Ask the author

Maureen Lang

Next release: Springtime of the Spirit (March), the final book in “The Great War Series.”

Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers

What turned your focus to World War I in “The Great War Series”?

Family history. My grandfather was in the Signal Corps in the First World War and gave me a whole box of pictures from France during that time. He’d written on the back what was going on in each shot, and it’s fascinated me ever since.

What can readers expect in Springtime of the Spirit?

I learned so much writing this, mainly because the political drama of 1919 Germany seems to touch on many topics we hear about in the news today: How big do we want our government to be? How much should we depend on government to take care of us? Does faith play into the design of government? 

Questions like those fascinated me, but to make the story fun instead of a textbook, I knew I wanted to include a romance. So my hero and heroine explore things like socialism and faith, and since they’ve survived different war experiences, they have very different opinions. How they work through those differences—eventually risking their lives in the process—is where the romance and drama really mesh together. 

How did you tackle the classic question about God and suffering--how could God allow war? 

Anyone who’s lived long enough has probably asked why God allows suffering, and after the brutality of war, it seemed especially appropriate for my characters to question this. At one point my hero, whose faith is solid, says that if God had stepped in to end a war that we started of our own free will, He would have to step in and stop other mistakes we make as well. Where would our free will be then? As my hero says: Doesn’t having to allow the little mistakes mean His having to allow the big ones, too?

Do you have a fondness for a particular character in the series?

I do love Christophe, the hero in this book. However, my absolute favorite in Springtime of the Spirit is Annaliese, my heroine. She’s so determined, so sure of herself and so totally unafraid to do what she thinks best. And she has absolutely zero fear of speaking in front of the biggest audience she can draw—something I always admire, because I possess not one ounce of such a talent.

What are your thoughts about Christian romance as a category?

I love Christian romance, and I read quite a bit of it. Falling in love is exciting, and to see two people withstand obstacles for love makes great reading. That said, I do pray for the genre—actually for all of Christian fiction—that in the hope of coming up with new and different stories, we’re mindful of “pushing the envelope.” My prayer is that we—and I include myself in this—will still create stories God wants to read.

Where to next in writing for Maureen Lang?

I’m heading into an even more romantic thread with my next project, this one between a thief and a sheltered young woman aspiring to become a thief as well—until God catches their attention. My settings are headed home to the USA, placing my next story in New York City during the 1880s. No more wars for the time being, but hopefully just as much excitement.

See Author Corner at www.christianretailing.com for more on this author.

ECPA Fiction Top 10

1. Unlocked, Karen Kingsbury (Zondervan)

Inspired by the true story of Mitch Thatcher—a teenager on the autism spectrum who experienced an “unlocking” of sorts when he became part of a musical theater group—Unlocked has brought hope to families struggling with autistic children. Thatcher also created a Facebook page to inspire others in similar situations.

2. The Twelfth Imam, Joel C. Rosenberg (Tyndale House Publishers)

3. Her Mother’s Hope, Francine Rivers (Tyndale House Publishers)

4. Her Daughter’s Dream, Francine Rivers (Tyndale House Publishers)

5. Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers (Multnomah Books)

6. The Thorn, Beverly Lewis (Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group)

7. The Shack, William P. Young (Windblown Media/Hachette Book Group)

8. In the Company of Others, Jan Karon (Viking Adult)

9. Immanuel’s Veins, Ted Dekker (Thomas Nelson)

Thomas Nelson gathered reader reviews in advance of the book’s release. The frontmatter of Immanuel’s Veins includes six pages of comments from these readers, speaking to how it impacted their lives.

10. Sarah’s Choice, Wanda E. Brunstetter (Barbour Publishing)

The ECPA list is compiled from sales of Christian books in hundreds of Christian retail outlets nationwide, collected using Pubtrack Christian (www.ptchristian.com). December best-sellers are for the four-week cycle ending November 20, 2010. All rights reserved. © 2010 ECPA. www.ecpa.org.

New fiction releases coming next month:

Beside Still Waters, Tricia Goyer (B&H Books)

Griselda Takes Flight, Joyce Magnin (Abingdon Press)

Home Made Haunting, Rob Stennett (Zondervan)

How Huge the Night, Heather Munn and Lydia Munn (Kregel Publications)

On Hummingbird Wings, Lauraine Snelling (FaithWords)

Patchwork Dreams, Laura V. Hilton (Whitaker House)

The Alarmists, Don Hoesel (Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group)

The Corruptible, Mark Mynheir (Multnomah Books)

The Daughter’s Walk, Jane Kirkpatrick (WaterBrook Press)

The Deepest Waters, Dan Walsh (Revell/Baker Publishing Group)

The Final Summit, Andy Andrews (Thomas Nelson)

The Judgment, Beverly Lewis (Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group)

Wolves Among Us, Ginger Garrett (David C. Cook)

Latest project: Scars of a Chef, written with Lisa Jackson (Tyndale House Publishers, March).

