More about Marcia:
1. Tell us about yourself.
Although I hold degrees in
sociology and Christian education, most of what I’ve learned has been by the
proverbial seat of my pants. I’ve taught English in a Christian high school,
worked with orphans in a Mayan village, led mission teams to Central America,
delivered Yellowbooks, stuffed vending machines, and lived in everything from
tepees to parsonages.
I
love to share the stories and lessons I’ve learned along the way about what a
very real God can do with the smallest of our offerings. My first and most dear
word from the Lord is Be still and know
that I am God—Psalm 46:10.
2. Your writing experience is unusual in that until
2008, you’d never written anything, but by 2011 you had a book contract with
Thomas Nelson. How did that happen?
I am grateful to have experienced
such abundant grace and blessing on my work. When we moved to the South a few years ago, I had a singular
image in my mind: buy a house with a pool where I could sit and write. Although I didn’t know what I would write,
nor did I know how to write a book, it was as though my story’s time had come,
and I needed a nesting spot.
I took a writing workshop taught
by the editor of the city journal. At the end of the class, she offered me my
own weekly column. That’s when I realized I could write something that people
would read.
I continued to take workshops
and go to conferences. In 2010, my manuscript won at the Blue Ridge Christian
Writers Conference. I also won a self-publishing package, but turned it down
because I felt constrained to wait.
Later in the year, I entered the
Women of Faith Writing Contest and won a self- publishing package from WestBow
Press. Unbeknownst to me, Thomas Nelson was looking at my book, and a month
after it came out, offered me a contract.
3.
Many
traditional publishers avoid memoir. Do you have any advice for someone who
hopes to publish a memoir?
The first agent I approached
told me no one would publish a memoir from an unknown. He suggested I turn my
story into magazine articles. Although I didn’t do it at the time, I think his
advice is good. Memoirists need the exposure magazines give.
My path to publication, however,
was through contests. I also made sure my story was about something more than
me. Thomas Nelson must have agreed because they categorized my book as Christian
living/spirituality.
4.
What
do you hope readers will glean from your story, Call of a Coward-the God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife?
A fresh confidence in the Living
One Who Sees Them. A sense of expectancy in encountering him. Both the story and
its path to publication are examples of the possibilities of an ordinary life
in the hands of an extraordinary God. I hope readers will be inspired and
encouraged that whether they travel a thousand miles or a thousand feet, God
can do exceedingly more than they imagine.
5.
What
advice have you found helpful to you as a writer?
To
do my part—learn the craft, be open for critique, write with guts, and then
rest in Flannery O’Connor’s advice: “When a book leaves your hands, it
belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I
think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.”
6.
What
or who has influenced you?
I’m sure influences from thousands
of books are floating around my brain, but most recently, I’ve been inspired by
the imagery and metaphors of the Bible, the
essays of E.B. White and Annie Dillard, and the stories of Rick Bragg—people
who capture the extraordinary in the ordinary.
7.
How
did you know you should become an author?
Unlike
my fiction writing friends, I never had voices carrying on in my head (at least
not the kind you talk about) or flashes of the perfect plot. But threading throughout
all the other things I wanted to do in life (astronomer, archaeologist, doctor) was
the idea that someday I’d write a book. Of course, as Sholem Asch so succinctly points out: “Writing
comes more easily if you have something to say.” A few years ago I realized I did.
8.
Do you have
a writing schedule?
I’m
a bad example here. Wisdom leans on the side of schedules and quotas, and not
on the side of sporadic, task-driven efforts, which I seem to favor. I’d rather
pull rusty nails out of old decking than sit in a chair all day, but if I have
a specific project that has the possibility of a future, like writing an essay
for the Writer’s Digest competition, or better yet—writing a second book
because my first did well enough to warrant one—then I’ll sit, and write, and
squirm until I’ve got something. I always need the first line of every section
before I can go on. (It may change, but I have to have a satisfactory one at
first.)
9.
Are
you working on a second book?
Yes.
My working title is Going South-the God
of my Mistakes. When we moved south, we didn’t expect our plans to go south
too—but it’s really a story of hope.
10.
Tell us about Call of a Coward-the God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife.
It’s about laying aside your hopes,
dreams, and fears to follow God even though where He’s leading seems to require
credentials you lack and courage you don’t think you have. And about
discovering just how personal and gracious He is. Here’s my opening:
The
problem with promising God you’ll follow Him wherever He leads is that you just might have to go.
I suspect it would be easier if you were
certain of His calling—like stepping out the door and
seeing the lilac bush on fire and hearing a voice commanding you. But when it’s
your husband
who is delivering the message—well, that leaves a little room for wonder.
At
least that’s how I felt when my husband rocked my comfortable middle-class afternoon with his belief God was calling us to
pack up and move to a Mayan village in Guatemala.
Permission link: Excerpted from Call of a Coward: The God
of Moses and the Middle Class House-Wife. Thomas Nelson ©2012. Used by
permission of Thomas Nelson, Inc. www.thomasnelson.com.
11.
How were
you personally impacted working on the project?
Recording events and later
rewriting them helped me to see just how involved God was (and is!) in my
journey. I gained a deeper appreciation of his grace, and then after the
manuscript won several contests, including the women of Faith writing contest,
I realized it was a message bigger than my personal story.
12.
Is there
anything else you would like readers to know?
It was
with fear and trembling that I put my name on the same line as Moses’, but the
story is not about me or Moses; it’s about the God who is the same yesterday,
today, and forever.
Call of a Coward: The God of Moses and the
Middle-Class Housewife is available online at Amazon,
Barnes
and Noble, Christian
Book Distributors or from your neighborhood bookstore.
