Interview with Denise Weimer

About the Author

Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University.  She is the author of The Restoration Trilogy, The Georgia Gold Series, romantic novella Redeeming Grace, and numerous magazine articles about the Northeast Georgia region.  She's also a wife, a swim mom of two daughters, and for many years directed a group of mid-1800s dancers. 

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The Interview

1. How did you get started as an author? What or whom inspired you?
Growing up, my parents were history buffs who took me to historical sites across the Southeast. My active imagination would try to determine what kind of people lived in those old buildings and towns and what their lives might have been like. The living history villages proved best of all! I was one of those strange tweens delighted by columns, log cabins and the scent of boxwood. I also found that whole scenes and conversations popped into my head from nowhere! I started scribbling my stories in spiral bound notebooks in the back seat of the car and reading them to my mother, who encouraged me to develop that talent.
 
2. What is your current WIP (work in progress)? What can you tell us about this project?
My two most recent writing projects have been novellas, one Christmas and one Colonial, in collection with a number of other authors, currently under review. Working with these other authors has been such a treat! And I’d fully recommend writing a novella to anyone who struggles with overflowing description and detail (ahem – pointing to myself here!). I felt like I was back in journalism class, cutting those words to the bare bone.
 
3. What advice would you give a potential writer/author?
Several things, I guess. Everyone’s path to publication is different, but almost all are liberally sprinkled with setbacks and disappointments. The New Living Translation of Zechariah 4:10 gives us excellent advice: “Do not despise these small beginnings.” If you know God has given you a writer’s voice, always be willing to put your writing on the altar, but unless He says to, don’t give up. Prepare yourself to be a public speaker and salesperson once you’re published – both in person and online. Learn from other authors, network, blog, conduct Facebook parties and giveaways. The evening and weekend hours required to connect with readers will be opposite of what family members and friends may work.
 
4. Do you write full time or part time?
Part-time when I look at my hours, full-time when I consider I don’t hold another job besides that of wife, mother of two teenage daughters (isn’t that a job in itself?), keeper of the home.
 
5. What inspired the idea for Widow?
The Restoration Trilogy (White, Widow and Witch) had its physical birth in watching my parents restore an old house and apothecary shop that they later learned belonged to a famous line of doctors. I thought, “What if a man inherits family property he knows little about, and he and the historic preservation grad he hires uncover secrets of the past in the buildings they restore? And what if those stories of his ancestors happen to have a divinely ordained lesson of heart healing the two modern characters need to apply in their own lives?” I added a log cabin to create a trilogy and pull a back story from three different centuries.
 
The series had its spiritual birth in the concept that house restoration can mirror spiritual restoration. Our pasts often leave us with broken places and decay that The Master Renovator longs to fix, to make us whole and into His image. My characters, Michael and Jennifer, both need God’s healing touch before they can be effective – and fall in love – in their modern lives! Their story is couched in a warm, quirky Southern community where humor and friendship lighten the deeper spiritual concepts the trilogy explores.

6. What authors do you enjoy?
Wow, the more I connect with other authors, the more names are on that list! I’ll just name three of my early favorites. Kristen Heitzmann’s Secrets series did a great job of applying the past to the present while showing God at work in her characters’ lives. Laura Frantz made me feel I was in Last of the Mohicans when I read her debut novel, The Frontiersman’s Daughter. And of course Francine Rivers’ Mark of the Lion Series and Redeeming Love provide examples of God’s anointing on powerful fiction all Christian writers should strive for.
 
7. What other hobbies do you enjoy when you are not writing?
For many years my husband and I led a mid-1800s living history and dance group, before writing and teenage daughters took all the weekend time. :) That provided some lovely memories, friendships, and writing inspiration! Now, I spend my extra time with church friends, going to dinner and a movie with my husband, cheering for my girls at swim meets (I really DO try not to embarrass them, LOL), or visiting a quaint town, coffee shop, or antique store with my mom.

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