A Bond Never Broken, Judith Miller (Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group)

A Watershed Year, Susan Schoenberger (Guideposts)

Bound by Guilt, C.J. Darlington (Zondervan)

False Pretenses, Kathy Herman 
(David C. Cook)

Lie Down in Green Pastures, Debbie Viguié (Abingdon Press)

Love Amid the Ashes, Mesu Andrews (Revell/Baker Publishing Group)

No Safe Haven, Kimberley Woodhouse and Kayla R. Woodhouse (B&H Books/B&H Publishing Group)

Springtime of the Spirit, Maureen Lang (Tyndale House Publishers)

Vicious Cycle, Terri Blackstock (Zondervan)

Who Is My Shelter?, Neta Jackson (Thomas Nelson)

ANN H. GABHART

Next release: Angel Sister (February)

Publisher: Revell (Baker Publishing Group)

How was writing Angel Sister different from writing your Shaker novels?

In my Shaker novels, the history focuses on the Shakers’ very different lifestyle and religion along with whatever was happening in the nation during the time of the story. Angel Sister has a historical background as well with its Great Depression-era setting along with flashbacks to a World War I romance. So history is threaded throughout both the Shaker books and Angel Sister. Different stories, different settings, different histories, different characters, but my way of writing those stories was much the same.

Where did you get the idea for this book?

The inspiration for Angel Sister came directly from the many stories my mother and her sisters told me about growing up during the ’30s. They would talk about the abundance of odd characters in their community and about how happy they were in spite of the hard times because of the love they had for one another. 

Any advice for Christian retailers?

Angel Sister is a story of family with characters who struggle with the same problems many people are struggling with today—addiction, the loss of a way to make a living, family sickness and division, secrets from the past, questions of faith. At the same time, it is a joyful story of how love and faith in God can see a family through personal hard times and national hard times as well. 

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

Latest project: Global Soccer Mom: Changing the World Is Easier Than You Think (Zondervan), releasing this month.

Resides in: Wheaton, Ill.

Is “global soccer mom” a good description of you? It is. It’s a phrase that was actually coined by a friend of mine because I really am a soccer mom. I was a stay-at-home mom for almost 14 years. I was blessed to be able to stop teaching and stay home when I had my babies. My babies aren’t babies anymore—they are teenagers and the youngest is in third grade, so I really do spend my time in carpool and driving to sports practices and instrument lessons. But I came to the realization and conviction that I wanted to also be a global thinker and think outside of my family and my suburbia life and wanted to make a difference.

Singer-songwriter Martin Smith of Delirious teams with co-writer Craig Borlase to tell the story of one of Christian music’s most popular worship bands in Delirious: My Journey With the Band, a Growing Family and an Army of Historymakers (978-1-434-70237-1, $14.99), releasing this month from David C. Cook.

For 17 years, Smith fronted Delirious, known for such songs as “Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble?” and “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever.” The Dove Award-winning, GRAMMY-nominated band helped bring the modern worship movement into existence. 

Written to show how God used “five ordinary guys” and how He can use every believer, Delirious also offers thoughts on today’s music scene. Reflecting on the early days of the worship movement, Smith writes: “We’ve become too song focused, and in truth I believe that we need to be more worship focused. We’ve lost the ability to push aside the songs and replace them with twenty-five minutes of crying out, opening our hearts and heads with the raw worship of God who’s within us.”

Barnett inspires believers to focus on something bigger than themselves

Title: The Cause Within You

Author: Matthew Barnett with George Barna

Publisher: BarnaBooks 

(Tyndale House Publishers)

Isbn: 978-1-414-34846-9

Price: $24.99

Release date: February

Quotable: “The happiest person in the world is somebody who has one cause before them at all times.”—Barnett

When Matthew Barnett moved to Los Angeles at age 20, he planned to build a big church like his dad, megachurch pastor Tommy Barnett, did—but God had other plans. 

Sixteen years later, the younger Barnett finds himself leading a successful inner-city ministry, the Dream Center. It is the singular cause that now drives him, and he tells the story of how it became his driving force in The Cause Within You: Finding the One Great Thing You Were Created to Do in This World.

Co-creator of VeggieTales and now vice president of creative development for Big Idea, Mike Nawrocki oversaw the production of this month’s release, Sweetpea Beauty—A Girl After God’s Own Heart, the first-ever VeggieTales episode just for girls.

How did the idea of a girls-only episode come about? When General Manager Leslie Ferrell, offered a woman’s perspective and said, “Let’s make a show about inner beauty.” To be honest, it’s not the first thing a development team of three guys would think of. But we embraced the challenge and, being fathers of daughters ourselves, created a couple of stories that we would love for our own daughters to watch.

What did you do differently to reach this niche audience? We didn’t really change much of what we usually do in that, with any story, you want to try to write from a place of experience and truth. You need to speak to your audience with the story you are telling—whatever the niche. As male writers, we needed to rely on the input and feedback of our wives, daughters and female co-workers.

Isn’t the message of Sweetpea one that boys need to hear, too? Absolutely. Boys are also under a tremendous amount of pressure in our culture to “look good.” The message that God looks at the heart and not on our outward appearance is also important for boys. As Petunia says (in closing), “Anyone can learn a thing or two from a princess story, Larry.”

Will there be other targeted episodes, and if so, on what kind of topics? We’re currently working on an episode where we are partnering with World Vision on a lesson in serving others.

How did Nichole Nordeman come to write a song for Sweetpea? She has some huge fans at Big Idea. Because of how she has addressed the topic of true beauty in the past, both personally and professionally, we felt that her unique perspective as a singer-songwriter—in addition to her role as a mother of two small children and her love of VeggieTales—would be a great fit. We were so thrilled when she agreed to write a song for the show and were absolutely floored when we heard it. ″Beautiful For Me″ is a wonderful and moving song that captures the lesson of Sweetpea Beauty perfectly.

How is today’s VeggieTales audience different from the one in your beginning in the early 1990s? People are much more visually sophisticated than they were at the birth of 3-D computer animation. Twenty years ago if it was computer animated, it was cool. VeggieTales benefited from that early wave of enthusiasm. As I go back and watch the shows, I notice the stories and lessons hold up well, but they look very rudimentary. Visually, we’ve had to improve as the art form has improved, and our audience’s expectations have grown.

Will there be another full-length VeggieTales movie? We have a script for The Bob and Larry Movie, which tells the story of how Bob and Larry met, that we would love to make into a movie when the time is right.

For an extended audio version of this interview, visit the specialty blogs at www.christianretailing.com.