Today I'd like to welcome a friend of mine, Mildred Colvin.
1. Tell us a little about yourself.
Hi, I’m Mildred Colvin, Christian romance author. I’ve been married over 40 years, have three children and three grandchildren, and love to piece quilts. I say piece because, to me, the hard part is putting top, back, and lining together and making the quilt look nice. I’m neither country nor city, but maybe a little of both. I’m not a great cook, but have always enjoyed collecting recipes. I write both historicals and contemporaries. By now I sound like a walking contradiction, and maybe I am, but the variety is what helps make me who I am. I love the Lord and enjoy serving him through my writing and my work with children in my local church. I consider both my ministries.
2. What is the quirkiest thing you have ever done?
Take up writing? LOL! Actually, I may be serious.
3. What is your favorite genre to read?
I love to read and write stories set in the late 19th Century. But that’s time period. My favorite genre is definitely romance. Specifically Christian romance.
4. Share something about your day-to-day life that might help a reader to feel as though they know you a little better.
I live where the neighbors target practice each fall with loud, booming explosions that make me jump. Crickets chirp and birds call. Snakes and frogs give me the creeps, but both think our yard is their playground. Deer eat my flowers as soon as they bloom, and a garden is usually a lost cause. I’m too busy writing for a garden, anyway, but in the past I’ve put in large ones and spent some wonderful hours canning the bounty. I’d love to have another garden like that, but we built over our garden spot when we expanded the house. Imagine that!
5. How many books do you have published and where can they be found?
I have fifteen books published, which includes eleven small paperbacks, two 3-in-1 collections, one audio book, and four e-books. I know it doesn’t add up, but some are reprints not included in the first figure.
6. Tell us about your latest book.
My latest paperback is Love Returned, which began life as an e-book and is now also in paperback form. More about Love Returned is in answer seven below.
7. Tell us about the journey to getting this book published.
Love Returned is a book that touches my heart. In the first place, I wrote this while I was active in the Cub Scouting program with my own boys, so using that as a background seemed natural. The heroine, Megan, was forced to give up her newborn son when she was in college. She has resented her mother ever since while she longed to find the child she scarcely saw after his birth. Nine years later, Megan meets Scott who has an adopted son. He enrolls him in her Webelos den, and she begins to believe his son is the baby she gave away. By this time she has fallen in love with Scott. If she lets Scott know of her suspicions, she could easily lose him and her son. She finally settles into a false sense of contentment as she remains silent and lets her relationship with Scott and the young boy grow ever closer. Then Scott proposes marriage and everything blows up in her face. She can’t marry Scott without telling him the truth, but she’ll lose him and her son for sure either way. Why can’t everything continue as is? I won’t tell what happens, only that there is a happily ever after.
8. Does your faith affect your writing? How?
Yes, without question. Each of my books have something that the characters must face in their spiritual life. Many times they deal with forgiveness. In Love Returned, Megan must forgive herself and her mother, and Scott has his own forgiving to work through.
9. Do you put yourself into your main character, or do you find yourself borrowing from family or friends as your characters develop?
I think there may be a lot more of me in my heroines then I realize at the time. I borrow from my own experiences and from things I see and hear. There are also many things in my characters that have nothing to do with the way I am. Those things are purely imagination.
10. Is there any scene in your book that came from a real-life happening?
Love Returned is based on the Scouting program, so there are many borrowed bits from real life, although I don’t think any one scene is a true happening.
11. Where can fans find you or your books on the internet?
http://www.mildredcolvin.blogspot.com
http://www.infinitecharacters.com
http://www.twitter.com @mildred colvin
http://www.facebook.com @romantic reflections
Jackie, thank you for graciously inviting me to be interviewed on your blog. You have a wonderful blog, by the way. I’m honored to be here.
Here’s a short excerpt from the beginning of Love Returned:
Megan McGinnis yelped and jerked back. She touched a hand.
Her gaze skimmed past the well-sculpted male fingers, moved up a muscled arm dusted with dark hair, and over a broad shoulder, to a rather attractive specimen of the stronger sex. The palm of her hand burned, and heat crept up her neck to fill her face.
Where had the man come from? One of the other campsites, obviously. Her mind had been filled with her dream.
“I am so sorry. I—” She couldn’t think. She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t see you.”
He laughed. Not a polite titter, but a throw-back-your-head-and-let-it-out laugh.
Her hand tightened on her water bucket. A smile touched her lips, and before she could stop, she was laughing, too.
“I apologize.” He shook his head. “It’s just that you looked so cute when you squealed and then—” He tapped his nose and grinned. “That cute face you made—I’m sorry. Are you serious you didn’t see me?”
“Of course not. I made it up so we could hold hands.” He thought she looked cute? No one had called her cute since she was five, certainly no one ever said so twice in a row.
She giggled at his raised eyebrows. “What can I say? My mind was on something else. And really, I don’t go around holding hands with strange men.”
His eyes, bluer than any she’d ever seen, twinkled above a lop-sided grin. “I’m not so strange once you get to know me.”
“Is that right?” What was wrong with her? She never flirted, but unless the rules had changed in the last ten years, that’s exactly what she was doing now. Of course, today her emotions were in such turmoil, she might be capable of doing almost anything. Just not this. Not with a stranger.
Mildred, thanks for joining us today. I've read your story and enjoyed it.
If you're interested here's a link:
