An Old Take on Going to Church Camp by Jo Ann Brown

Today, we send our kids to camp in the summer, either day camp or sleepover camp. In the 19th century, the whole family attended camp meeting together. The first camp meetings, as they were called, were held on land purchased by a church or a generous donor. Families either rented or bought small plots of land, just big enough to erect a generous sized tent where everyone could live—along with the mosquitos and other bugs—for the duration of camp meeting. Eventually, those families sought permission to build a more permanent structure on their tent site, and camp meeting communities evolved into what today are still highly sought after vacation communities.
My first visit to a camp community was when I was invited to teach for a week at Craigville Conference Center on Cape Cod. I immediately fell in love with the collection of homes and other buildings. A grand open-sided structure, called the Tabernacle, sits on a hill overlooking the village green where once a post office was the gathering place for residents and visitors.

That post office now is a gift shop, but still provides a bulletin board with member information. The once simple tents have become adorable Gothic-style cottages or large vacation homes, where the original footprint of the tent-sized house has been augmented by expansive construction.

Craigville was built on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and the views remain glorious as the sun sets over the marshes surrounding it.

There are several other camp meeting communities in Massachusetts, including another Cape Cod one that was built in Yarmouth (near Hyannis) and one on Martha’s Vineyard. My husband and I chanced upon another community last fall, this one named Rustic Ridge in western Massachusetts. Again, I fell in love with the architecture and the sense of community, though the place was nearly deserted as the summer people had already moved back to their permanent homes around the country.
Rustic Ridge is in the town of Northfield, MA,

the only town that abuts both Vermont and New Hampshire as it straddles the Connecticut River. Northfield is the birthplace of Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist and publisher who drew hundreds to his lectures in the late 19th century. He considered education an important part of his work, and he founded schools for both boys and girls in his home town. He also invited ministers to attend a summer gathering where they could learn from one another, starting in 1880. The small town and the schools couldn’t provide all the housing necessary, so families camped on the steep sides of the hill overlooking the girls’ school. By 1901, the first house was built on what became known as Rustic Ridge.

Others quickly followed, all of them purchased by visiting ministers and business people looking for a quiet place for the summer for recreation and reflection. The descendants of some of those original purchasers still live on the Ridge (as it’s affectionately known).

In the future, I hope to be able to visit Rehoboth Beach in Delaware where there was also a camp meeting association as well as Ocean Grove, NJ. I’m sure there are plenty of others I’ve never heard of, so if you know of one, share please! Each place has its own unique history and wonderful architecture. In the northeast, some are near the beach, others in the mountains, but all are testaments to families who came together to worship and enjoy the summer together...along with all those pesky mosquitos!

We {{Heart}} New York and its Amish by Jo Ann Brown

I’ve been friends with Tracey J. Lyons for more than a decade, but today is the first time that we’ve both had a book coming out at the same day from the same publisher. My book The Amish Widower’s Twins is set in Washington County in northeastern New York.

Her book A Love for Lizzie is set almost eight hours west in Chautauqua County in the southwestern corner of New York. These settlements are two among the more than twenty that have been established in the state since the early 1950’s.

Tracey’s book is her first for Love Inspired and her first Amish romance. My book is the fourth and final book in the Amish Spinsters Club series. But we both agree that we are delighted with our book covers.
Both of us are writing about Old Order Amish communities, but there are some definite differences. Tracey’s settlement of Miller’s Crossing was established in the 1970’s and is a daughter settlement of one in Geagua County, Ohio (in the northeast portion of the state). My brand new settlement in Harmony Creek Hollow was settled primarily by families from Lancaster County, but also from other states (including Delaware and Indiana). While the older settlement has its Ordnung, the unwritten rules by which the community lives, one of the challenges for my characters has been creating a new Ordnung for their settlement as they decided on color of their buggies and shape of the women’s kapps (head coverings) and other details that are vital to their community.
While southwestern New York has slow rolling hills that lead toward the Great Lakes,

Washington County shares a border with Vermont and enjoys amazing views of the Green Mountains.

