Calendar alert! It’s SPRING!
What is your favorite thing about springtime? For many, especially those who have been inundated with more snow than they care to measure, spring means relief from the icy conditions. Others love the first blooms of crocuses, daffodils, and forsythia. Some anxiously await the return of birds to their backyard feeders. The thought of grilling hamburgers and the smell of freshly mowed grass tantalizes the senses.
Winter tends to make me sleepy! There is nothing cozier than curling up with a cup of hot chocolate, a good book, and a warm quilt. Add a crackling fire in the fireplace to that scene, and it’s not hard to lose track of the weeks. But suddenly I’m turning over a page of my calendar and excitement tickles my insides. With the arrival of spring, I get to finally announce the release of SUNDAYS IN FREDERICKSBURG.
Two weeks ago, the UPS man became one of my favorite people when he delivered this box to my door—my author copies! This is a collection of four novellas written by Margie Vawter, Lynette Sowell, Eileen Key, and myself. I had a blast writing with this team of outstanding authors, and thus, my first experience at writing a novella was so much fun, I’m looking forward to doing it again in the future.
The setting for all four stories is Fredericksburg, Texas, and we stretched our collection over four generations. My story, Hope’s Dwelling Place, is set in 1897. The rest of the collection visits the eras of World War 1 and World War 2 before culminating in a contemporary story. The heroine of the contemporary story is the great granddaughter of the characters in my story.
The Fredericksburg Sunday houses have a fascinating history. When the German farmers first settled this area, their farms were located a good distance from town. So these practical and industrious folks built “Sunday houses”—small dwellings to shelter their families when they came to town on Saturdays to shop, socialize, and transact other business. They spent the night in their Sunday house, attended worship the following morning, and then departed to return to their farms. With the advent of motorized transportation in the early 20th century, many of the Sunday houses were no longer needed for their original purpose, so some of them were transformed into stores, offices, or permanent houses for elderly family members. Quite a few of them still exist today.
SUNDAYS IN FREDERICKSBURG will be available on Amazon, Christianbook Distributors, Barnes and Noble, and wherever Christian fiction is sold. I hope you enjoy reading this collection of novellas as much as we did writing it.
What do you like the most about reading a novella collection? Leave a comment and you will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of SUNDAYS IN FREDERICKSBURG. Drawing will take place on Friday, March 29th.
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