My interview with Deborah Raney

Deborah Raney's new novel, Remember to Forget, grabs you from paragraph one and doesn't let you go until you've put the book down. In my case, that included some major sleep deprivation, so absorbed was I in the story of Maggie Anderson.

The book opens in the middle of the action: Maggie is being carjacked while on her way to pick up booze for her abusive live-in boyfriend. When it dawns on her that she has more fear of her boyfriend than of this dangerous situation, Maggie also realizes that this may be her chance to escape.

The journey leads her to small-town Kansas, a hurting but compassionate man, and the redemptive love of God. And the tale of that journey is spun so compellingly that you may find this book, as I did, very hard to put down.

I was able to interview Deborah Raney the other day for my radio show, and it was a terrific experience (once we got past some technical glitches that threatened to de-rail the interview!)



Deborah is charming and gracious. Here, I talk with her about how she came to write a novel in which domestic abuse is a factor:



Advice for aspiring writers

Deb's laughing advice to aspiring writers is, "Don't do what I did!"

Deborah Raney is the fiction-writing equivalent of a starlet that gets discovered on a drug-store stool. Although she had writing aspirations as a young Kansas farm-girl, she put them on the back-burner to raise a family. But when it came time to put her son in college, she knew she would have to do something.

So she prayed, and then she sat down and starting writing her first book, A Vow to Cherish. That book was accepted, published, won the 1997 Angel Award for Excellence in Media, and became a movie starring Ken Howard and Barbara Babcock.

Deb says she went into the writing of the book not realizing that there are terrific books, conferences and other resources aimed at helping and instructing the newbie writer--all things that she now encourages aspiring writers to take advantage of.

She just dove right in--and she's the first to give credit to God for her success.

Go to Deborah Raney's website/blog to find out more about her and her books.

Related Tags: Fiction, Christian fiction, Deborah Raney, Remember to Forget, A Vow to Cherish, domestic violence