Both are traditional farming areas with a scattering of small towns which is a primary reason the Amish were drawn there. And probably why we were drawn to write in these areas, too!
We were amazed, because we never mentioned it to each other, that we both have main characters with the surname of Miller. My hero is Gabriel Miller, and her heroine is Lizzie Miller. Actually it’s not surprising, because Miller is one of the most common names among the Old Order Amish. But the similarities don’t end there. Both Gabriel and Lizzie have a single sibling, which is unusual for Amish families, which tend to run to a lot more kids!
Now both Tracey and I are each working on another Amish romance while we enjoy the release today of the print books. The ebooks will be available July 1. The audio book for The Amish Widower’s Twins is also available today.
So join two friends today while we enjoy a unique celebration!

Saying Good-Bye to the Old and Saying Hello To the New by Jo Ann Brown

Life is a woven tapestry of having to say good-bye to one aspect of it and saying hello to another. I always thought that a graduation ceremony,

instead of being called “commencement,” should be more of “Hail and Farewell” as we had in the military when a high-ranking officer cycles out and another takes her or his place. A celebration of both the leaving and the arrival. Throughout our lives, we have periods of time when we are settled and times when we’re packing up and moving on.
Sometimes, this is literal. We find we have to move from our home to another place. It might be a job change or retirement or even going to college or simply buying that RV and seeing the world. Right now, we’re helping my father with that good-bye. He’s getting ready to sell the house, the only one my parents ever owned, that he’s lived in since the early 1970's. It was part of our family even before they bought it, because my mother’s parents rented the downstairs apartment before it was converted to a single family. Nearly fifty years later, he’s realized that taking care of that big house is more than he wants to deal with,

so my sisters and I are helping him sort through years of possessions and deciding what he wants to keep, what he wants to sell and what he wants to give away. For all of us, it’s a farewell moment, a reopening of the past as we look at photos and through items we’d once been familiar with but had forgotten or simply put out of our minds. His “hello” moment will be when he moves into his new apartment at my sister’s house and no longer has the responsibility for a big house...though he still intends to keep busy by doing things like mowing the grass and puttering in the garden.
Life is made up of these moments of change. Change caused by outside circumstances, change caused by others, change caused by ourselves. After all, isn’t that what our romance stories are about...how someone is changed by someone who comes into their life at a pivotal moment? It’s always so comforting to me, as a reader, to see how the hero and heroine (and their families and friends) step up to confront change and make it work in a positive direction for them.
Though there’s always that moment when a reader is hoping that everything doesn’t crash down in disaster!
Right now, I’m facing a few endings and beginnings of my own. In life and in my writing.

My upcoming book The Amish Widower’s Twins will be final book in my Amish Spinster Club series. Releasing in mid-June in print, it’s a book that I felt really sorry to finish because I have enjoyed writing about a new Amish community set near my home town. On the other hand, I’m now working a new Amish series, Green Mountain Blessings, that will begin in December 2019. I’m getting to meet a whole new collection of characters and work with them as they go through their own endings and new beginnings. Just like when we read a book by a favorite author, it’s sad to have one series come to an end, but, oh, how delicious it is to begin something brand new! Who knows what waits us in the days to come?

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?

Gathering Together by Jo Ann Brown

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not only is it the official kick-off to the holiday season (and has football on throughout the day!), but it focuses on two things I really love—family and feasting. Oh, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, whose ending has always been the signal to put the turkey in the oven. I can’t forget that!

Our family has a long tradition of getting together for Thanksgiving. When I was younger, my mother’s parents and her older brother always joined us to share the meal. Or almost always. One year when I was in high school and we lived about ten miles from my grandparents, we got more than 30" of snow overnight on Thanksgiving Eve. At our house, we had the turkey and all the fixings. At my grandmother’s house were the desserts. My dad tried a couple of times to get out to pick them up, but the roads hadn’t been plowed yet, so he had to turn around. We got together for leftovers and lots of laughs the next day.
Another year, after I was married and had children of my own, we’d planned to get together with one of my sisters, her family and her in-laws. All went according to plan until my mom ended up in the ICU and my dad (who by then worked for the town) was called out to plow another three feet of snow. Mom got better, and Dad was able to stop in the house for a quick meal with us—including some pie, of course. We had extra reasons to be grateful that year.
The years have passed, and my family has scattered to live over almost 1500 miles apart from the farthest north to the farthest south. We all get together on occasion, but that doesn’t happen too often. That’s why last year, my son and some of his cousins decided to take matters into their own hands. They put out the word that they wanted to have a family reunion this year in the town where my dad lives (and where I grew up).