You’ve written cookbooks, but this is a different kind of book for you, isn’t it? It is. It’s an extremely personal book of my journey, really just kind of a memoir and the wonderful journey that my life was taken over the last 30 years in the restaurant industry.  

What’s it like working in the restaurant business? It’s an extremely aggressive field as far as competition these days. People are striving now, coming out of culinary schools to not only become chefs, but then to obtain their own restaurants or multiple restaurants, and it’s become such a multimedia world with Bravo and the Food Network and the Cooking Channel and all these multimedia outlets, having your own television show or books or multiple books, so it’s very competitive. It’s really become extremely popular and turned into something that I never thought it would become. Back in the day when I was growing up, there was Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet.  

Can you tell us about your restaurants? For the last 10 years I’ve had a restaurant called Tru in Chicago, which is a fine dining restaurant, high-end restaurant. I also have a place called Tramonto Steak and Seafood and the R.T. Lounge on the north shore of Chicago. And the last year I’ve been in New Orleans getting ready to open up a new restaurant in the French Quarter in the Royal Sonesta Hotel called Resturant R’evolution with my partner, Chef John Folse. 

You started at Wendy’s and worked alongside Dave Thomas on occasion. It was the first Wendy’s in Rochester, N.Y., that had opened when my dad went to prison when I was a kid. I left school and was getting into trouble and my mom was a lunchroom lady during the day and a cleaning lady at night, and I needed a job. I needed to help out. I’ve always grown up in a family that loved food. My grandparents had both lived with me at one time from Italy, so at least I got my arms around it. 

You were aiming to reach the top of that “kitchen ladder.” To what do you attribute your overall success? There was just this dedication, of relentlessness of wanting to learn this trade and wanting to do this regardless of the obstacles, and then I think the bigger piece was God. … Now that I may have a culinary stage to be able to be respected on, I think that was the purpose of my life and my journey now, to be able to be used by God, to be able to speak into my industry because my industry still has a lot of excess and darkness. There is a lot of darkness in my industry because it has such high alcohol and drug and divorce rates and just so many things that are negative and dark. 

You suffered a divorce yourself and used drugs, so you can relate, can’t you? Yes, very much so. We serve the God of the second chance, and I think the message of this book is God loves us so much that He’ll continue to bring light into our life and second chances to help us to draw (closer) to Him. 

How would you like to encourage the Christian retailers in selling this book? It just continues to show the God of the second chance, the love of God, the hope that is in Christ, and it’s certainly a great snapshot of the behind-the-scenes of the restaurant industry, of being in the kitchens—a different take on Kitchen Confidential, if you will, but from a Christian viewpoint and from somebody who has spent his whole life in professional kitchens.

Reggie Dabbs had a rough start in life, but learned that although he couldn’t change his past, he could make a difference in the future—and that’s just what he is doing now every day. Dabbs speaks to 2.5 million young people a year, and, with John Driver, he tells his story in Reggie (978-0-849-94626-4, $15.99), in stores next month from Thomas Nelson.

Dabbs was born to a 16-year-old unwed mother who already had three children. In order to feed them, she felt compelled to accept the offer of a male friend who said he would give her $20 for sex. As a result, she became pregnant and knew she couldn’t handle raising another child. It was then that she remembered a caring former schoolteacher, Mrs. Dabbs, who had said to her students, “If you ever need anything, call me.” And she did. 

Mrs. Dabbs and her husband had six grown children, but took the girl into their home and cared for her until baby Reggie was born. They served as his parents until he was in fourth grade and then officially adopted him.

Filmmaker’s gritty memoir shows how he learned to live by faith

TITLE:  Faith in the Land of Make-Believe

AUTHOR:  Lee Stanley

PUBLISHER:  Zondervan

ISBN:  978-0-310-32545-1

PRICE:  $19.99

RELEASE DATE:  March

QUOTABLE:  "I think my book is honest proof that Christ is a modern-day God you can trust with your life, and He is still a God of miracles." - Stanley

By “providential accident,” Lee Stanley was called to a juvenile prison one day, and what happened there changed the course of his life. He tells the story of how he took on the juvenile justice system and ended up a multiple Emmy Award winner, in Faith in the Land of Make-Believe: What God Can Do … Even in Hollywood.

