Julie Lessman Interview & Signed book Giveaway!!!--You have more time to enter!!!!!!

Ok everyone we are adding one more day to this giveaway so anyone who hasn't entered yet you still have a little time so leave your comments!!!

Good morning all! After a bit of technical difficulty, here is my interview with the wonderful author Julie Lessman. Her newest release A Hope Undaunted is great and she is truly a lovly lady!
1. When did you start writing? And do you believe it is a calling?

Oh gosh, the first or the second time? :) The first was at the age of twelve after reading Gone With the Wind, when I wrote 150 pages of what today is my debut novel, A Passion Most Pure. The second time was some forty years later when God tapped me on the shoulder in a beauty shop (figuratively, of course) while reading a 2001 Newsweek cover article on how Christian movies, books and music were on the threshold of exploding. Now is the time to finish your book, the thought came, and I knew that meant the book I’d begun at the age of twelve. But romance? The "subgenre" that literary snobs (myself included) looked down upon? Yes, the thought came again, write for Me. Mmm … passion for God, an interesting concept. Thus was born my tagline and my ministry—Passion With a Purpose.
And a calling? I’d say anything as natural and essential as breathing to someone is a calling, wouldn’t you? Writing has always been lifeblood to me—first as a means of creating a world in which I was loved, and secondly as a means of talking to God after I was saved at the age of 23. But it wasn’t until my 50s that God “called” me to to draw people to an intimate relationship with Him through the “passion” of my words—both romantically and spiritually.
I thoroughly explain both my “calling” and how I came to it in a blog I wrote for The Seekers entitled “Life on the Edge …” (http://seekerville.blogspot.com/2009/05/life-on-edge.html), but basically I want to reach women like I used to be—raised in the faith, but living any old way they please. You see, according to the American Religious Identification Survey conducted by the Barna Group, “nine out of ten women nationwide (90%) consider themselves to be Christian.” The sad truth is that most of these women who do read romance wouldn’t choose Inspirational romance to save their soul, myself included at one time.
Why? Well, I can only speak for myself and my friends who wanted more heart-pounding, 21st-century realistic romantic tension interlaced with God’s precepts, which in years past, hasn't been overly prevalent in the Christian market. As a result, most of my friends, Christian and non, read secular romance, which, of course, generally promotes the world’s amoral lifestyle rather than God’s. What’s wrong with this picture? I mean if the world can take something that God created and use it to sell its amoral agenda, then why can’t Christians utilize this God-given passion to promote Him and His precepts? So, yes, I do believe it’s my “calling—to use passion the way it was intended—to teach people God’s precepts and therein, His love. It’s the cry of my heart, and I hope and pray that for my readers, my stories of romantic passion translate into passion for God.

2. Do any of your characters ever represent people you know in any way like attitude, features, or spiritual nature?

Okay, this is embarrassing—yeah, me. For instance in A Passion Most Pure, the heroine Faith O’Connor is basically my spiritual self. Of course we both have hot tempers and get our “Irish” up more than we should, but we also have an intimate relationship with God. Faith talks and prays to Him as naturally as if He is her best friend, but she gets angry with Him too. I like to say that she (and I) are emotionally engaged with the God of the Universe—we laugh with Him, tear up at His goodness to us, and worship Him with all of our hearts. As a matter of fact, Faith and I are so much alike in the spiritual aspect, that a good friend once told me that reading A Passion Most Pure was “like going to lunch with me.” I hope that’s a good thing!

Charity, the sister heroine of Book 2 A Passion Redeemed is my rebellious and “passionate” self, before I came to the Lord. I was a wild child of the seventies before Jesus got a hold of me (as he does Charity in Book 2)!

Lizzie (or Beth), the sister heroine of Book 3 A Passion Denied is my dreamer self. Lizzie is a bookworm bent on fairytale romance, just like I used to be as a little girl, sneaking downstairs to watch romantic movies after my parents went to bed. In her story, Lizzie has to learn (just like I did) that true romance, the kind that really satisfies, comes from following God’s precepts, not the world’s.

3. Do you feel the emotions of the characters when you write?

Grin … are you kidding?? I should have stock in Kleenex!! I am totally engaged with each and every scene I write, laughing one moment and sobbing my heart out the next. In fact, when I read the final galleys for A Passion Most Pure, I actually went through about twelve tissues! What a sap!! :)

Sometimes it reminds me of the first scene from the movie, Romancing the Stone, where Kathleen Turner is being chased by desperados in a Western movie, only to have the cowboy hero rescue her and then ride off into the sunset together. The next scene is Kathleen Turner at her keyboard, sobbing her eyes out over the scene she just wrote. Both my daughter and husband thoroughly enjoy mocking me with imitations of me sitting at the computer sobbing and mouthing the words, “It is soooo good!” J

