Laura Frantz, Author of A Heart AdriftÂ
Welcome Laura, we’re very excited to have you on Reader’s Entertainment. Let’s begin by telling our readers a bit about yourself.
Where you’re from, where you live? Is writing your full-time job? I’m from Kentucky but live in Washington State most of the time. I love to travel so return home quite a bit as well as crossing the pond to visit Scotland where much of my ancestry originates. Writing is a full time job for me though I’ve been a teacher, a visiting innkeeper for vacationing bed and breakfast owners, social worker, waitress, and more…
How long have you been writing? Since age 7. I knew then that there was something special about writing and so wrote my first story soon after I discovered those little historical biographies of famous men and women. I’ve not stopped writing since. I’ve always been drawn to historical fiction as both reader and writer.
Briefly describe your writing day. Tell us about your latest release. I enjoy rising early, talking a walk (I usually get inspiration or writing ideas this way), and working between bouts of social media. I’ve just returned from a 2 week trip to Colonial Williamsburg and Yorktown, my favorite historic sites in the U.S. which always spur story ideas.
What inspired this book A HEART ADRIFT? My love of chocolate and a lifelong desire to have a hero who’s a sea captain. Plus, I love setting anything in the Virginia area and Colonial Williamsburg and Yorktown make a wonderful backdrop.
Could you share one detail from your current release with readers that they might not find in the book? My heroine in A Heart Adrift is my first plus-sized heroine. I mean, can you realistically expect a chocolatier to be thin? The author isn’t, especially after the writing of this delicious novel. The striking cover portrays Esmée Shaw in her pre-chocolate shop days 😊 but our hero’s tasteful observations of her voluptuousness in the novel (or between the lines) is larger than life.
What has been your hardest scene to write? Writing characters out of a story through death is always hard to me. But there must be fictional goodbyes as well as those in real life.
Who has been the most difficult character for you to write? Why? My first and only series, The Ballantyne Legacy (Love’s Reckoning, Love’s Awakening, Love’s Fortune) was quite a challenge. I had to age my hero, Silas Ballantyne, and a large cast of family characters through 3 generations. Silas’s story opens when he’s a young man in his 20’s and closes when he’s nearly 90 or so.
If you could be one of your characters for a day which character would it be? I would be Morrow Little in Courting Morrow Little. This may well be the reader favorite of my 13 novels. Why? Her life and love story involve a particularly touching story of redemption and restoration that strikes a chord with me and also readers.
Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write? I always look to the classic authors like Anne of Green Gable’s Lucy Maud Montgomery. She is unparalleled in her way with setting and deep characterization in a novel’s shorter form. The Blue Castle is my favorite novel of hers but it’s often eclipsed by Anne. I’ve also been heavily influenced by Jane Eyre and Christy.
What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? The Blue Castle
Do you have a secret talent readers would be surprised by? I can sing. My voice is untrained but people remark on it.
Your favorite go to drink or food when the world goes crazy! Pasta or Thai food. And Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry which I gave up years ago.
And what is your writing Kryptonite? Prayer
What is the one question you never get ask at interviews, but wish you did? Ask and answer it. What’s been your most satisfying job over the years? Being a stay-at-home mom and homeschooler. Nothing comes close, not even publishing!
Thank you so much for stopping by today, Laura!!
Reader’s, here’s a quick look at A HEART ADRIFT:
A Virginia chocolatier and a privateering sea captain collide once more after a failed love affair a decade before. Will a war and a cache of regrets keep them apart? Or will a new shared vision reunite them?*****It is 1755, and the threat of war with France looms over colonial York, Virginia. Chocolatier Esmée Shaw is fighting her own battle of the heart. Having reached her twenty-eighth birthday, she is reconciled to life alone after a decade-old failed love affair from which she’s never quite recovered. But she longs to find something worthwhile to do with her life.
Captain Henri Lennox has returned to port after a lengthy absence, intent on completing the lighthouse in the dangerous Chesapeake Bay, a dream he once shared with Esmée. But when the colonial government asks him to lead a secret naval expedition against the French, his future is plunged into uncertainty.
Will a war and a cache of regrets keep them apart, or can their shared vision and dedication to the colonial cause heal the wounds of the past? Bestselling and award-winning author Laura Frantz whisks you away to a time fraught with peril–on the sea and in the heart–in this redemptive, romantic story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Laura Frantz is a Christy Award winner and the ECPA bestselling author of more
than a dozen novels, including An Uncommon Woman, Tidewater Bride, The
Frontiersman’s Daughter, Courting Morrow Little, The Colonel’s Lady, The
Lacemaker, and A Bound Heart. She is a proud mom of an American soldier and a
career firefighter. When not at home in Kentucky, she and her husband live in
Washington State. Learn more at www.laurafrantz.net.
