It's an absolute delight to introduce you all to Kimberly Rae today. We share a similar illness and over the last few weeks we've shared some experiences and stories - it's good to talk to someone "who knows".
Kimberly's recently released her latest book Blue Ridge Setup - I added it straight to my kindle, because not only did she include Addison's Disease into the story line, but the story's set in North Carolina, a place I'd love to visit one day.
Blurb:
Not him. Anybody but him.
When Kayla’s great-aunt Lavender, an eccentric romance novelist, invites Kayla to come live with her in the Blue Ridge Mountains for the summer, Kayla accepts. No one will know her there. No one will be disappointed in her failure.
A failure she had kept a secret until Ryan Cummings destroyed her dreams.
What Kayla does not know is that her aunt attends Ryan Cumming’s church and has decided Ryan and Kayla would make wonderful characters for her latest novel. Aunt Lavender hires Ryan to build additions to her property, making sure he will be around as long as Kayla is.
Neither Kayla nor Ryan have any desire to be set up. However, as Kayla battles feelings of worthlessness—started when health problems got her sent home from the mission field—a friendship grows and blossoms, one that may become a reflection of the perfect love, the love that casts out fear, that Kayla has always longed to know.
At its heart, Blue Ridge Setup is a fun
read about a young woman getting set up who doesn’t want to get set up. Kayla
Madison moves in with her eccentric romance-novelist great aunt, who is
determined she and Ryan Cummings would make great characters for her next
novel, if only she can get them together! Poor Ryan has no idea what he’s
getting into when he agrees to do a landscaping project for the great aunt, who
intends to keep coming up with jobs for him to do until her plan works! And of
course I love that it’s set in the Blue Ridge mountains, in my own town in
fact!
Is
the eccentric great aunt based on someone you know?
No, but I wish she was. She’s a riot—kind
of what I’d imagine Anne of Green Gables would be like as a senior citizen. =)
Your
main character starts having health problems and that plays a big part in your
story. Why did you do that?
Most novels don’t have heroines with
chronic health conditions. If there is a medical crisis in a book, it gets
resolved so the main character can get back to her life as a healthy,
productive individual.
As nice as that is, for many it is just not
a reality. I was shocked to find out that nearly 1 out of every 2 people in our
country has some type of chronic illness, and 96% of those are “invisible
illnesses,” meaning the phrase I and others often hear, “But you don’t look
sick!” As a person with chronic illness myself, I wanted to read a book with a
character who didn’t get magically better, but who learned to live well despite
and through her limitations. I wanted a book that said you don’t have to be
healthy to have a happy ending.
Kayla’s disease is very rare. Did you have to do a lot of research?
None at all, well, not for her anyway. I
have Addison’s disease myself. I thought about giving her something different
but they say you should write what you know, so…
Did you embellish a little with the health crisis to make it more dramatic?
The opposite, actually. That crisis in the
book is from memory, not imagination, including the doctor asking, “Do you give
permission for this surgery?”
And me responding, “What happens if I
don’t?”
“You die,” he says. Cracked me up! Oh, and
her joking with Ryan about the doctor saying sometimes a Central IV goes up
instead of down actually happened to me, and the doctor told me he’d fix it
tomorrow. Tomorrow! That was an interesting night. =) Goodness, that makes my
life sounds interesting.
So did the falling-down-the-mountain-needing-a-shot incident happen to you as well?
Thankfully, no. That’s fiction. However, I
have needed my husband to give me those shots on several occasions (poor man,
he hates needles), once even on an airplane, which made a passing stewardess
quite nervous!
Are any other parts of the story personal to you?
Like Kayla, health problems brought me home
from the mission field and took away my sense of identity and significance. And
it was one of the best things God ever did for me. I hated it, but I had to
learn to stop looking for my worth in what I did. Now, I get to share with others
that it is God who gives us worth, and it is not based at all on our level of
activity or achievement.
What do you hope readers get out of Blue Ridge Setup?
First, I hope they just enjoy the story.
After that, I hope it blesses readers with the reminder that God loves them
deeply. If they are in a place where it feels like He has taken away their
biggest dreams, they should not despair. His dreams for them are better than
anything they could dream for themselves.
Where can readers get Blue Ridge Setup?
You can find it on amazon: http://goo.gl/yLD3zQ . Right now it only has a
few reviews. I’d love some more!
About the Author:
Amazon bestselling author Kimberly Rae has lived in Bangladesh, Uganda, Kosovo and Indonesia. She has rafted the Nile River, hiked the hills at the base of Mount Everest, and eaten cow brains just to say she’d done it!
Rae has been published over 250 times and has work in 5 languages. Her articles have been published in BRIO/BRIO & Beyond, Proverbs 31 Woman magazine, Mature Years, Diabetes Health, SusieMag, Women of the Harvest, Clubhouse Jr., Keys for Kids, Insight magazine for teens, Standard, and Woman Alive, the only Christian magazine for women in the UK. She writes regularly for Union Gospel Press and Regular Baptist Press. Rae’s first published book, A Trip to Where? (ABWE Publishing) takes children on a 5-day story adventure to Bangladesh. Her series of Christian suspense/romance novels on human trafficking (Stolen Woman, Stolen Child, Stolen Future) are all Amazon bestsellers -
Rae’s Website: www.kimberlyrae.com
E-mail: info @ kimberlyrae.com
Facebook Page: Human Trafficking Stolen Woman
Twitter: @KimberlyRaeBook
Blog for Writers: www.kimberlyraewriting.blogspot.com -
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