Joanie Bruce asked A.M. Heath:

What was your inspiration for the Ancient Words Series?

A.M. Heath Ancient Words Series was originally a stand alone novel by the same title. It was one of those story ideas that held promise but would take some time to develop. I actually mulled over the idea for over a year before it was right. There are so many things that worked as inspiration, but the clearest was the Love Finds You Series. I've been a fan of these books for years and one day I asked myself what town I would write about if I were to submit a story for the series. Since traveling to far off places wasn't possible for me, I looked around me. It didn't take long to choose the little town of Wartrace, Tennessee. Since the series requires that each novel tell a story about a real town while weaving the town's name into the theme of the story, I knew that I wanted to tell a story about war: spiritual warfare and the Civil War. I settled on a story line about a young girl named Allie in the year 2012, moving into a historic home and finding letters written during the war. The story would include the Harper family's story from the war as well as Allie's spiritual journey. The letters themselves would be instrumental in her spiritual life. After some quick research, I learned that my story was wrong for their series and decided to change the town name to the fictional town of Maple Grove and go at it alone. After a few months of writing, I began writing 3 different short stories (2 on the Harper family and 1 on Allie's best friend) that I planned to add on at the end of the novel. Over time it became apparent that the short stories were far from short and deserved to be novels of their own. Now Ancient Words is a 4 book series with it's first 2 books based on the Civil War and the last 2 books in the present day. The 3rd book of the series features the Allie's story as originally intended. Ancient Words took on some amazing changes that I never saw coming, but I couldn't be prouder of the outcome.
Thanks so much for asking!

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