. I went to the stores where plain folks shop and compared the farms where they live to the farm where I grew up.
So much fun!
But my miniseries was drawing to a close with my January 2018 release An Amish Arrangement, and I needed to come up with an idea for a new series that excited me enough to spend a year of more writing 3-4 books. Every idea I came up with seemed to be too tried and true.

In exasperation, I turned back to my own tried and true method—I went to the shelves of my research books and took down one I hadn’t read yet. I took it with me on a cross-country flight, and somewhere over the middle of the country, I came across a small paragraph about “older girls’ groups”—social groups for unmarried young women who have aged out of the usual youth groups.
A light bulb went off in my head. Here was an idea I hadn’t seen used before in an Amish series. That’s how the Amish Spinsters Club was born. The stories about four friends who really don’t fit in with either the young unmarrieds or the newlywed/married women kick off on May 22, 2018 with The Amish Suitor.As I’m writing this, I’m working on the third book in what will be a four book miniseries, and I’m just as excited as when I found that tidbit at 40,000 feet in the sky.

Of course, now I’ve got to start thinking about the next set of stories I want to write, and you’ll know right where to find me. Next to my bookshelves with my nose in a book, seeking that bit of information that will set my imagination on fire again.