An Interview with author Ada Brownell
Thank you, Ada, for agreeing to grant my readers a 'Getting To Know You' interview. So, here we go ...
About Your Writing
How long have you been writing?
I started when I was age fifteen and I’m a great-granny now. I was youth president at my church and I submitted ideas for unique youth services to a leadership magazine, and they bought and published them. With the help of two amazing editors, I produced complete articles for youth and adults when I was still in my teens.
What is your favorite part of the writing process?
The hook or lead is a big challenge I enjoy. As a retired newspaper reporter, I know the opening sentence to a story needs to contain important information, but it should be presented in a fresh way. That takes thought. I remember a lead I wrote on a feature story for The Pueblo Chieftain about the politically involved Catholic bishop: “If Bishop Charles Buswell would have been alive when Christ was crucified, he probably would have been protesting the death penalty at the foot of the cross.”
A recent lead for my op-ed story in The Chieftain: “Christianity Has Changed the World in My Lifetime.” One from the Teen Devotional Take Five Plus: “Polio once was one of the most dangerous communicable diseases among children in the United States. In 1952 alone, nearly sixty thousand children were infected with the virus. Thousands were paralyzed and more than three thousand died.”
From an Independence Day feature in LIVE “I spent a night in prison. I hadn’t committed a crime, but that night brought new meaning to liberty.”
How have you sensed the Lord’s hand on your writing journey?
I started writing without any college credits and I’d never taken a journalism course. But I had a burning in me to share the gospel.
I memorized Acts 1:9 that says “But ye shall receive power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”
I took that seriously and began to witness. That’s when the youth group grew and God poured out his Spirit in our church. I was blessed, but then I got married and two or three years later we had to move to a little town with four bars, no church, and about 90 miles one way to home, and 38 miles another way to the only church we knew about.
I had no ministry, no close Christian friends. I thought we were out of God’s will, but I kept seeking God. We drove 38 miles to church on Sunday nights because my husband worked Sunday mornings.
Then one night God touched me. Within a week God sent me a Christian friend and we started a Sunday school in the schoolhouse where we lived, Thompson, Utah, population 98. I also began to write.
A few of my articles were published. But when I sold a story about my mother’s Sunday school teaching methods to David C. Cook for $35, in an era when my husband made $14 a day working for the railroad, I enrolled in a course, Writing for Christian Publications by Dorothy C. Haskins. Then I sold my accordion and bought an electric typewriter.
My writing instructor told me I needed to work for a newspaper to get a facility with words. So I became a correspondent for The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. They had a wonderful instruction booklet on how to recognize a news story. I almost memorized it,
We moved, and I was hired as a reporter for The Leadville Herald-Democrat. Less than a year later, I became a staff writer at The Pueblo Chieftain. Then I took out 20 years to stay at home with our five children and earned my bachelor’s degree in mass communications.
So God directed my footsteps, but he also directed my mind. I have always been an idea person and at The Chieftain, I always had a list of about 100 story ideas on file.
I still write for Christian publications and occasional op-ed pieces for newspapers. Sometimes God drops the whole article in my mind. Recently he did that with an op-ed piece that contained spiritual truth. It’s His power, working through me.
About You
Besides writing, what other hobbies do you enjoy?
Over the years I’ve sung in three different trios from churches where we lived at the time. In the late 1960s at Lakewood (Colo.) Assembly, I sang with Betty Vawter and Lila Butrick. But Betty was killed in an airplane crash. The Damascus Singers sang almost every week during the 1970s at Abundant Life Christian Center (Arvada Colo.) and made several tape recordings and one album. Gloria Vigil, Gayle Ortiz and I made up Praise Trio and sang seventeen years at Praise Assembly in Pueblo, Colo.
Name one of the first books or authors to inspire you and why.
Fiction: Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke because the book shows a couple who need each other and want to live righteously, but they also develop a glorious love relationship.
Non-Fiction: Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell because it shows where to find the evidence, not only for your faith but faith for witnessing and teaching.
