I love meeting other authors. Writing is a solitary endeavor, and only another author understands the passion driving us to tell our stories. We spend hundreds of hours writing, editing, revising, and promoting our novels, but really, all we want to do is tell a good story. I’ve shared my blog with several guest authors over the years, and most write in genres different than my own. Mary Ann Poll writes Christian horror, Rich Ritter pens edgy westerns, T. Martin O’Neil tells fictionalized stories based on his experiences as a Naval Intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, and Steve Levi writes in a variety of genres, including his popular series on impossible crimes.

This week I’ll introduce a pair of authors I met recently. These ladies immediately caught my attention because Jan Selbourne lives in New South Wales, Australia, and Dee Knight and her husband reside in the Western U.S.  Despite the distance separating them, though, Dee and Jan write a highly successful joint newsletter. 

I asked Jan and Dee how they met and why they decided to write a newsletter together, and Jan said, “Dee and I have books published with Black Velvet Seductions, but we didn’t meet until I wrote to Dee thanking her for the review she’d posted on one of my books.” 

Dee added, “I read Jan’s Perilous Love and absolutely was crazy for it! I don’t write reviews for books I don’t like but will frequently write them for books I love, so I wrote one for Perilous Love. That’s how we first exchanged e-mails, but we kept at it because Jan has such a great sense of humor, and I like to think mine is as quirky as hers. I can’t believe we live so far apart and yet have so much in common!”

Dee and Jan have never met in person, but from their joint e-mails, you would think they were lifelong friends. In this post, I will introduce you to Jan Selbourne and Dee Knight by reposting one of their joint newsletters. In my next post, Jan will tell us about her life and books, and in the following post, Dee will share her story.

I’ll provide a spoiler on each author. Jan recently won the Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year awards – Silver medal for her historical romance novel, Lies of Gold, and Dee writes in at least six different genres under several different pen names. I am awed by both women, and I know you will be too.

If you like their newsletter, don’t forget to sign up for it here, so you don’t miss an issue. This is the link to sign up: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/h8t2y6. 

Check out Jan’s Amazon page and Dee’s Amazon page, and click on their names at https://nomadauthors.com to view their websites.

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Hello from Jan Today, 18 January 2020, I intended archiving last year’s blogs and author interviews but instead I’m watching the lovely steady rain fall. The best rain New South Wales has had in a long, long, time. It’s not only filling creeks and rivers it’s giving our wonderful firefighters a well-earned breather. Before I was interrupted by the rain, I was glancing through some of last year’s work and it occurred to me that every author interview begins with the question. “What inspired you to write your book?” The next question asks about our characters, are they based on people we know or pure imagination? Was the story planned or did it grow as the chapters increased? That’s the beauty of books, each one is new and unique for the reader, taking us on an adventure from the first page.

Nomad Authors has hosted wonderful authors and it never ceases to amaze me that each book we have featured in our newsletters and blogs is a new story to entertain. There is indeed a book for every reader. My first attempts at writing were full of enthusiasm and lacking the essential substance, inspiration. It was by chance while sitting in the doctor’s waiting room that I picked up a three month’s old journal and read an article on how a person’s true character emerges when faced with ife threatening danger or massive upheaval. For example, the tough guy turns to water and runs, the small insignificant person steps up and takes charge. An idea was forming in my head and again by chance, I was sorting through old family papers and came across my grandfather’s World War One military record. He served with the Australian Imperial Forces in Belgium and France and was involved in some of the bloodiest battles. He came home but was never the same and it was years before he could talk about the horrors of that war. I decided to research the events leading up to the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 and what followed was called The Rape of Belgium. I was reading the atrocities my grandfather spoke about. There was the inspiration and the setting for my first book Behind the Clouds. I’m sure every reader could name a book that inspired them in some way. Charles Dickens’ books were instrumental in bringing about overdue social change in Victorian England. Remember ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’? Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life inspired millions of people around the world. Again, there is a book for every reader and that brings me to my pal Dee who has just released Burning Bridges. The first page hooks you and by the last page you’ll be asking the same question as I did – how many times did this happen. Dee, what inspired you to write Burning Bridges? Until next month, stay safe and remember, if you can’t be good, be careful. Jan.

Hello from Dee
Inspiration is a strange and wonderful thing. Take the inspiration for my latest book, Burning Bridges–war and the death of a mail carrier.

I grew up during the Vietnam War. We generally watched the news after dinner each night and the war was right there in our faces. In the lotter, Jack’s number was under 100, and he definitely would have been drafted had he not been going to a military college and the government thought they would get him eventually. Fortunately, the war ended before Jack got out of school, but we both had friends and schoolmates who went overseas. It took me a long time before I could even consider writing anything related to Vietnam in one of my books. But on a drive up to visit my mother once, I heard a radio report about a mailman who had died. When his family cleaned out the garden shed in back of his house, they found two bags full of mail stuffed in the back. The Post Office said they would do their best to connect the letters with the intended recipients, but the mail was more than a decade old. Suddenly, lost letters…the war…a young man leaving for the unknown and a girl staying behind with a terrible secret.

I had my inspiration.

I had quite a lot of research to do for Burning Bridges. Some of it—like the concert at the Alan B. Shepard Convention Center I knew because I’d been there for concerts, back in the day. But I knew nothing about the ships and the kinds of work they did in Vietnam. A story in one of the letters Sara (the heroine, Sara Richards) receives is a true story I found online. I changed it up slightly, but for the most part, it’s something that actually happened. The story made me realize how little any us knew about the day-to-day conditions our men and women faced over there. But then, I guess that’s often the way with war.

Anyway, that was my inspiration for Burning Bridges. I can’t wait to spring Jan’s surprising new book news! Then she’ll have to tell us about her inspiration! Maybe next month?

*Burning Bridges, a non-erotic romance by Dee S. Knight writing as Anne Krist: “With surprising twists

and believable interplay between characters, BURNING BRIDGES is an unforgettable love story filled with passionate desires and potent emotions.” –5 stars AlwaysReviewing.com

Finally, don’t forget that you have access to free stuff on the Nomad Authors site. This month there’s a poem I wrote just for Valentine’s Day. It shows one of the differences between men and woman. Hope you’re staying safe, dry and warm in the northern hemisphere and cool and safe in the southern! Dee

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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