Today I welcome my friend Robin Lee Hatcher to The Edge as we chat about her new release, Fit to Be Tied, the second title in her Sisters of Bethlehem series.

EDGE: So, Robin, what's the inspiration behind this series?
RLH: The Sisters of Bethlehem Springs series sprang from the question: Who says a coman can't do a man's job? And I can't fully express just how much fun I've had looking for the answer through the eyes of my heroines in this series. Although I have no favorites among the novels I've written (each were special to me at the time I wrote them), I do have some favorite characters. I love her for her strong faith, for her quirky turns of phrase, for her confidence with horses and her lack of confidence with men, even for her impatience with Sherwood, the English aristocrat that she's supposed to turn into a cowboy. I've been delighted that readers have taken her into their hearts the way they have. I hope you will feel the same way about her.

EDGE:Tell us about Fit to Be Tied.
RLH: Cleo Arlington dresses like a cowboy, is fearless and fun-loving, and can ride, rope, and wrangle a horse as well as any man. In 1916, however, those talents aren’t what most young women aspire to. But Cleo isn’t most women. Twenty-nine years old and single, Cleo loves life on her father’s Idaho ranch. Still, she hopes someday to marry and have children.

Enter Sherwood Statham, an English aristocrat whose father has sentenced him to a year of work in America to “straighten him out.” Sherwood, who expected a desk job at a posh spa, isn’t happy to be stuck on an Idaho ranch. And he has no idea how to handle Cleo, who’s been challenged with transforming this uptight playboy into a down- home cowboy.

Just about everything either of them says or does leaves the other, well, fit to be tied. And though Cleo believes God’s plan for her includes a husband, it couldn’t possibly be Sherwood Statham. Could it?

About Fit to be Tied, the Library Journal said: "A master of lively historical romances, Hatcher demonstrates an expert ability to craft spunky, unlikely heroines who go against the tide of the times in which they live, making for fun, exciting stories. She also pays close attention to historical detail. This second series entry (after A Vote of Confidence) is highly recommended for readers of inspirational and historical romances and women's fiction."

Want to read an excerpt? Here you go.

A bit about Robin: Best-selling novelist Robin Lee Hatcher is known for her heartwarming and emotionally charged stories of faith, courage, and love. She makes her home in Idaho where she enjoys spending time with her family and her high-maintenance Papillon, Poppet.

Phriday Phobias

Those who know me well, know that I had a long list of things I was afraid of as a kid. I know now that these phobias were just the outworking of an overly creative mind - something that comes in handy now that I am a fiction writer.

Back when I was little kid, though, I wasn't writing novels and I had a hard time appreciating my active imagination. Actually, I had NO time to appreciate my active imagination; I was too busy defending myself from enemies like Mr. Bubble, Mr. Clean and, insert gasp here, the Michelin Man.

I really, really hated that guy. Everything about him was wrong. He was a man made of tires. White tires. Even a six-year-old knows that tires are black. How on earth could anyone trust a man made of white tires?

And what would he do to me if he got close to me, this man-made-of-white-tires? Why, he'd wrap his fat, white arms around my body in a boa-constrictor-like hold and suffocate me, of course. What other purpose could he have?

I survived my childhood, obviously, and no longer have nightmares about company mascots chasing after me, but even now - as recent as last night - when I see the Michelin Man on television (last night he was pulling little black tires out of his abominable snowman body and throwing them at evil gas pumps who want our wallets) a ripple of unease courses through me. I am instantly reminded that I used to be afraid of him.

There is much I know now about the Michelin Man that I didn't know when I was a kid. He is happy. He likes cars. He's a hundred years old. He has a cool name no one even knows. Bidendum. Bib for short. And his record is as clean as his cottonwhite body: He has suffocated no children.

A good friend gave me a Michelin Man T-shirt and sometimes I wear it as a token of my remorse for having had unjust thoughts about him all those years ago.

But the truth is, he's made of white tires.

And tires are black.

My trust can only extend so far. . .

Time traveling

I've long admired an author who can weave a story of two time periods into a seamless ride that doesn't make you feel like you are spinning in one of the teacups in Disneyland. I loved People of the Book and The Thirteenth Tale for that reason, and now I can add Kate Morgan's The Forgotten Garden to the list. And get this: Morton crafts a story of three time zones, an even more admirable feat, I think.

And here's why.

We authors lure you into our fictive world by creating a character in a certain time and space and we entice you to care about them. It is incredibly important that you care about them; that's what keeps you turning pages. When we create a second storyline in second time zone, we are now asking you not to split your character loyalty in half, but to double your capacity for character loyalty. Add a third character in a third time zone and now we ask you to triple it.