About Your Book
Do you have a favorite character in your novel(s)? If so, why?
My favorite character is difficult to choose because the characters are almost like family. How can you choose a favorite among loved ones?
Yet, I like Ritah O’Casey a lot because of her spunk, her worthy goals, and her courage. Her faith is something to cherish because she believes she can do great things, even if she is a woman in a time when ladies weren’t expected to be achievers. Twice in the book, she faces a man with a gun, and knowing she’s the only one that can stop him, does it.
I like Hillary, Ritah’s college roommate quite a bit because she shows how she feels but is likable in spite of it. Hillary has experienced sorrow and isn’t over grieving. Having less financially than most students, yet she is rich in scholarly knowledge, and eventually opens to the gospel.
I like 11-year-old Willie for his sense of humor and antics. Yet Edmund Pritchett III becomes more loveable all the time. Farmer Joe Nichols is so gentle, wise and romantically smart, it’s no wonder he becomes competition to Edmund in pursuing Ritah, despite his tragic injury.
The World War I victims also grab the heart, as do others that enter Ritah’s life, including her students with their different personalities, backgrounds, and challenges.
What takeaway value do you want readers to gain from your novel?
I would pray they have their eyes opened to how their lives can be used by God to witness and minister to others.
What can we expect to see from you in the future?
I plan to rewrite some middle-grade lessons I put together for an after-school program, and publish them as books. Unless I change the titles, they will be Dynamite Decisions for Youth, Love is Dynamite, and God’s Powerful Presence in America’s History.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Love’s Delicate Blossom, a historical suspense novel
By Ada Brownell
Sequel to The Lady Fugitive and Peach Blossom Rancher
1917--Edmund Pritchett III wants to marry Ritah Irene O’Casey, but she says wait. The beautiful redhead is trying to rescue Tulip, a 14-year-old orphan kidnapped by Henry Hunter to work in his brothel, and Ritah doesn’t have much time. She has a train ticket to go to college.
Ritah wants to become a teacher who can help widows keep their children when tragedy strikes. She also would like to teach mothers how to prevent dangerous diseases and treat health problems, in an era when few have access to a doctor. Instead, Ritah ends up fighting for the lives of injured soldiers in a World War I Army health clinic, and her own life is threatened by an influenza pandemic.
But Ritah finds a teaching job in Kansas, and there Joe Nichols, a handsome farmer, edges his way into her heart. But Edmund Pritchett III isn’t giving up, and neither is Henry Hunter, who is still after Tulip and about to open his brothel.
Will Ritah accomplish her dreams or is everything in danger 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.
#WWII #1918FluPandemic #Orphans #Romance
MEET ADA BROWNELL
The sixth redhead in a family of eight achievers, Ada Nicholson Brownell writes with stick-to-your-soul encouragement from her Missouri home where she lives with her handsome husband, Lester. They have five children, one in heaven—and not one with red hair or freckles.
Ada is a retired reporter for The Pueblo Chieftain and says she had experienced before going into journalism. The youngest of her parent’s children, she was the family tattletale.
She is the author of nine inspirational fiction and non-fiction books and has had hundreds of articles in Christian publications. She still writes occasional op-ed pieces for newspapers as well as devotions for the teen devotional magazine Take Five Plus, articles for Live, blogs and does other freelance writing. She has served as a judge for the American Christian Fiction Writers Grace Awards and for the Ozarks Chapter of American Christian Writers annual writing contest.
Her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KJ2C06
Her blog: www.inkfromanearthenvessel.blogspot.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/AdaBrownellWritingMinistries
Twitter: @adabrownell
ABOUT ADA'S GIVEAWAY:
ADA is offering a free eBook copy of Love's Delicate Blossom to one of my readers of this post. To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment in the section below and include your name and email address (so we can notify you if you win) Giveaway ends one week from today on Thursday, March 14, at MIDNIGHT CDT.