They put a lot of time into the plans, coordinating who would stay where and who would do what. Early on, we decided to have the meal catered and hold it at the membership hall of the church my dad attends (which is just around the corner from his house). That would give us access to two kitchens. The invitations went out through word of mouth and social media, and everyone got really excited. We may be missing two members of the family because of work obligations, but the rest plan to be there. The gathering of the food (of course, we need extra pies and other goodies) and the division of who will be bringing what has gone smoothly.
And this is what I love most about Thanksgiving. Being with family and catching up on new and old news. Gasping about how big the kids have grown since the last time we saw them. Discussing and debating sports teams and their chances next year. Starting so many sentences with, “Oh you remember [Fill in the name]. She (or he) was in school two years before you and...”
Oh, did I mention that we’ll be five generations strong? We’re looking forward to being together and each of us is thankful to have the chance to share hugs and a meal...and of course, pie!

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....

Our Unique Souvenirs...Mermaid Tears by Jo Ann Brown

Last month, my husband and I spent a couple of weeks in England. Our trip up to the northeast of the country allowed us to indulge in one of our favorite past times...looking for sea glass. We search for it whenever we’re on a beach, but the shores of northeast England, especially north of Newcastle, are our prime hunting grounds. Back in the days before anyone concerned themselves with the state of our rivers and oceans, glass manufacturers in the Newcastle area dumped broken and irregular pieces of glass into the River Tyne. The glass washed out to sea where salt, waves and sand smoothed the sharp edges and took away the gloss to leave the surfaces pitted and coarse. In addition, ships used glass, tile and brick as ballast while at sea and would dump it as they neared the shore. Those pieces underwent the same “weathering” conditions.

Years ago, sea glass was known as mermaid tears and prized just as it is today. In fact, in the second book of my Sanctuary Bay series for Love Inspired Historical, A Hero for Christmas, which is being re-released this Christmas, the heroine teaches the hero about mermaid tears when she’s collecting pieces to decorate tables at her sister’s wedding.
Fast forward to the present, and strolling along the beach can turn into a treasure hunt. Our favorite place to look for sea glass is on the beaches of Lindisfarne. The small island, just south of the Scottish border, is also known as Holy Island. It’s a tidal island, which means that it’s cut off from mainland England twice a day at high tide when the causeway floods. The Pilgrim’s Way remains open at low tide, marked by tall posts, including a few with platforms where people have taken shelter when they misjudged the timing of the tides. Holy Island is the site of the first attack by Vikings on English soil, and ruins of the ancient priory are set next to the small parish church which is filled with memorials to the Irish saints who brought Christianity to northern England in the 7th century. On a wall near the altar is a small framed letter. It’s a formal apology from Norway for that Viking foray against the terrorized residents of Lindisfarne in 793.

Between the churchyard and a tiny island (reachable on foot at low tide) where St. Cuthbert built a chapel when he became a hermit monk is a beach that’s a mixture of sand and shingle (small rocks). Here, while we listen to the seals barking nearby and, on this most recent trip tried not to be blown off our feet by powerful gusts from a sea storm, we’ve found lots of sea glass in all sorts of colors. In fact, there’s so much glass washed ashore that we pick and choose what we want.

We don’t want modern glass which is much thinner than Victorian glass. We gather white and turquoise and dark green (sometimes almost black) and brown glass. We’ve found occasional pieces of yellow glass, which is much rarer. We also pick up unique pieces of broken tiles and ceramic dishes.

At home, I display the pieces in clear containers where the sunlight can shine through the glass and illuminate its shapes and colors. Each time I see it, I think about the two of us walking along the shore and being as excited with the last piece I pick up as the first. It’s a very personal sort of souvenir...the best kind!
And I'm curious...Do you have a unique souvenir you look for when you travel?

