Ada, please tell us five random things we might not know about you.
1. When we married 65 years ago, my husband Les was an agent- telegrapher for Rio Grande Railroad.
2. He and I have moved nearly 35 times because he kept getting bumped. In addition to nice homes and shacks, we lived in a railroad depot and a boxcar. Most places the towns were so small we lived in what was available. Usually it was the only place in town for rent. Finally we bought a mobile home.
3. I taught youth in Sunday school for about thirty years and also was a youth leader at two different churches.
4. When I was eight years old, I carried the bridal train on my sister’s wedding dress. I misunderstood the directions at rehearsal because she wasn’t wearing the dress. I thought they said, “Put the train on the front seat,” so I kept pulling and lifting her dress up, but she kept pulling back and shoving her dress down. Finally, somebody told me I was supposed to sit on the front seat, not put her train there.
5. I spent a night in prison. Colorado built a prison on the grounds of Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo for mentally ill prisoners. The prison invited journalists, politicians, attorneys for the ACLU, and other dignitaries to spend a night in the new prison. I was a reporter for The Pueblo Chieftain, the hospital was on my beat, and I took them up on their invitation,and wrote about it. It was a miserable night on a concrete bed with a light glaring into my eyes, and guards’ boots continually walking outside my cell. I passed up the morning shower because guards watch the showers by video. But I didn’t write about my experience. I wrote about the other women who spent the night on that ward.
“I’m going to let all the prisoners out,” a politician from Denver said. She went to bed a beautiful lady and came to breakfast carrying the body pillow she smuggled in, looking like a hag.
A friend of hers from city council had a camera. “If you take my picture, I’ll kill you,” the Denver woman said, her hair all askew.
“I wouldn’t advise that,” the ACLU attorney said. “You’ll end up in a place like this for life.”
Why did you choose to write Love’s Delicate Blossom?
I am fascinated by the miracle of life in a blossom, plus my parents had a great romance. I would have liked to know them in their youth. I wanted to write about things that affected them, so some of what they experienced happens to my characters. Mom and Dad had many wonderful talents and characteristics. They were blessed in some ways, but World War I, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and 1917 economic depression, drought, plus the plight of widows and orphans affected them.
Yet they were strong, innovative, and often blessed people other than themselves. Both were born in 1900. They had faith in God and loved to work. Mama believed women should have some way to earn an income, so if something happened to the husband the children wouldn’t become orphans.
Mama was privileged to go to college, and my character, Ritah, goes too, and college opens new horizons. But when she meets Joe Nichols, she already has a beau who wants to get married.
My main character’s big problem is the kidnapping of a 14-year-old orphan. The kidnapper is opening a brothel, and he’s dangerous.
What one thing about writing do you wish non-writers would understand?
I wish readers would understand these days the average writer makes little money. Most give hundreds of books free. Yet few readers understand an e-book costs less than a special coffee, and even a paperback is about what it costs for two or three coffees. The reader has hours and hours of entertainment and wonder created by a writer. Often a book is cherished for decades, and memories of characters and the events bring inspiration for years to come.
What is the toughest test you've faced as a writer?
Editing.
What do you hope readers take away from your novel?
A new vision of love, and awesome faith in God.
What
do you do for fun when not writing?
Read, get together with friends and family, walk with my
husband, play table games like Rook.
What
are you working on now?
I
will be marketing Love’s Delicate Blossom
and my other books, getting my office better organized, writing blog posts,
and deciding which writing project I’ll do next. I’d like to make my book, Facts, Faith, and Propaganda into a
paperback, and polish some small books I’ve started. I might do the fourth book
in the Peaches and Dreams series.
The first page of Love's Delicate Blossom:
September 1917, Woodburn, Iowa
A horse and buggy clattered toward Ritah, rocking. The elaborate fringed buggy swayed, and a woman passenger wobbled and slid toward the street.
Ritah jumped aside, her packages scattering on the boardwalk. Clutching her pocketbook to her chest, she gasped as Tulip Quinlan almost fell into her path. The driver grabbed the girl’s arm and yanked her back into the buggy.
Her friend looked mighty strange. Her eyes nearly shut as a frown twisted her lipstick-smeared face into a ghastly masque.
The buggy clattered around the corner, the left wheels lifting off the road. Ritah shivered at the driver’s scraggly beard and bushy brows. A crooked scar puckered one eye. His vision caught hers and pulsed a warning.
Back cover blurb for Love’s Delicate Blossom
Third in the Peaches and Dreams series
Edmund Pritchett III wants to marry Ritah Irene O’Casey, but his intended has just begun her fight for the future. The beautiful redhead stands between Henry Hunter and Tulip, the orphan girl he kidnapped to work in his brothel, and he’s not giving up.
Excited about being one of the few women to go to college in 1917, Ritah hopes to become a teacher who can help widows keep their children when tragedy strikes. She also wants to enable mothers to know more about prevention and treatment of disease, in an era when few have access to a doctor. Instead, she ends up fighting for the lives of injured soldiers in a WW I Army health clinic, and finds her own life threatened by illness as well as sorrow.
When Ritah takes a teaching job, Joe Nichols, a handsome farmer, edges his way into her heart. But Edmund Pritchett III isn’t giving up, and neither is Henry Hunter.
Will Rita be able to continue to fight for women and families, understand enduring love, decide on who she’ll marry, and defend herself and her students when Henry Hunter bursts into the school shooting a pistol?
COMMENT FROM A READER: Your book set a tone and world from your grandmother’s time, the historical elements are what readers read the genre for.
ADA BROWNELL BIO
Ada Brownell is the author of nine books. She has written for Christian publications since age 15 and spent much of her life as a reporter for The Pueblo Chieftain in Colo.
A freckled redhead, she’s used to standing out in a crowd like her seven older sibling achievers she grew up with. She also is a veteran youth Christian education teacher, and most of her life sang in Christian gospel groups, including the Damascus Singers and Praise Trio. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Ozarks Chapter of American Christian Writers.
Read sample chapters of her books on Amazon or listen to the first chapter of her audio Imagine the Future You. Amazon author page is https://www.amazon.com/author/adabrownell
Connect with Ada at:
Book Fun Network: http://www.bookfun.org
Twitter: @adabrownell
Amazon Ada Brownell author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KJ2C06
Stick-to-Your-Soul Encouragement
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