It's a tall order. And when someone can pull it off, I think that's a feat worth mentioning.

The Forgotten Garden begins at the turn of the century in an Australian port where a four-year-old has been found alone on ship that originated in London. Unable to give her name or any other identifying information, she is taken in by the childless harbormaster and his wife. When someone comes looking for the child many months later, well after the harbormaster and his wife have grown to love the child, they move away with her and try for decades to pretend she was always theirs. Upon the harbormaster's deathbed, the girl-now-older-woman learns the truth and so begins her and reader's journey to find out who she is and how she ended up on a boat, all alone with nothing but a tiny suitcase and a book of fairy tales.

In addition to the clever story construction, I was also thoroughly impressed with Morton's committment to making every chapter stand-alone sweet. It's easy, once you have story momentum going, to minimize the care and labor you spend on those supporting chapters that just provide a momentary rest stop for the real plot line. Morton peppered her pages with nuggets of story all over the place. I admire that. She could've saved those images for her next book, and made them stars in their own right. But she gifted them to the reader inside a story that was already intruiguing.

Well done.

You can read an excerpt here:

See you on Friday.

Sleigh Bells, anyone?

The tang of fall is still in the air and usually I don't allow the bliss of autumn's offerings to be shadowed by early talk of December, but I will make a happy exception today to chat about my friend Cindy Woodsmall's new book, The Sound of Sleighbells. Cindy and I share the same editor at the same wonderful publishing house, and the same love for a powerful story. On top of that, Cindy's the most genuniely humble person you could ever meet. If you enjoy a Christmas novel to help you set a gentle, relaxed tone for the rush of holiday activity to come, well here you go.

To give you a little backstory, when Cindy was 10 and living in the dairy country of Maryland, she became best friends with Luann, a Plain Mennonite girl. Luann, like all the women and girlsin her family, wore the prayer Kapp and caped dresses. Her family didn't own a television or radio and many other modern conveniences. When Luann would come Cindy’s house to spend the night, her rules came with her and the two were careful to obey them—afraid that if they didn’t, the adults would end their friendship. Cindy remembers that both sets of parents were uncomfortable with the relationship and that a small infraction of any kind would have been enough reason for the parents to end the relationship.

While navigating around the adults’ disapproval and the obstacles in each others' lifestyle, the two girls bonded in true friendship that lasted into their teen years, until Cindy’s family moved away. Many years later, Cindy became friends with an Old Order Amish family opened their home and hearts to her. It's these two friendships that give Cindy's Amish fiction the depth of understanding she has for Amish and Mennonite culture.

The story in a nutshell:
Beth Hertzler works alongside her Aunt Lizzy in their dry goods story, and serving as a contact of sorts between Amish craftsmen and Englischers who want to tell the Plain people's wares. But remorse and loneliness still echo everyday in her heart as she still wears th dark garb of mourning following the death of her fiance. When she discovers a large, intricately carved scene of Amish children playing in the snow, something deep inside Beth's soul responds and she wants to help the unknown artist find homes for his work - including Lizzy's dry goods store. But she doesn't know if her bishop will approve of the gorgeous carving or deem it idolatry.

Lizzy sees the changes in her niece when Beth shows her the woodworking, and after Lizzy hunts down Jonah, the artist, she is all the more determined that Beth meets this man with the hands that create healing art. But it’s not that simple–will Lizzy’s elaborate plan to reintroduce her niece to love work? Will Jonah be able to offer Beth the sleigh ride she’s always dreamed of and a second chance at real love–or just more heartbreak?

The Sound of Sleigh Bells is a heartwarming Christmas novella where lack and abundance inside an Amish community has power for good when it's tucked inside love. Romantic Times gave The Sound of Sleigh Bells 4 1/2 stars saying: "This is a wonderfully written, transformative story of two Amish families at Christmastime. It will being sleigh-riding memories to life as readers vicariously join in this jolly and exciting holiday tradition.

You can read an excerpt of the book right here on Cindy's beautiful website. Check out her blog while you are there.

And by the way, Cindy Woodsmall is a New York Times best-selling author whose connection with the Amish has been featured on ABC Nightline and the front page of the Wall Street Journal. She is the mother of three sons and two daughters-in-law, and she and her husband reside in Georgia.

Experiments with Fiction

In today's San Diego Union Tribune an obituary graced the top of page B4 that drew me in like a magnet to metal: Acclaimed writer known for experimental fiction. It was the headline for the obituary of a local writer and retired professor, Dr. Raymond Federman, who had just passed at the age of 81.

I'd never heard the term "experimental fiction" before, and while I quipped as I folded the page back that I experiment with fiction all the time, deep down I knew this man must have taken fiction for a truly unconventional ride and I had to see where it was he had gone with it.