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.

Got Cold? by Jo Ann Brown

One of the fun things about being a writer is that we live in the future...even if we write about the past. We live with the next deadline and the next publication date, which usually are nine to twelve months apart.
But we also live in different seasons.
The first time I realized how this could affect me as a person was when I was working on a book set in the Yukon gold rush in 1898. My characters were going to be living through multiple months in the far north, including the winter months. I was writing the book in the midst of an August "dog days" heat wave. My characters were facing a “three dog night.” Remember the rock group by that name with their song “Joy to the World?” I was amused to find out the source of that name – that the night was going to be so cold that someone needed three dogs cuddled up next to them to keep them from freezing to death. So my characters were freezing, and I was typing in a heat wave. How did I feel in my house with no air conditioning and sweat dripping down into my eyes?
Chilled!

How is that possible? It’s because an imagination is a wonderful gift...and a very powerful tool. It’s one I’ve always used to help me with climate control.
My sister and I, when we were young and living in northern New York, would tell each other on our walk to the bus each snowy, frigid winter morning how warm we were. We’d point out flowers we were passing, discuss the color and the scent and the bees and butterflies. Again, imagination pulled us out of the freezer and made us feel less cold. Or it could have been the laughter as we each tried to out-imagine the other.

As I write this, a cold front is diving toward the southeast, and there are whispers that it may snow in northern Florida. Blizzards are forecast for the northeast, and fountains are freezing in Charleston, SC. More than half the nation is shivering in below zero temps.
So what’s the solution?
It’s not like we can change the weather on a whim, so the only thing to do is think warm. How? By reading a book with a tropical/warm-weather setting or by creating something with our imaginations. Right now, I’m working on a project with a spring setting, and I’m reading a book set in Savannah, Georgia. Both allow me to think of sunny days and warm breezes and beautiful bushes weighted down with flowers or fresh fruit. It’s the reason we love to read beach books in the winter and tales of the hero and heroine on a ski slope while the heat index heads toward 100+ degrees in the middle of summer. I read as many books set at Christmas in July and August as I do in November and December.

I came up with the idea for An Amish Arrangement, set in January in northern New York in an imaginary version of the town where I grew up, in the middle of the summer. I've written Christmas stories in the spring and the summer...but never in the winter. In fact, my writing is always a season or two off, so I'm imagining warm weather during the cold and vice versa!




That’s why my advice to you as the temps head toward record lows is to get something hot and chocolate to drink (with whipped cream, of course),pick up a good book and let your imagination take you to spend a cold winter evening somewhere lusciously warm. After all, spring and warm weather have to return sometime...right?

Getting a Very Special Christmas Present by Jo Ann Brown

When you were a kid after Christmas, did you get together with friends to share what was received as gifts? We’d ooh and aah over everyone else’s gifts, as excited as if they were our own. In a way they were, because we knew in the year to come, we’d be playing with our friends’ toys, too. Because we lived in northern New York where the snow could stay until deep into April, gifts like bicycles and skates offered us delayed pleasure. That was okay because while we waited to ride them outside (some of my friends had cellars big enough to ride inside), we put our sleds and ice skates to good use.
Over the years, my two younger sisters and I had a tradition of going through our toys in October and picking out some of the better, but seldom played with toys to donate the town clerk who would see they got to children who would love them, We sewed new clothes for the dolls or even whole wardrobes, so the dolls were even better than new. Stuffed toys were spiffed up with fresh ribbons and maybe even an outfit or two of their own. We knit scarves for everything from Barbie to teddy bears in vivid shades of whatever yarn we’d collected from my mother’s friends.
It was the way my parents taught us about sharing with those kids who might not otherwise have gotten a nice toy for Christmas and knowing that the giving brought as much joy as the getting.
Years passed, and I continued the tradition with my young children. They picked out the toys to donate, and I fixed the toys up so they looked like new. In addition, I began knitting personalized Christmas stockings for everyone in the family, our immediate family, parents, in-laws, nieces and nephews.

