Guest Post – PEPPER BASHAM
Please give a big welcome to PEPPER BASHAM to my blog.
Sinking Ships and Matching Stories
Most of the time when you pick up a novel you know the characters are going to experience struggles, trials, maybe even tragedy, to get to the happily-ever-after ending. In some stories, you go in knowing the tragedy before you open the book or turn on the movie, especially if the story is based in fact.
Seventeen years ago when the movie Titanic came out, every person who attended the movie theater to see the movie knew they were going to watch people board a ship that was going to sink. The less well-known movie, Britannic, gave the same foreboding beginning. So it shouldn't be a surprise when you pick up a book that features characters boarding the ill-fated Lusitania in 1915, you are about to embark on a journey fraught with tragedy.
When I begin writing this novel over 10 years ago, I had no idea I was going to involve a sinking ship. All I knew is that I had a heroine, Ashleigh, with a heartbreaking and tragic secret and I wanted an external ‘symbol’ to show her internal devastation.
It isn’t often, thank goodness, that tragedies match so well together in the same way for the same story. I'm pretty sure that in books 2 and 3 of the Penned in Time series, I won't have any sinking ships or massive tragedies such as the Lusitania, but the heart rending pain my main character experienced as a child and continues to experience into adulthood required a setting in which the reader could visibly compare tragedies.
I don't know about you, but I’d never heard of the Lusitania before I started research for The Thorn Bearer. I'd studied history a little bit up to that point, but kept mostly to the "big events" like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, with a brief mention of the Wright brothers, Amelia Earhart, and, of course, the Titanic.
It wasn't until I visited our yard sale, or what they would call in England a rummage sale, where I found a $.25 book called the Lusitania, that I found the missing link to my novel.
I don’t always make such an intense pairing as Ashleigh and the Lusitania, but somehow it worked for this story.
What about you? Have you ever ‘discovered’ the perfect fit to you story in an unexpected place? Do you try to make external situations mirror what is happening to your characters at the heart?
Author Bio:
Pepper Basham is an award-winning author who writes romance peppered with grace and humor. She’s a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mom of five, a speech-language pathologist, and a lover of chocolate. She enjoys sprinkling her native Appalachian culture into her fiction whenever she can. She currently resides in the lovely mountains of Asheville, NC where she works with kids with special needs, searches for unique hats, and plots new ways to annoy her wonderful friends at her writing blog, The Writer’s Alley. She is represented by Julie Gwinn and her debut novel, The Thorn Bearer, released in April 2015.
You can connect with Pepper at:
www.pepperdbasham.com,
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pepper... or
https://twitter.com/pepperbasham
From the decks of the ill-fated Lusitania to the smoke-filled trenches of France, Ashleigh must choose between the forgiveness of her past, life in the present, and a Savior who can rescue her from them all.
When her fiancé leaves her eight months before their wedding, the unexpected blow ignites a battalion of insecurities stemming from her father’s intimate betrayal. Her worst fears are confirmed – who could ever love a soiled woman?
In an attempt to escape the shame and disappointment of her past, Ashleigh boards the ill-fated Lusitania to cross the war-torn waters of Europe. Much to her dismay, she isn’t traveling alone.
Sam Miller is always making up for his best friend’s mistakes. Determined to help Ashleigh, he offers his compassion and protection as she ventures across a perilous sea. With the faint hope of renewing his lost love for Ashleigh’s sister, Sam never expects to find the woman of his dreams in his best friend’s former fiancé and his own childhood companion.
As they travel across the Atlantic, neither is prepared for the life-altering and heart-breaking journey of their friendship.
When the truth of Ashleigh’s past explodes in the middle of war and Sam rejects her, Ashleigh must decide if God is enough – or if the double weight of her betrayal and past will crush her life forever.
#pepperbasham, #guestbloghost, #thethornbearer, #sinkingships, #Lusitania, #WorldWarI
Sinking Ships and Matching Stories
Most of the time when you pick up a novel you know the characters are going to experience struggles, trials, maybe even tragedy, to get to the happily-ever-after ending. In some stories, you go in knowing the tragedy before you open the book or turn on the movie, especially if the story is based in fact.
Seventeen years ago when the movie Titanic came out, every person who attended the movie theater to see the movie knew they were going to watch people board a ship that was going to sink. The less well-known movie, Britannic, gave the same foreboding beginning. So it shouldn't be a surprise when you pick up a book that features characters boarding the ill-fated Lusitania in 1915, you are about to embark on a journey fraught with tragedy.
When I begin writing this novel over 10 years ago, I had no idea I was going to involve a sinking ship. All I knew is that I had a heroine, Ashleigh, with a heartbreaking and tragic secret and I wanted an external ‘symbol’ to show her internal devastation.
It isn’t often, thank goodness, that tragedies match so well together in the same way for the same story. I'm pretty sure that in books 2 and 3 of the Penned in Time series, I won't have any sinking ships or massive tragedies such as the Lusitania, but the heart rending pain my main character experienced as a child and continues to experience into adulthood required a setting in which the reader could visibly compare tragedies.
I don't know about you, but I’d never heard of the Lusitania before I started research for The Thorn Bearer. I'd studied history a little bit up to that point, but kept mostly to the "big events" like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, with a brief mention of the Wright brothers, Amelia Earhart, and, of course, the Titanic.
It wasn't until I visited our yard sale, or what they would call in England a rummage sale, where I found a $.25 book called the Lusitania, that I found the missing link to my novel.
I don’t always make such an intense pairing as Ashleigh and the Lusitania, but somehow it worked for this story.
What about you? Have you ever ‘discovered’ the perfect fit to you story in an unexpected place? Do you try to make external situations mirror what is happening to your characters at the heart?
Author Bio:
Pepper Basham is an award-winning author who writes romance peppered with grace and humor. She’s a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mom of five, a speech-language pathologist, and a lover of chocolate. She enjoys sprinkling her native Appalachian culture into her fiction whenever she can. She currently resides in the lovely mountains of Asheville, NC where she works with kids with special needs, searches for unique hats, and plots new ways to annoy her wonderful friends at her writing blog, The Writer’s Alley. She is represented by Julie Gwinn and her debut novel, The Thorn Bearer, released in April 2015.
You can connect with Pepper at:
www.pepperdbasham.com,
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pepper... or
https://twitter.com/pepperbasham
From the decks of the ill-fated Lusitania to the smoke-filled trenches of France, Ashleigh must choose between the forgiveness of her past, life in the present, and a Savior who can rescue her from them all.
When her fiancé leaves her eight months before their wedding, the unexpected blow ignites a battalion of insecurities stemming from her father’s intimate betrayal. Her worst fears are confirmed – who could ever love a soiled woman?
In an attempt to escape the shame and disappointment of her past, Ashleigh boards the ill-fated Lusitania to cross the war-torn waters of Europe. Much to her dismay, she isn’t traveling alone.
Sam Miller is always making up for his best friend’s mistakes. Determined to help Ashleigh, he offers his compassion and protection as she ventures across a perilous sea. With the faint hope of renewing his lost love for Ashleigh’s sister, Sam never expects to find the woman of his dreams in his best friend’s former fiancé and his own childhood companion.
As they travel across the Atlantic, neither is prepared for the life-altering and heart-breaking journey of their friendship.
When the truth of Ashleigh’s past explodes in the middle of war and Sam rejects her, Ashleigh must decide if God is enough – or if the double weight of her betrayal and past will crush her life forever.
#pepperbasham, #guestbloghost, #thethornbearer, #sinkingships, #Lusitania, #WorldWarI
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