Turns out Dr. Federman experimented with the conventions of fiction - writing non-linear pieces that defied every boring rule of Story - to make sense of what happened when he was just a boy, not to turn the literary world on its head. Federman, a child of Jewish parents, was living in Paris in 1940. His obituary states that "he was spared from death during the Holocaust when his mother pushed him into a closet to hide when the Gestapo arrived and took the rest of his family. Dr. Federman never saw his parents or two sisters again."

Imagine being twelve and having to emerge from a closet to that kind of desperate situation. No wonder when he was older he experimented with how to tell a story like that one. His "Voice in the Closet" is apparently one, long poetic sentence with no capitalization and no punctuation. His latest work about his life, called "Shhh" is due to be published next year.

"Shhh" is what Federman's mother said to him - the last thing she said to him- as she pushed him into the closet.

I can tell already I must add it to my bucket list of books I simply have to read. And not just to see what experimental fiction look like. . .

I am halfway through Richard Stearns' The Hole in Our Gospel, a book that asks some of the toughest questions imaginable about faith and practice. I don't usually comment on a book that I haven't finished, mainly because most books are meant to be embraced in their entirety - phonebooks and dictionaries excepted.

But this one has me thinking. It's one of those books you need to think and ponder on while you're reading it.

Stearns was the well-paid CEO of Lennox, busy selling pretty dishes when he was asked to be president of World Vision a few years back. As you probably already know, World Vision doesn't sell pretty dishes. They feed, clothe, and care for some of the world's poorest and disadvantaged children. It was what some might call a huge career move, and a tough choice. But Stearns felt the call of God to make it, and has since come to the conclusion - based on his own experience - that Christians believe the gospel but largely fail to live it out, and that American Christians especially have the resources to make an incredible difference in shrinking poverty around the world.

His treatment of his subject matter is nothing short of blunt: If you are a follower of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you will love the poor like he did, and you will care for them like he did. I totally get that.

But I am eager to see how Stearns helps us understand how much do we give? Do we give it all away except for what we need to meet our own basic needs? What are my basic needs? Must the Christian buy a used sedan if he or she has the money to buy a new Lexus? Does the prosperous Christian have no option but to give all his wealth away? Is what we do with our material possessions always more important than what we say with our mouths?

A reviewer on Amazon said this book is nicely paired with Randy Alcorn's The Treasure Principle, about which one reader said, "Giving is the only antidote to materialism." I don't fully understand the scope of alleviating the plight of the world's poor, but I do understand the snarky pull of materialism. That, I understand.

More when I finish. . .

She Reads, of course!

Proverbs 31 Ministries, a fabulous organization, has a new book club called She Reads, which launched in September with three new featured books, one of which is The Shape of Mercy.

I wrote a devotional for the main Proverbs 31 site that you can read right here. My publisher is giving away ten copies and one grand winner will receive a beautiful leather bound journal and fountain pen, ala Mercy's diary. You can enter the drawing on the Proverbs 31 site today - the link takes you right to the She Reads blog.

Want to know more about She Reads? Sure you do! My good friend Marybeth Whalen is one of the key organizers of She Reads and she wrote a great blog post about it last week, which I have excerpted here:

So how does She Reads work?
Marybeth: Our goal for She Reads is for it to function in two ways: 1) as a place an individual can go get recommendations for great books to read and to connect with the authors who wrote them and other readers who enjoyed them and 2) as a place where book clubs that are already out there can get connected with an umbrella organization that provides suggestions for books, activities they can do, discussion questions, and a point of contact with the author. We are working towards accomplishing these goals and are learning and tweaking as we go.

That sounds great, so how can I get connected?
Marybeth: Right now, the best way to get connected is to sign up for our seasonal newsletter and to subscribe to our blog, which is updated several times a week. You can also become a fan on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter. That way, as we make changes and create new facets to She Reads, you will know about it. To visit our site and learn more, go to www.shereads.org. There is a navigation bar at the top which will take you to different parts of the site.

What books have you selected so far?
Marybeth: We select 3 books a season. Our fall selections are Daisy Chain by Mary DeMuth, The Shape of Mercy by Susan Meissner, and eye of the god by Ariel Allison. These three different books all meet the criteria we created at the outset. Because this club is not set up by any one publisher we have the freedom to go to any Christian publisher to find our selections... and we do. We are reading, reading, reading right now to find our spring and summer selections. We have already chosen our winter ones but I can't tell you what those are yet! We will be making our announcement towards the beginning of December but I can promise you you are in for a treat with these books!

Do check the devo out!