4. What does it feel like when someone tells you that your book 'touched' them?

Oh-oh, we’re talking more Kleenex here!! I have to say that I’m pretty blown away by some of the e-mails I’ve received. Stories like the one from the 15-year-old who couldn’t talk to her mom about anything, she said, UNTIL her mom gave her my book and suddenly they had common ground in their mutual love of the story. Or the guy who contacted me to get a signed copy for a friend he wanted as a girlfriend. When he told her he wanted a deeper relationship with her, she actually made him read A Passion Most Pure because “that was the kind of relationship she wanted, with God in the middle!” Or the fallen-away woman who would not read Inspirational books on a dare, but picked mine up not realizing it was spiritual. She wrote that A Passion Most Pure rekindled her love for God and gave her hope again. I’m sorry, but for me, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

5. Tell us about your newest release A Hope Undaunted from the “Winds of Change” series.

Although the “Winds of Change” is a brand-new series, it does continue the saga of the close-knit O’Connor family in A Hope Undaunted, picking up with the youngest daughter’s story at the tail end of the Roaring 20s into The Great Depression. Anyone who has read “The Daughters of Boston” series knows that Katie O’Connor is a spunky, sassy little girl with a sharp wit and dry humor, but never more so than when she butts heads with her childhood nemesis, Cluny McGee. Here’s the jacket blurb:

What happens when the boy she loved to hate ...
becomes the man she hates to love?

The 1920s are drawing to a close, and feisty Katie O'Connor is the epitome of the new woman—smart and sassy with goals for her future that include the perfect husband and a challenging career in law. Her boyfriend Jack fits all of her criteria for a husband—smart, good-looking, well-connected, wealthy … and eating out of her hand. But when she is forced to spend the summer of 1929 with Cluny McGee, the bane of her childhood existence, Katie comes face to face with a choice. Will she follow her well-laid plans to marry Jack? Or will she fall for the man she swore to despise forever?

6. Is it a relief when you finish a book or do you miss the characters once the focus is off them and on the next book?

A relief in the sense that I am finally closer to meeting my deadline, of course, but NOT over finishing the story because YES, I do miss the character when the story is done! Keep in mind that I have been living/breathing these characters since after that appointment in the beauty salon in 2001, so they are family—CLOSE family at that because their thoughts, their words, their faith in God—are all mine at various points in my life.

BUT … one of the blessings of writing a series (or two) is that I can continue their story (and mine!) in the next book. However, it is a little sad to think I am now writing the final book in the O’Connor saga and to be honest, a part of me dreads letting them go. But God is preparing me because already I feel myself being pulled toward another new series. But I guarantee you, I will revisit the O’Connors now and then by rereading the books and then, who knows? Maybe down the road I’ll be able to pen a series about the O’Connor cousins during WWII and definitely a prequel to Marcy and Patrick’s story!

Thank you, Ashley, for hosting me on your blog. It’s been fun! And I LOVE to hear from readers, so they can contact me through my Web site at http://www.julielessman.com/, either by sending an e-mail via my site or by signing up for my newsletter at http://www.julielessman.com/sign-up-for-newsletter . My newsletter is chock-full of fun info on my books and there’s always a contest featuring signed book giveaways including one right now to have a character named after you or a loved one in my next book. Also, I have a cool feature on my website called “Journal Jots” (http://www.julielessman.com/journal-jots), which is a very laid-back, almost-daily journal to my reader friends that would give your readers an idea as to my relaxed style of writing. Then finally, I can be found daily at The Seekers blog (http://seekerville.blogspot.com/), a group blog devoted to encouraging and helping aspiring writers on the road to publication.

God bless and hugs,
Julie



AUTHOR BIO FOR JULIE LESSMAN

Julie Lessman is an award-winning author whose tagline of “Passion With a Purpose” underscores her intense passion for both God and romance. Winner of the 2009 ACFW Debut Author of the Year and Holt Medallion Awards of Merit for Best First Book and Long Inspirational, Julie is also the recipient of 13 Romance Writers of America awards and was voted by readers as “Borders Best of 2009 So Far: Your Favorite Fiction” at http://www.borders.com/online/store/ListView_best2009favefiction. She resides in Missouri with her husband, daughter, son and daughter-in-law and is the author of “The Daughters of Boston” series, which includes A Passion Most Pure, A Passion Redeemed, and A Passion Denied, as well as the recently released A Hope Undaunted, book 1 of her brand-new “Winds of Change” series. You can contact Julie through her website at http://www.julielessman.com/.

Thank you so much for the engaging interview Julie!!!



Now ladies and gentlemen, the lovly author as described above ;) has offered to giveaway an autographed copy of her latest book A Hope Undaunted to one of my wonderful followers. To enter all you have to do is leave a comment, preferably with a question for the author, and your email address and a winner will be chosen at random on Friday and announced Saturday morning!