Goodreads.com has a new feature for its authors. It's called Ask The Author. Today I had about 5 questions on my page. The first one was, "Where did you get your idea for your most recent book?" I decided that the answer would be my blog for today.

The idea for my most recent book came out of a dark time in my life. I was struggling with a lot of questions and uncertainty. Without giving too much away, I'll just say that I sat down one morning and started writing about a character who would end up being Julie in my book, Where There is Love. If you've read it then you understand that Julie has a lot of dark spots in her life and struggles with her understanding of love and acceptance. I kept expanding this early writing about Julie and at one point thought the whole thing was silly and almost deleted it. I decided that it would be better to hold onto it and just not look at it for a while. Before long other ideas were popping into my head that could help me create the entire story. I couldn't fight it. In fact, I became so involved with the story and the characters I almost felt obsessed. After the book was published it took me a while to get where I didn't think about them every moment of every day like they were my closest friends. The characters seem very real to me still and there are days when I miss them! Ha!

Where there is love there is God.

Out of the depths I cry to you Lord...Psalm 130:1

Freedom…one of my all-time favorite words.

In my book Where There Is Love, my character
Julie is an individual who is extremely independent. She is a beautiful
intelligent woman. However, her Achilles’ heel—you might say— is her need for
emotional attachment…to feel loved and admired. She doesn’t recognize her
strength and abilities to go it alone. Without realizing it, Julie gives up or
trades in her freedom and independence for the chance to be loved—or at least
what she thinks of as love. Julie is a good example of the prostitute archetype,
which you can read about in detail in the Caroline Myss book Sacred
Contracts.

 It’s all too easy to give up our freedoms, our independence, and
the very person our spirit intends us to be for affection, material wealth,
fame, or security. It’s much more comfortable to be taken care of than to
accept personal responsibility for ourselves. But does that sort of bartering
bring true happiness?

In honor of Independence Day, I pose a question to you. Have you
ever traded your independence, your rights as an American, or even a bit of your
soul in order to achieve wealth, gain comfort, or find success? Oh, come on, you
know you have! Think about it. Have a great
holiday!


Where there is love there is freedom.