AmishReader.com » OAC

Where I create my stories

Mary — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:43:52 +0000

As a writer of Amish books, I’m often asked where I go to create my fictional tales. My answer? Just about anywhere. I’ve been known to take either my yellow legal tablet with a couple pens or my laptop to the local park, to the nearest coffee shop, to the local Subway restaurant (I’m hooked on Meatball Marinaras!), down to Amish country to write in parking lots of auctions or flea markets, or to my favorite B&B. But my favorite place is home-sweet-home. I often sit by my barn completely removed from human contact and write while bees, hummingbirds and pesky mosquitos buzz my head. In summer, when the bugs grow annoying, I write on my deck in this screenhouse my husband puts up for me every year. It’s perfect. I’m outside but semi-protected. Where is my least favorite place to write? That would be my office! Because then it only feels like work, and I like to trick myself into thinking that writing stories about these lovely people is always easy!

The post Where I create my stories appeared first on AmishReader.com.

Hate Crimes Against the Amish

Mary — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:44:32 +0000

While researching my current book, A Marriage for Meghan, God placed the perfect person to help me in my path. Although my main plot focuses on a struggling teacher, I developed a concurrent sub-plot which involves escalating criminal acts against the Amish. I met Lieutenant Matthew Linnscott of the sheriff’s department where I live in a Subway Restaurant. He gave me firsthand information about crimes against the Amish in Wayne and Holmes Counties, Ohio. Thugs had been robbing them on deserted country roads as they returned from auction sales or the grain elevator. They would block the buggy’s path with their cars and then rob these pacifistic people of their cash. How does one catch criminals in sparsely populated rural areas? I’ll tell you how the sheriff’s department handled it. In a joint effort of several agencies, including the FBI, teams of detectives borrowed buggies, dressed in Plain garb, and meandered down country roads during the time period the thieves favored. What a surprise for those thugs when their “helpless victims” turned out to be well-armed, highly-trained officers of the law. Now there are a few less criminals on the streets. And I was able to “pump the brain” of one of my local department’s finest for accounts of other hate crimes aimed at the gentle-hearted Plain folk. Nothing like being in the right place at the right time!

The post Hate Crimes Against the Amish appeared first on AmishReader.com.

Book fair in Ohio’s Amish Country

Mary — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:47:55 +0000

Last weekend was the Buckeye Book Fair in Wooster, Ohio–the largest annual book event in Ohio and one of the largest literacy fund-raisers in the country. I can’t tell you how much fun I had meeting with readers and signing books. When they opened the doors to the auditorium promptly at 9:00 am. and hundreds of people surged in to browse and buy signed copies from their favorite authors, I was filled with awe! This wasn’t the latest Harry Potter movie, or free lattes at Starbucks…these were books people were hurrying to get their hands on. I must say, as a writer, my heart pounded all that morning and is still a little off beat today two days later. This was the first time I’d been invited to the event to sign A Widow’s Hope, and I certainly hope I’ll be invited back next year.

Afterwards, we drove to my favorite B&B, Simple Pleasures, in Winesburg to spend the night. The innkeeper had invited their Amish neighbors to dinner and chit-chat. And their daughters held an pie-tasting for me with three different kinds of Chocolate Mousse Cream pie. The “winning” recipe along with 3 other pies will appear in The Way to a Man’s Heart, the third in the Miller Family series, coming in July, 2010. Remember, the second in the series, Never Far From Home, will be released late next month. My husband and I slept like babies, and awoke to rolling farmfields kissed by frost and the sound of roosters! I threw some apples to the deer and of course, fed Sam-the-horse apples as well. I cannot imagine a better way to spend the weekend, or a better place to spend it in than Ohio’s Amish Country!

The post Book fair in Ohio’s Amish Country appeared first on AmishReader.com.