What do you think of my new Genesis House covers?  Should I go with the new look? Should the couple go on the top or bottom?  How do you like the girls on The Amen Sisters?  What about the colors?  Are they bold enough?

What do you all think of book trailers? I’m having one done for Up Pops the Devil that should be ready soon. In the meantime, take a look at the one I had done for The Amen Sisters. If you’ve read the book, I’d like to hear how well you think the trailer captured the story? If you haven’t read the book, let me know if the trailer makes you want to read it. Here it is:

Good news! Sandi Mallory, host of Morning Journey on NPR (WEAA-AM Baltimore), interviewed me yesterday morning. She had read the The Amen Sisters and contacted my publicist at Grand Central Publishing.  I enjoyed it, but I have a habit that I have to lose. I finish most my statements with, “if you know what I mean.” YIKES!  I must get ready for prime time.

Readers often ask what inspired me to write The Amen Sisters and where the idea for the book originated.  The Amen Sisters has a long and, I hope, interesting history.  The idea for this book came to me around 1990, about the time that I was able to start talking about an abusive church situation I had experienced a few years earlier.  I had a story I wanted to tell, but I had no idea I’d tell it in a novel.  I wasn’t even a published author at the time!

Sometime in 1998, I think, after publishing seven romance novels, I signed a contract to do a three-book, Christian romance series with Tyndale House Publishers.  The first book in what became The Genesis House series was Awakening Mercy, my first Christian romance, which was published in 2000.  The second was Abiding Hope, published in 2001.  The third, Enduring Love, has never been published.  Enduring Love was the first incarnation of The Amen Sisters.

Tyndale loved Awakening Mercy and thought I had perfectly hit the tone they wanted in a Christian romance novel, so I had very few revisions.  Their response to Abiding Hope was not as positive.  They sent it back to me with the recommendation that I make it more romance-y, more like Awakening Mercy.  That’s when I began to wonder whether I had another Christian romance in me.  Thankfully, I was able to revise Abiding Hope enough to make it the Christian romance that my publisher and readers expected. When I turned in Enduring Love a year later, my publisher and I knew we were at the end of our road together.  The book had a romantic element but it was definitely not a romance along the lines of Awakening Mercy and Abiding Hope.

Since Tyndale didn’t think they could successfully market me as a Christian women’s fiction author at that point in my career and since I was pretty sure I didn’t have another Christian romance in me, we parted ways.  Since they’d already paid me half of the advance for the book, I had to repay it.  The good news is that my contract gave me six months to do so.

So here I was with a book that my publisher didn’t want and that really wasn’t ready for women’s fiction land. The good news is that the publisher at Walk Worthy Press was interested in having me do women’s fiction for her new publishing venture with Warner Books.  Seemed like at perfect match!

Almost.  When I went to contract with Walk Worthy, I had this finished book, Enduring Love, which not quite a romance and not quite women’s fiction, on my hands.  I decided my best option was to try to make it a “big” romance and sell it to a romance publisher.  Well, even though I wasn’t contracted to do romance for Walk Worthy, there was a clause in my contract that gave them the right to see the romance before I shopped it to another publisher.

Guess what?  Walk Worthy wanted to publish the story as women’s fiction.  Good news, right? Well, sorta. Though my new publisher and I talked about what a women’s fiction version of Enduring Love would look like, it became apparent after about a year of revisions that we were miles apart in our visions for the book.  At the end of my rope and exhausted of all hope, I made a fateful call to my new publisher, fully prepared to terminate the contract and, once again, pay back an advance. Imagine my surprise when my publisher said, “Write your book, Angela,” or some words to that effect.

Those words freed me up and seven months later, I turned in The Amen Sisters.  That wasn’t my original title though. I can’t even remember if I had a title, since Enduring Love had long since fallen by the wayside.  The Amen Sisters, as a title, was my publisher’s idea.  All I had to do was change the last name of my main characters from Thompson to Amen and a book title was born.

So that’s the story of The Amen Sisters.  You never would have guessed, would you?

For those of you who are wondering, I do still have a few romances left in me.  I realized over time that what I needed in my writing was balance.  In case you didn’t know it, most romance writers are married women.  As a single woman, I found it difficult to continually turn out stories of women who ended up happily ever after with the mate God had chosen especially for them.  I needed to also tell stories of godly women whose lives were not headed towards holy matrimony.  In other words, I needed to write stories about women like myself.

That’s it for now.  Enjoy your weekend and be blessed!

Good news!  The official release date for the trade paperback edition of The Amen Sisters is November 19th, but it is on sale at Amazon.com today. 

In preparation for the November 19th date, I’ve been doing a bit of updating to the web site.  There are a couple of features that I want you to see. 