My older daughter was five and my son was two when my husband I decided that our family wasn’t complete. Our son had been born in Korea and came to us when he was 11 months old, but this time we applied for an older child, knowing there was a narrow window between our children’s ages and how agencies didn’t like to disrupt the family order for the oldest child already in the family. We filled out the paperwork and waited and waited for the good news. As we’d specifically asked for a girl, I knit our future daughter a stocking with her name on it. We were all set for her.
Sure enough we got our best-ever early Christmas present the Monday after Thanksgiving when our social worker called with news on a little girl who’d been matched to us. She was 18 months old. In her photo, she looked too serious for such a young child, but we discovered she was already in our hearts and we couldn’t get her home.
We put everything on warp speed in hopes of getting her home in time for Christmas, but it didn’t happen. It seems as if no baby, even our Savior, has come when it’s convenient. We hung her stocking and said, “She’ll be here to open her gifts with us next Christmas.” She did, in fact, come home the day after Valentine’s Day after all the hoops were jumped through.
Now fast forward to 2001 and our younger daughter was participating in the college program at Disney World.

That year, we knew she wouldn’t be home for Christmas, because her session ended on January 8. We didn’t want to lose another Christmas with her. Going to Florida wasn’t possible, so what to do? Her sister, her brother, my husband and I discussed it, and we decided to postpone the Christmas gift portion of the holiday until she came home. I was proud of my kids to be willing to put off the fun of exchanging the gifts they’d picked out for each other, and I believe they’d learned about what was truly important in gift-giving from that old tradition of sharing with others.
We set up the tree, hung the stockings and made the cookies as we always did. My husband read “A Visit from St. Nick” on Christmas Eve as he always did, but that year he read it over the phone so our youngest and her five homesick roommates (and apparently a suite full of other kids longing to be home) could hear. We enjoyed the events at church and with extended family and neighbors, but the gifts waited under the tree unwrapped. Our kids couldn’t participate in the “what did you get?” conversations...Not yet!
On January 9, our daughter arrived home. The first thing we did after she got in the house was share the gifts we’d gotten for each other. It was all the sweeter for waiting, and we laughed and laughed about being the last people in neighborhood to open gifts. But the best gift again was having the whole family together again.
Being together as a family is a theme throughout my Amish Hearts series. The final book in the series, An Amish Arrangement, is coming out today (January 1 as an ebook).

The heroine, Mercy, knows all about the different ways of building families because she’s both an adoptee and an adoptive parent. She and the hero, Jeremiah Stoltzfus, must learn, too, that sometimes things happen on their own schedule and all we can do is have faith that God will make everything come out for the best in the end.
Have a merry Christmas with the ones you love and enjoy the special traditions you’ve built through the years!

My First Sale - Truth more Astounding than Fiction by Jo Ann Brown

Now things move at the speed of cyberspace, but that wasn't always so. Sometimes they move much more slowly, and they turn out in ways we couldn't have imagined ahead of time.
Come with me back in time. Your choice: Doc Brown’s Delorean or Mr. Peabody’s Wayback machine or...if you are of a certain age, just think back through your personal memories to 1987. That was the year I made my first sale. Actually it was my first sales.
I’ll admit that I made a LOT of mistakes on my way to get published. The only published author I knew was the cousin of a friend’s brother-in-law. In on our one quick phone call, she mentioned words like “proposal” and “synopsis,” so I knew I had a lot to learn. Finding a list of agents, I contacted the first three alphabetically and the last three. Though the others said no thanks, one got back to me quickly and asked for a complete, even though I was still figuring out how to write a synopsis. That letter arrived the day I went to my first local Romance Writers of America meeting. How thrilled I was to meet others who shared my dream and who assured me that the agent interested in my work was a respected guy! (Only later, when he arranged for us to meet, did I discover he was also Arlene James's agent.)
That first book went out to plenty of places, but no offers. In the meantime, I continued writing and I sent what I thought was my new best work, a western historical entitled Nothing Wagered Nothing Gained, off to my agent. While he read that, I kept writing.

