When I started thinking about doing Nanowrimo this year, I hesitated. My calendar was already so full and busy, adding one more thing seemed like a bad idea. That being said, I pushed on and decided to go ahead and at least attempt it. After all, even if I didn't "win" this year like I had so many times before, at least I'd have more words typed up than I started with.
Little did I know that my fingers would fly over the keyboard, pounding out several thousand words a day and putting me almost a week ahead. Yet, that's what happened. I am squeezing in writing time in the afternoons I'm home and the evenings when the afternoons are full. Some days I'm doing both. And I'm averaging over 2000 words an hours, guys. I'm shocking myself.
​At the time of my writing this post, I'm sitting at 39,090 words, 14,085 ahead of where a typical Nanowrimo author should be right now. That's basically over a week ahead of schedule.

If you look in the back of Saving Grace, you'll see something that isn't in my other two books. Know why? Because this year, I joined a book club. And several of the girls in the group always look for discussion questions for the book of the month. And since they honored me by choosing my book as the October read, I wanted to make sure these questions were there.
So, being read by a book club is a huge deal to me. This is my third book and this is the third club to choose one of my books as their read. I know how hard it is to pick books, especially if no one in the group has read them yet. And even though these ladies had read my other stories, they didn't know anything about this one.

One of the privileges I've discovered with being published by multiple houses is that I have multiple publishing families. I'm still getting to know the authors over at Anaiah Press, but I'm enjoying it, too. And I hope you'll enjoy getting to know brand new author Jennifer Chastain with me. Here's the fun interview about her and her new novel, which sounds like so much fun!

How does it feel to have your first book "birthed?" 

    How do I describe my first book being published? When I saw the email saying, "Congratulations! We'd like to offer you a book contract for "The Mistletoe Contract", I started crying. But these were happy tears of joy. It's surreal, exciting, scary, and all those other adjectives thrown in! It's been a long awaited dream coming to fruition with a lot of long nights of writing. I guess I can sum it up in one word - overwhelming. 

I completely agree with all those adjectives. :-)
When did you first decide to become a writer?

    Oh wow, this is another tough question. Over twenty-five years ago I felt this strong urge to write. However, I was unsure and scared and really had no idea where to start. I have loved to read since I was a young child and was always making up stories for my Barbie and Ken dolls. However, six years ago, I felt God's call again and I said "I should write a book. I think I could do that." Before this, I lacked confidence in myself and my abilities but God kept nudging my heart to do this. And to be honest, He wouldn't let me rest. So I did a Google search for "How to write a novel"  and up popped Novel Academy/My Book Therapy, with Susan May Warren teaching the StoryCrafter classes. I learned so much and am still learning.