The Hope of Azure Springs by Rachel Fordham

From an author’s perspective, what do you like best about participating in the Avid Readers of Christian Fiction Facebook Group, and what has been your favorite part of having Yours Truly, Thomas as the book club selection this month? As a reader, I get to share my love of Christian fiction with the other members in the group, and I have discovered so many new-to-me authors who have become must-read authors.

Nicole: I love being a member of the Avid Readers of Christian Fiction Facebook group and participating in so many wonderful discussions within the group. I also hope readers get lost in it and just enjoy the ride. We don’t have to love the trial, but we can love the biproducts. This is something I’ve seen so many times in my own life. Thomas is a better man at the end of the book than at the beginning and pain was a huge catalyst for his growth. The hard struggles we face can be teaching, refining things. I also wanted to show that pain isn’t always the enemy. I tried to portray this through Dinah’s story and of course Penny and Thomas’s love story. Sometimes love is roses and moonlit strolls and sometimes it’s sharing struggles and crying on each other’s shoulder. Rachel: There are always messages that sneak in that I don’t expect or even see myself until I get to the end, but the messages I intended to have come through include – What message or inspiration do you hope that people will get from reading Yours Truly, Thomas? Nicole: Yours Truly, Thomas is a beautiful story of redemption, second chances, and finding love. For Yours Truly, Thomas, I was BUSY with kids and a foster daughter and had to write in small doses. With The Hope of Azure Springs, my son was sick during the writing of it, and so the whole experience was emotional and that emotion came through in the book. Other big differences and challenges include my life circumstances at the times these two books were written. That’s just one example of the many changes this book went through to become the book you read. I ended up loving Honey so it worked out, but that kind of change has a trickle effect that makes for a lot of work.

My editor thought this opening was too sad, so I had to rewrite her motivation and give her a dog to talk to since she was unable to communicate openly with her mom. She basically tells Penny to go find a new life now that she’s not taking care of her any longer. Originally Penny’s mom is the sweetest lady ever and she’s dying. This new book required a great deal more revising than my first.

Someday I’ll become a better note taker, but when I wrote The Hope of Azure Springs, I had no idea if I would get published and no idea there would be another book set in the same town. Rachel: I am not very good at keeping notes so anything specific from the world of Azure Springs required me to go and do research from my own first book.

The Hope of Azure Springs by Rachel Fordham