You have to take a look at The Amen Diaries.  This is a very special page where I share some of the notes you and others sent to me, or posted on the blog, after reading The Amen Sisters.  My heart gets full everytime I read those notes. I’m overwhelmed at how God used something as simple as a book, this book, to touch so many lives in so many different ways.  So please view The Amen Diaries and be blessed. 

I have been fortunate to connect with some great publicty people and they’ve created a wonderful e-blast for The Amen Sisters.  You have to take a look at it HERE.  Do you think it’s gorgeous?  I loved the graphic so much that I’ve asked them to re-design my blog/website using those colors.

I have a lot more planned for November and December.  Here’s a partial list:

Book giveaway/contest, including a seat in my online writing seminar, starting November 19th

December Blog Tour

Ad and review in January issue Romantic Times Magazine, on stands in December

Stop by frequently during November and December so you don’t miss out on the fun!  You could be the next big winner!

A while back when we were talking about What makes IT Christian? I promised to write a post about the writing of The Amen Sisters. Well, this is that post!

Because of the subject matter of the book, I was determined not to sensationalize it. That meant The Amen Sisters was not going to be about the acts of a pastor gone wild. I was determined not to focus on the misdeeds of the pastor but the impact of his actions on those around him. For me, that was a more complex story, a more interesting story. I bet you can imagine the drama showing the pastor’s unpastoral actions would have brought to the book, but that was not my book to write.

I want to make another point about a choice that I made with The Amen Sisters but it gives away some of the book, so I’m going to put it on the next page. Don’t select “Read the rest of this entry” at the end of this post if you don’t want to know.

Every author makes choices with the stories he or she chooses to write. Our stories reflect our perspective. Some writers say their stories represent a “Christian worldview.” I’d probably go along with that as long as it’s understood that my stories represent “a” Christian worldview, not “the” Christian worldview.” I make this distinction because even though we are Christians our individual views are colored by our personal experiences of Christ.

That’s it for tonight. Don’t forget that selecting “Read the rest of this entry” below will tell you something about The Amen Sisters that you may not want to know before you read it.

The ending of The Amen Sisters has caused me to get a lot of email, not all of it good. I chose that ending because I didn’t want to give the impression that God gifts women with good men because they live godly lives. I wanted to show that my heroine could be happy and content with God. Isn’t that what we Christian women preach all the time–that we need to be satisfied with God alone before we’re ready for a mate? Well, that’s what I wanted to show in The Amen Sisters. It worked for some readers, but it didn’t for others.

Recorded Books purchased the audio rights to The Amen Sisters earlier this summer. While I was surfing the web, I found this entry for it on their web site. I hope they send me a free copy as it’s bit expensive.

I had two unexpected blessings today. First, this morning I found out that The Amen Sisters is going into a third printing. As of today, there are no books in stock; the reprint is scheduled for March 7. Second, this afternoon I received this wonderful thank-you e-mail from a student who’d chosen me as the topic for a school essay on writers:

Thank you so much. I made a 93% on that essay test. I’ ve never made that good of a grade.

She wrote back later to say:

. . .kids are really reading books now!! so really THANK YOU!! You’ve changed my school, and Me!! Just because I spoke about you and your books our school has so much more Respect for writers and how much they have been through!

You know, I was pretty high after finding out about the third printing for The Amen Sisters, but this young girl really made my day. Her excitement is contagious, isn’t it?

I just found out that The Amen Sisters hit #10 on the Essence list of Best-selling Hardcover Fiction Books for February 2006. The Top 10 Books are posted on Essence.com while only the Top 5 are published in the magazine.

This is the first time one of my books has made this list so I’m feeling especially blessed. What a wonderful way to end the week! My heartfelt thanks to each of the readers who purchased The Amen Sisters and gave it the numbers to make the list. Have a great weekend!

I learned this past weekend that The Amen Sisters was in its second printing. How did I get this piece of news? The old-fashioned way, of course. I opened a book that was purchased by a friend and read the copyright page. Near the bottom of the page, directly under the text, “First printing, September 2005,” I found the numbers “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 ” and no “1″. Well, the missing “1″ indicated that the book is in its second printing. A missing “1″ and a missing “2″ would mean the book is in its third printing. Get it? Good. We’ll have a test on Friday. Psych!

So what does second printing mean? You would ask, now wouldn’t you? Well, it means the book is in its second printing. Duh. Okay, I’ll explain a bit better. When a book is first published a specific number of copies are printed. This is the first printing. The publisher prints more when orders reach or exceed the quantity on hand. Hence, subsequent printings.

I bet you have another question, don’t you? Yes, I knew you did. Now you want to know how many copies were printed in each printing. I want to know as well, so if you find out, please drop me an email. For now, I’m just happy to know that there is ongoing demand for The Amen Sisters. I pray it continues a while longer.

Now check the copyright page of your copy. The first person with a copy from the third printing will get a prize. I haven’t figured out yet what it will be, but it’ll be a goodie. Wink, wink.