But one Friday at the end of March 1987, I got a call telling me that someone was interested in my “new” book. My agent would let me know early the following week if it was a go. So now I waited.
Then the storm hit. A big spring nor’easter in eastern Massachusetts. Power out, phones out and our fence now lying in the neighbor’s garden. My husband alerted my agent from work, where the phones were working. Still no call, so more waiting. I’d love to say I was patiently waiting, but I think I wore out a pair of shoes and our 100-year-old hardwood floors with my pacing on Monday and then Tuesday. Finally late on Tuesday, the phone rang for the first time since the storm started. It was my agent with the news that there definitely was going to be an offer, but he didn’t have all the details and I’d have to be patient a while longer.
More waiting and pacing and I didn’t even share the news with my writers’ group that evening because I wasn’t sure whether or not the deal was going to go through. Thursday I get a call with the request to come to New York to meet with my agents in a few weeks as well as the comment that it should be a contract “for at least two books.” Our family had a trip planned to Washington, DC the week mentioned, so I agreed. We’d take the train and I’d get off in New York and meet them in DC. My big worry was if I could hail a taxi to take me back to Penn Station after the meeting.
When I reached the publisher’s office, I was greeted warmly by my agent, his wife, and the editor Kate Duffy (who started so many romance writers’ careers, though I didn’t know it at the time) as well as the publisher. Tudor Publishing was a very new publishing house, so Kate and the publisher and a secretary constituted the full staff.
My agent and I went into Kate’s office to talk, and he informed me that the contract offer was for four books with options for fourteen more if we were happy with how the first four were published. I’m seldom speechless, but I don’t think I spoke coherently the whole time all of us went out for lunch. I felt so blessed to have this opportunity. That was thirty years and many books and hailed cabs ago, but I still remember those astounding weeks so well that I get goosebumps now just relating the events. It’s always a special day when dreams come true...and I got three of them over a period of several weeks.

And when I got home from our vacation to DC, my critique partners proudly presented me with a certificate they’d made. Not for my first sales, but for being able to get a New York City cab on my own for the first time! It’s hung on my wall since right next to the cover for that first book as proof that truth can be much more astounding than fiction.

Guilty Pleasures by Jo Ann Brown

Guilty pleasures.
We all have them. We treasure them, and we may talk about them a lot or not at all. Some we feel a little guilty about. Others we feel the full weight of "Well, I shouldn't...", especially if we're doing them instead of knocking off something on our always long to-do list or when a deadline looms. One thing all guilty pleasures have in common: we look forward, like a kid waiting for the first firework to burst, to the times when we can indulge in them...and then we wonder if we should have spent that time with them.
My guilty pleasure? Crossword puzzles. I love everything about them. The clues. The answers. Filling in the first square. Filling in the last one. Okay, I don't love everything about them. When I get the whole puzzle done except one square, and I can't figure it out in either direction, I wonder why I started working on puzzle in the first place.
But overall, crossword puzzles fascinate me. I love how words mesh together, and I enjoy groaning over puns in the clues. There's the fun of learning new words, although I'm not sure I'll ever use the word "eft" (name of a young newt/salamander)in everyday conversation or in a book. Can you imagine the handsome hero of your favorite romance novel, leaning a shoulder nonchalantly against a tree and turning to the heroine who is looking up at him with a soft, come hither gaze, as he says, "Pardon me, darlin', but you've got an eft on your shoulder"?
One thing I've discovered about my guilty pleasure with crossword puzzles: It can become consuming. I don't like giving up on puzzles until I've exhausted all other routes to the solution (every route except googling the answer). Walking away unfinished from something that I've put so much effort into annoys me because I know once I give up on it, I won't go back. So I stubbornly will sit there and stare at the clues even though I've tried every letter in the alphabet and none of them seem to work.
The heroine of my new Harlequin Love Inspired An Amish Proposal (which releases today in print)

