Today Marlayne Giron visits. This is her first visit to my blog and she's going to spice it up a bit with the things she has to tell us.Welcome Marlayne!Tell us a little about yourself. Instead of my usual “typical” boring answers I’m going to tell you unusual things about myself. I cluck like a chicken to classical music (because I can’t whistle); I used to ice-skate competitively in my early 20s and I still miss it. I take in strays…not animals but people. My family has played host to several adults who needed a place to stay for awhile. A little known fact that most people don’t know about me is that I never went to college (I don’t think one year in the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising counts) and that I am totally unqualified to be an author “on p
aper”. My last two years of high school I took typing, drama and sewing courses because I thought I was going to be a fashion designer. What do 17 year olds know about what they want to do with the rest of their life, I ask you?Tell us about your writing journey. What led you to do this? My writing journey started when I was 12 years old when my best friend put us into a short story as main characters in our favorite television show from the 1970s (“The Six Million Dollar Man”). We loved it so much that we took turns writing hundreds of these short stories each (and one “feature length”) story of several hundred pages (illustrated). My best friend, who aspired to be a teacher, started red-marking my stories for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors which made me so mad that it taught me to write in better English and expanded my vocabulary exponentially.
You have two books available. Please tell us a little about each. The Victor was inspired by an Amy Grant song from 30 years ago called “Fairytale” who I actually got to meet for the first time last June. She autographed my copy of the book and we took a photo together. It is a fantasy/fiction love story set in a medieval realm that retells the fall of Satan, the fall of man and the redemption of Christ’s bride the church as a good old fashioned daring do, swashbuckling story for both men and women. It is my hope that The Victor will not only be enjoyed as a “good read” but as a way to introduce people to the Gospel who have no interest in reading the Bible, going to church and hate being “witnessed to” like I used to be before I became a believer. Make a Wish is a compilation of short stories written as gifts for other people where they star in their own “wish fulfillment” story. I wrote the first story, A Gift for Henry, as a way to cheer up a quadriplegic friend who lived across the country from me and after a year and many requests I had 34 of them done. I guess you could say the stories I wrote as a kid was the impetus behind Make a Wish. These stories seemed to have struck a very deep chord in both the people for whom they were written (and those who are not) in a very profound way.
Where do you find inspiration for your writing, and how did the ideas for these books come to you? Inspiration is often a fleeting and elusive thing. It can’t be summoned at will. The inspiration for both books came unbidden to my mind and heart. The Victor as a result of an image that popped into my mind from a verse in “Fairytale”: “two princes wage the battle for eternity but The Victor has been known from the start” and the other as a desire to cheer up a friend who lived on the other side of the U.S. from me.
What message to you hope readers will take from it? The Victor was written primarily for nonbelievers and the message I hope they take away from it is that they owe the King of the Universe (Who loves and sacrificed His Son for them) their allegiance and that they have a choice to make. Make a Wish was written to bless and renew hope in fellow believers that our childlike faith is the most important thing to God. Most of the people I have written these stories for have the sense that God is revealing Himself, too because they contain so many intimate details that only He and they have knowledge of. I have been told this so many times it even gives me the goosebumps.
Do you have a favorite scene from either, or both? From The Victor it is the reunion between Joshua (the hero) and Llyonesse (the heroine) whom he had thought dead for many years. Make a Wish – the story that made me cry the hardest was “Three Wishes”.
Plans for anything new? I’m trying my hand at writing Amish fiction but not just your typical Amish fiction. Paranormal Amish Fiction! How hard could it be? Working title is Old Order Alien.
Do you have a favorite author or book that has impacted your life? Okay this time I have to give the typical, all too often provided answer because it is the truth: J.R.R.Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. The BEST fiction book ever written, bar none. I read The Hobbit and TLotR in ONE weekend when I was 12. Then I read it again the next weekend and then once a year, every year thereafter for decades. I think I’m now overdue to read it again.
What do you do enjoy doing in you spare time? I still work part-time five days a week to pay the bills and have a family to take care of. It used to be stamping, then scrapbooking but now all I have time (and money) for is writing, book promotion, cleaning house, cooking, and occasionally entertaining. I’m a frustrated Martha Stewart on a very tight budget. I have actually had some time to read some books lately so that has been nice.
Where can readers buy your book and where can they learn more about you? I have a book website that talks about how I found faith in Jesus at age 17 as a nonreligious Jew and various other blogs (which include photos of me with Amy Grant and Nicholas Sparks holding my book): www.thevictorbook.com
The Victor is available on Amazon (paperback or Kindle version), Borders, Barnes & Noble, Family Christian Stores, Books a Million, Ebay or directly from me (I have Paypal on my website) and comes with a companion Lesson Plan for those who home-school for $10 and a free downloadable Student Workbook. Make a Wish is currently available either through me, Amazon or Createspace. To find my books on Amazon just search on my full name. All links are below:
The Victor book website: http://www.thevictorbook.com/ and http://wishfulfillmentstories.blogspot.com/
Make a Wish: https://www.createspace.com/3522475
Marlayne has a special kind of giveaway. Leave a comment for the chance to win you own wish fulfillment story.