An honest account of Stanley’s life, the book shows that this Hollywood writer, producer and director didn’t always have it easy. He suffered a divorce, fought a battle with anger and endured the pronouncement by a professional that one of his sons would have to go into special classes so that one day he’d be able to live on his own—and through it all he learned how to depend on God.

Shawn McDonald sees the release of his fourth album and first recording in three years, Closer (Sparrow Records/EMI CMG Distribution), this month. With songs written by McDonald, Brandon Heath, Joy Williams and others, the album features themes of hope and redemption.

How would you describe your music?
I am a songwriter by nature. I also love all sorts of music. Every record I have written has been different. This current record I would call “intellectual pop.”

How is this album different than your others?
I try to remain fresh and innovative and at the same time retain a deep sense of my faith. I really try hard to not make the same record over, and it is a hard line to walk because you gain fans on one sound you gave them, and the goal is to not lose them on the next one. I have found that if I don’t continue growing as an artist or even in my faith, my heart sort of dies, and I start to do it for the wrong reasons. I am extremely excited about this record. It is a bit more on the pop side of things, but it was where my heart was at when I wrote it.

What are some of the album’s themes?
This record for me is a redemption record. It is about the ups and downs of faith that I wrote going through an intensely broken season of my life. It is really aimed at getting closer to God and learning to lean on Him in hard times rather than run.  

What’s a favorite song or two of yours on the new album?
My personal favorites on this record are “Don’t Give Up” and “Closer.”

What would you like to say to Christian retailers selling your music?
I write music because God has placed a seeker’s heart within me. I still don’t understand why He uses me, but the stories I receive from fans blow my mind. The fact that God is moving and healing broken people and lives through music and words reminds me that what I do is important. I don’t understand it, but I will follow and continue to create music as long as God continues to inspire and drive my heart. Thanks for walking on this journey with me.

Singer-songwriter Michael Card visits the Gospels in his new “Biblical Imagination Series,” with books, DVDs and CDs dedicated to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Christian Retailing talked with him about the series and its first installment on the Gospel of Luke.

What do retailers need to know about the “Biblical Imagination Series”?
It’s going to cover the four Gospels initially. We’re thinking it’s going to take five to six years to finish it. There will be a book, a record and a teaching video on each one of the Gospels. … The video has already come out, it’s with Day of Discovery. The book and the record are coming out with InterVarsity.

You started with Luke. What drew you to his Gospel?
I had just written a book on slavery, and because of that research, I became convinced that Luke was a slave, so (with) this whole idea of engaging with your imagination, you ask, who is it that wrote the Gospel? What is it about their personality, what about them as an individual would shape the Gospel in certain ways? So I started out just trying to read the book as having been written by a slave. Certainly he was a doctor—we know that for sure because Paul said so. So that’s how I got into it. The book really came to life.

So you’re working on whichever Gospel is firing your imagination at the time?
I couldn’t have started with Matthew because I know the least about Matthew. I am the Wednesday-night Bible teacher at our church, and I am working through Matthew, just getting started. But it’s been interesting with this approach, this engaging-with-the-imagination approach. Matthew is starting to come to life to me, too. Matthew was always my least favorite Gospel.

What is your process of engaging with the Scriptures and how that evolves into music, books and videos?
I was discipled by a wonderful man named William Lane, and (he) is the person that really started this ball rolling. He used to say that we need to engage with Scripture at the level of informed imagination, but he never told us how to do that. He just did it. He discipled me for about 27 years. We were together constantly for six years, then for another 21 years we were together a lot. So I was left to myself to figure out how to do this. Over the years, what I realized is that it’s the imagination that really integrates us in our heart.

These songs are all written by you. Do you ever work with other writers?
I work with other melody people. One was written with Scott Brasher; Scott is a melody writer. Two of them were written with my best friend, Scott Roley. Scott and I, we’ve been best friends for 30 years. We sort of finish each other’s sentences, we have that kind of friendship. ... He’ll start a song and I’ll finish it, or I’ll start a song and he’ll finish it—that’s how we worked. At a point when I would be discouraged or depressed about the whole process, he is about five years older than me, but he brings his youthful enthusiasm into the room and (you) finish things that you wouldn’t have finished otherwise.

What would you say to retailers about this series?
I think the church in general is recognizing that they are hungry for Scripture. I think in the wake of the current sort of worship movement, a lot of people have realized that are really just hungry for the Bible. I hope that retailers will (be excited), maybe since it’s a timely series. Hopefully it will be something that will wash people’s feet.