has a similar problem with being stubborn and feeling guilty. Being both obstinate and guilty keep her from seeing the truth right before her eyes and reaching out to grasp her heart's desire when it's offered.
Rescued: Mother-to-Be
Pregnant and without options, Katie Kay Lapp is trapped between two worlds—abandoned by her baby's Englisch father, not ready to return to her Amish family. With nowhere to go, she's rescued by the unlikeliest of heroes—the man whose heart she shattered. Months ago, Micah Stoltzfus courted her, envisioned a future with her, until she chose the big city over him. Now bound by duty to protect mother and child, Micah offers a solution—marriage. Though his heart never healed, he still cares for the Amish beauty. He knows he'll be the father Katie Kay's baby needs…but can he show her he's also the love she's always wanted?
Katie Kay's solution has to be - just as mine is when dealing with that last empty crossword square - to stop letting stubbornness and guilt keep her from savoring the joy of the blessings right in front of her. I'm going to try to keep that in mind the next time I try tackling the New York Times crossword puzzle on a Sunday afternoon.
So while crossword puzzles are my guilty pleasure, I'm trying to feel less guilty about it. What is your guilty pleasure and how do you keep it in balance?

We're Sorry. We Have to Interrupt This Blog.... by Jo Ann Brown

I had just sat down at the computer here in Florida, getting ready to start my blog post, when my husband's phone beeped to announce an incoming a text. Who was contacting him on a late Sunday afternoon?
It was the security system at the house we're selling Las Vegas. But we've already got a deal on the house, and the folks buying it always contact us if they're going to come over. So who was there? The security company called a minute later, and we told them that nobody should be in the house. Now, they let us know, someone has hit the medical emergency button as well. Do we need an ambulance as well as the police? We suggest they send just a Metro police patrol over to check out what's going on. We alert the new owners, just to check with them that they hadn't gone into the house, as well as our realtor. Five long minutes later, with lots of prayers that nothing was wrong at the house and nobody had broken in, we hear back from our realtor. Another realtor had come into the house by mistake. The house next door to ours is also for sale, but they don't have a sign in their yard, so when the realtor pulled onto our street, she went to our door. Now the houses don't look alike and the numbers are obviously different, so she was embarrassed. Once we knew what was going on, we just laughed. And laughed harder when our buyers asked if the potential buyers next door had kids because they're eager for playmates for their little ones.
Why am I sharing this? Because readers often ask me where I get ideas for my stories. Here's a good example. One of those that's listed under the heading of "I couldn't make this stuff up." Will the events go into one of my upcoming books? The chances are really good, though there will be enough changes made that nobody involved will recognize themselves. Most of my books have some aspect of something that's happened to me or my family in them.
For example, in A Ready-Made Amish Family, my fifth Amish Hearts book, out this month from Harlequin Love Inspired,

two of the children in the story have health challenges. They were inspired by issues my two daughters faced as young children, and my characters had the same questions and the same experiences that we did. It gives the story an air of authenticity as well as allowing me to know all the parade of emotions my hero and heroine would be feeling.
So when I get interrupted when I'm working, I always hope the interruption will provide fodder for my next story. Right now, I'm being interrupted again... This time by a sound of something out in the leaves under the bushes at the front of the house. Is it just a squirrel? Could it be a snake (and I have to confess that I find snakes fascinating)? Perhaps a lizard? No matter what it is, it'll be interesting...and who knows what ideas it will spark?

December? Christmas Already?

Where did the time go? I can't believe it is Christmas time already! This year we are going home for Christmas. Home for me is Oklahoma. Yes, I live in New Mexico but Mama lives in Oklahoma. See the connection?

I love Christmas. For the past couple of years I have put up our smaller tree. This is a picture from last year but this year will be no different. Normally my tree is up and I'm ready, but this year well... time got away from me. I still can't believe it is so close to Christmas! Can you?

 

 

One of my favorite things about the month of December is the Love Inspired Books that come out each year. We've already seen many wonderful Christmas books this year on the shelves by our favorite authors. This month I am so happy to be sharing shelf space with Winnie Griggs, Linda Ford and Jo Ann Brown. 

 

 

The twins, Rose and Ruby, are back this month in A Convenient Christmas Bride. It was hard saying goodbye to them at the end of the book but I know they are happy.

 

 

 

 

So am I the only one who thinks December and Christmas came early this year?